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epiphanyx7Title: Dmitri's Excellent Adventure
Length: One-shot (1 953)
Rating: all ages
Summary: Contrary to all logic and reason, Dmitri was having fun. Slava and Dmitri have an ADVENTURE. And are joined by some others.
Warnings: Crack, maybe mild language.
Notes: Lacey MADE me. Companion to Slava's Excellent Adventure.
-
Contrary to all logic and reason, Dmitri was having fun. Oh, sure, having to get up at some stupid hour in the morning to follow his crazy, crazy cousin from the house, that hadn't been fun at all. And the part where he'd had to run across three lanes of traffic to stop Slava from getting into a car with a stranger - that really hadn't been fun at all. And right after that, when they'd been kidnapped by thugs, that part hadn't been fun in the slightest. Having Slava open the back door of the van and shove Dmitri out, into the road, where cars started swerving to avoid them and the van with the kidnappers had sped off into the pre-dawn morning... well, actually, none of the events of the morning had been fun at all, especially not when Dmitri's brand new runners had been left on the floor of the kidnappers' van.
Instead, he was cold, cranky, tired, and bruised, lying on the side of the shoulder with his cousin, who didn't seem fazed at all. Instead, Slava was almost smiling, even though he kept looking out of the corners of his eyes to make sure Dmitri wasn't hurt.
-
Slava's self-preservation instincts had matured, apparently, into the kind of blatant lack of self-preservation instict that made a young boy want to escape his armed guard so that he could go gallavanting about the countryside. The part where he was under armed guard in the first place had never really mattered to Slava, not when he had much more interesting things to pay attention to, like whatever fool's errand had sent him running to Toronto.
Dmitri's instincts, honed by years (well, months, really) of adventures with the Screech Owls and their infamous luck, were slightly more appropriate. For example - hitchhiking was a bad idea.
-
After the police had carted Doris away, Dmitri traded Slava his left shoe back. The two of them took turns kicking the chair between them in the police station lobby, and Dmitri had noticed, shockingly, that he was having fun.
Somewhere in between jumping from a moving vehicle, running for his life, the crazed, too-fast car ride, the high-speed police chase, and the ensuing chaos when they attempted to determine whether or not Doris had kidnapped the boys - adrenaline had kicked in, and Dmitri realized that he hadn't had this much fun in his entire life. They lied to police officers. Their parents didn't know where they were!
Slava, of course, was still crazy and smiling happily, looking at Dmitri as if everything was going as planned. Right, I almost forgot Slava was insane, Dmitri thought, as he stood up and went off to cause a commotion.
-
His cousin wasn't crazy, he was a fucking idiot. "I went along with your crazy, hare-brained scheme because I thought it was - I thought there was something important, you know?" Dmitri said. "I thought that you were going to run off and get yourself into trouble if I wasn't there to help you!"
"Well," Slava said, ducking his head modestly, "You're mostly right."
"No, I wasn't. There's nothing important in Toronto - you did this just to - to - fuck with my mind!" His face was flushed and hot, angry and more than a little bit hurt. What had been the point of running off, getting up way too early and going with him to make sure nothing bad had happened to him? Slava wasn't determined to do something important, he was determined to be an idiot. An idiot who'd already accidentally been kidnapped twice, almost killed in two different kind of vehicular accidents, and - and...
Slava stared back at Dmitri. "Of course I didn't." He said, sounding a little wobbly.
"Why are we going to Toronto?" Dmitri asked again, feeling tired and hurt.
Blinking, Slava shrugged again. "I hadn't really thought that part out, yet." He answered. "But hey, aren't you having fun? Dmitri? Dmitri! Hey, wait up ---"
Dmitri didn't wait, just walked as quickly as he could down the road. There had to be a payphone around here, somewhere, and then he could call - or rather, then he could try and figure out how to make a collect call. If all else failed, he could call 911 -
Slava caught up to him, a hand wrapping around his shoulder and pulling him back. "Come on, Dmitri." He said. "You were having fun, weren't you - I mean, until just now - you were smiling and everything."
Sometimes, it was really difficult not to hate his cousin. Unfortunately, Slava would look at him with his eyes wide and guileless and half-filled with tears, and then he'd give Dmitri some obviously bullshit excuse, which would make total sense and Dmitri would cave, immediately, and forgive him. It was the way the world worked, and Dmitri had been resigned to being Slava's recaltricant sidekick for a long time.
"I thought you'd have fun," Slava said, kicking at the ground with his bare foot. "If you really hate me that much, we can go back to Tamarac."
"And how -"
Pulling something out of his pocket, Slava handed it over. It was Dmitri's father's cellphone. Squeezing his eyes shut, Dmitri counted to ten, and when he still wasn't calm, quickly counted to fifty instead. "You had a phone?" He asked.
"And a credit card," Slava said. "Just in case something happened, I thought we could always call for a taxi. Or an ambulance, you know, if you were hurt -"
"Or even call for a pizza?" Dmitri asked, suddenly starving.
-
"What are you doing?" Travis asked. "Where are you guys? Your parents are going nuts!"
"Listen to me very carefully," Dmitri said, feeling only a little bit guilty for lying to his friend. "Slava and I are hiding out, right now - one of the police officers is working for the mafia, and we need to keep Slava safe, right, Travis?"
Travis agreed immediately, probably remembering his time in Sweden. "Yeah okay, right - but which officer?"
"We don't know," Dmitri said. "That's why you can't tell your parents where we are, Travis. Instead, you need to find a way to come get us yourself..."
-
Lars was the most dependable of the Screech Owls, in Dmitri's opinion, which was why he'd called his best friend first. Travis and Nish would probably go all Slava-crazy on him, doing something incredibly stupid in order to make their way to Toronto. Lars, on the other hand, would be able to think things through and get results, which was why Dmitri and Slava were sitting in the Wal-mart near the bus station, buying a new pair of shoes to share.
"I threw his shoes over the overpass," Slava said brightly when the saleslady asked why they needed to buy a new pair. Her eyes widened in shock and she looked back and forth between the two boys.
"My dad's waiting in the car," Dmitri added. "He said that he couldn't be bothered to deal with our immature antics for another second, and that if we didn't learn to get along he was going to leave us here,"
She laughed and pointed at a mostly inexpensive pair of runners. "How about these?"
"I dunno if they'll fit," Slava said. "Dmitri's got teeny feet,"
"Shut up, Slava!"
-
Later, when they'd once again split up the pair of shoes, Dmitri still wearing Slava's worn runner on his right foot, they met Lars at the bus station.
"You two are crazy," Lars said in flawless Russian, before he switched over to English. "I hope you realize that your parents are going to kill you," He hissed quietly.
Dmitri hugged the Swedish boy and ruffled his pale blond hair before letting him go. "I know," he said. "But come on - Slava's having fun."
Lars rolled his eyes and handed over a backpack full of supplies. "I'll have you know that the others got caught trying to escape," he said. "Their parents don't know that you guys are here, though, they just think Trav and Nish were going to try and join the search."
"Well," Slava said. "How long until we can rescue them?"
Lars turned to look at him. Dmitri turned as well, but he'd pretty much figured out how Slava's mind worked by now, so it wasn't difficult to understand that Slava was just wondering if they could.
And when he closed his eyes and counted to ten, Dmitri couldn't help but wonder if they were all actually this crazy. After a crazy adventure getting to Toronto (for no reason at all) and hiding from their parents, Slava wanted to turn around and head back to Tamarac to bust Travis and Nish out of parental lockdown?
"It is not impossible," Lars said, thinking hard. Slava was looking at him approvingly.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" Dmitri said, even as he grabbed Lars' hand and dragged the two other boys into a secluded corner to talk.
-
Sneaking their way back to Tamarac was kind of easy, all things considered. Lars's backpack full of goodies had contained more than the socks, clean clothes, money, and snacks that Dmitri had requested. With his infinite wisdom, Lars had also packed two bottles of gatorade, a small set of tools, a first aid kit, notebook, and a few more things besides.
Dmitri hadn't really expected Lars to go on one knee and pick the lock on the back door of Travis' house, though - that had been slightly surprising. Slava's mouth had dropped open in astonishment when the door made a soft click and slid open easily. Lars, being himself, just gave Dmitri the look that meant he'd explain later, when it wasn't more important to sneak up to Travis' room.
Travis, being himself, was on the phone with Nish, as he stuffed things into his backpack, talking furiously when they walked into the room.
"It's okay - oh, yeah. I gotta go." he said, abruptly hanging up and then throwing himself at Dmitri and giving him a hug. "Hey, let's get out of here before my parents get back, yeah?" He said, gesturing towards his bedroom window.
It was a quick climb down, a short trip through the graveyard and across the town, and then they were at Nish's place.
-
Somewhere, it had become the best game ever. How long could they evade the police and their parents? It wasn't as if they'd done anything wrong, excluding minor theft of Dmitri's father's cellphone and credit card. And lying to the police about their names when Doris had been arrested, but they'd done that mostly because it was entirely possible that one of the police officers in all of Canada might have had some affiliation with the Russian mafia and would recognize the names.
It was also possible that Dmitri was starting to think like his cousin. However, that didn't matter. He was starting - for the first time in a long time - to feel like he was actually safe, because he was at home, in Ontario, Canada, where nobody was trying to hurt him.
Dmitri grinned at Nish, and Sam - who had been far more successful in her attempt to free Nish from his parent's regime than Dmitri and Lars had been, and had managed to meet up with the boys with little difficult at all. Sam's eyes were bright, and her hair - tucked neatly under a baseball cap - was threatening to escape. "Come on," she whispered. "We can hide at my place for a couple of hours - my parents aren't home."
-
Length: One-shot (1 953)
Rating: all ages
Summary: Contrary to all logic and reason, Dmitri was having fun. Slava and Dmitri have an ADVENTURE. And are joined by some others.
Warnings: Crack, maybe mild language.
Notes: Lacey MADE me. Companion to Slava's Excellent Adventure.
-
Contrary to all logic and reason, Dmitri was having fun. Oh, sure, having to get up at some stupid hour in the morning to follow his crazy, crazy cousin from the house, that hadn't been fun at all. And the part where he'd had to run across three lanes of traffic to stop Slava from getting into a car with a stranger - that really hadn't been fun at all. And right after that, when they'd been kidnapped by thugs, that part hadn't been fun in the slightest. Having Slava open the back door of the van and shove Dmitri out, into the road, where cars started swerving to avoid them and the van with the kidnappers had sped off into the pre-dawn morning... well, actually, none of the events of the morning had been fun at all, especially not when Dmitri's brand new runners had been left on the floor of the kidnappers' van.
Instead, he was cold, cranky, tired, and bruised, lying on the side of the shoulder with his cousin, who didn't seem fazed at all. Instead, Slava was almost smiling, even though he kept looking out of the corners of his eyes to make sure Dmitri wasn't hurt.
-
Slava's self-preservation instincts had matured, apparently, into the kind of blatant lack of self-preservation instict that made a young boy want to escape his armed guard so that he could go gallavanting about the countryside. The part where he was under armed guard in the first place had never really mattered to Slava, not when he had much more interesting things to pay attention to, like whatever fool's errand had sent him running to Toronto.
Dmitri's instincts, honed by years (well, months, really) of adventures with the Screech Owls and their infamous luck, were slightly more appropriate. For example - hitchhiking was a bad idea.
-
After the police had carted Doris away, Dmitri traded Slava his left shoe back. The two of them took turns kicking the chair between them in the police station lobby, and Dmitri had noticed, shockingly, that he was having fun.
Somewhere in between jumping from a moving vehicle, running for his life, the crazed, too-fast car ride, the high-speed police chase, and the ensuing chaos when they attempted to determine whether or not Doris had kidnapped the boys - adrenaline had kicked in, and Dmitri realized that he hadn't had this much fun in his entire life. They lied to police officers. Their parents didn't know where they were!
Slava, of course, was still crazy and smiling happily, looking at Dmitri as if everything was going as planned. Right, I almost forgot Slava was insane, Dmitri thought, as he stood up and went off to cause a commotion.
-
His cousin wasn't crazy, he was a fucking idiot. "I went along with your crazy, hare-brained scheme because I thought it was - I thought there was something important, you know?" Dmitri said. "I thought that you were going to run off and get yourself into trouble if I wasn't there to help you!"
"Well," Slava said, ducking his head modestly, "You're mostly right."
"No, I wasn't. There's nothing important in Toronto - you did this just to - to - fuck with my mind!" His face was flushed and hot, angry and more than a little bit hurt. What had been the point of running off, getting up way too early and going with him to make sure nothing bad had happened to him? Slava wasn't determined to do something important, he was determined to be an idiot. An idiot who'd already accidentally been kidnapped twice, almost killed in two different kind of vehicular accidents, and - and...
Slava stared back at Dmitri. "Of course I didn't." He said, sounding a little wobbly.
"Why are we going to Toronto?" Dmitri asked again, feeling tired and hurt.
Blinking, Slava shrugged again. "I hadn't really thought that part out, yet." He answered. "But hey, aren't you having fun? Dmitri? Dmitri! Hey, wait up ---"
Dmitri didn't wait, just walked as quickly as he could down the road. There had to be a payphone around here, somewhere, and then he could call - or rather, then he could try and figure out how to make a collect call. If all else failed, he could call 911 -
Slava caught up to him, a hand wrapping around his shoulder and pulling him back. "Come on, Dmitri." He said. "You were having fun, weren't you - I mean, until just now - you were smiling and everything."
Sometimes, it was really difficult not to hate his cousin. Unfortunately, Slava would look at him with his eyes wide and guileless and half-filled with tears, and then he'd give Dmitri some obviously bullshit excuse, which would make total sense and Dmitri would cave, immediately, and forgive him. It was the way the world worked, and Dmitri had been resigned to being Slava's recaltricant sidekick for a long time.
"I thought you'd have fun," Slava said, kicking at the ground with his bare foot. "If you really hate me that much, we can go back to Tamarac."
"And how -"
Pulling something out of his pocket, Slava handed it over. It was Dmitri's father's cellphone. Squeezing his eyes shut, Dmitri counted to ten, and when he still wasn't calm, quickly counted to fifty instead. "You had a phone?" He asked.
"And a credit card," Slava said. "Just in case something happened, I thought we could always call for a taxi. Or an ambulance, you know, if you were hurt -"
"Or even call for a pizza?" Dmitri asked, suddenly starving.
-
"What are you doing?" Travis asked. "Where are you guys? Your parents are going nuts!"
"Listen to me very carefully," Dmitri said, feeling only a little bit guilty for lying to his friend. "Slava and I are hiding out, right now - one of the police officers is working for the mafia, and we need to keep Slava safe, right, Travis?"
Travis agreed immediately, probably remembering his time in Sweden. "Yeah okay, right - but which officer?"
"We don't know," Dmitri said. "That's why you can't tell your parents where we are, Travis. Instead, you need to find a way to come get us yourself..."
-
Lars was the most dependable of the Screech Owls, in Dmitri's opinion, which was why he'd called his best friend first. Travis and Nish would probably go all Slava-crazy on him, doing something incredibly stupid in order to make their way to Toronto. Lars, on the other hand, would be able to think things through and get results, which was why Dmitri and Slava were sitting in the Wal-mart near the bus station, buying a new pair of shoes to share.
"I threw his shoes over the overpass," Slava said brightly when the saleslady asked why they needed to buy a new pair. Her eyes widened in shock and she looked back and forth between the two boys.
"My dad's waiting in the car," Dmitri added. "He said that he couldn't be bothered to deal with our immature antics for another second, and that if we didn't learn to get along he was going to leave us here,"
She laughed and pointed at a mostly inexpensive pair of runners. "How about these?"
"I dunno if they'll fit," Slava said. "Dmitri's got teeny feet,"
"Shut up, Slava!"
-
Later, when they'd once again split up the pair of shoes, Dmitri still wearing Slava's worn runner on his right foot, they met Lars at the bus station.
"You two are crazy," Lars said in flawless Russian, before he switched over to English. "I hope you realize that your parents are going to kill you," He hissed quietly.
Dmitri hugged the Swedish boy and ruffled his pale blond hair before letting him go. "I know," he said. "But come on - Slava's having fun."
Lars rolled his eyes and handed over a backpack full of supplies. "I'll have you know that the others got caught trying to escape," he said. "Their parents don't know that you guys are here, though, they just think Trav and Nish were going to try and join the search."
"Well," Slava said. "How long until we can rescue them?"
Lars turned to look at him. Dmitri turned as well, but he'd pretty much figured out how Slava's mind worked by now, so it wasn't difficult to understand that Slava was just wondering if they could.
And when he closed his eyes and counted to ten, Dmitri couldn't help but wonder if they were all actually this crazy. After a crazy adventure getting to Toronto (for no reason at all) and hiding from their parents, Slava wanted to turn around and head back to Tamarac to bust Travis and Nish out of parental lockdown?
"It is not impossible," Lars said, thinking hard. Slava was looking at him approvingly.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" Dmitri said, even as he grabbed Lars' hand and dragged the two other boys into a secluded corner to talk.
-
Sneaking their way back to Tamarac was kind of easy, all things considered. Lars's backpack full of goodies had contained more than the socks, clean clothes, money, and snacks that Dmitri had requested. With his infinite wisdom, Lars had also packed two bottles of gatorade, a small set of tools, a first aid kit, notebook, and a few more things besides.
Dmitri hadn't really expected Lars to go on one knee and pick the lock on the back door of Travis' house, though - that had been slightly surprising. Slava's mouth had dropped open in astonishment when the door made a soft click and slid open easily. Lars, being himself, just gave Dmitri the look that meant he'd explain later, when it wasn't more important to sneak up to Travis' room.
Travis, being himself, was on the phone with Nish, as he stuffed things into his backpack, talking furiously when they walked into the room.
"It's okay - oh, yeah. I gotta go." he said, abruptly hanging up and then throwing himself at Dmitri and giving him a hug. "Hey, let's get out of here before my parents get back, yeah?" He said, gesturing towards his bedroom window.
It was a quick climb down, a short trip through the graveyard and across the town, and then they were at Nish's place.
-
Somewhere, it had become the best game ever. How long could they evade the police and their parents? It wasn't as if they'd done anything wrong, excluding minor theft of Dmitri's father's cellphone and credit card. And lying to the police about their names when Doris had been arrested, but they'd done that mostly because it was entirely possible that one of the police officers in all of Canada might have had some affiliation with the Russian mafia and would recognize the names.
It was also possible that Dmitri was starting to think like his cousin. However, that didn't matter. He was starting - for the first time in a long time - to feel like he was actually safe, because he was at home, in Ontario, Canada, where nobody was trying to hurt him.
Dmitri grinned at Nish, and Sam - who had been far more successful in her attempt to free Nish from his parent's regime than Dmitri and Lars had been, and had managed to meet up with the boys with little difficult at all. Sam's eyes were bright, and her hair - tucked neatly under a baseball cap - was threatening to escape. "Come on," she whispered. "We can hide at my place for a couple of hours - my parents aren't home."
-