Man on the Inside

17

"Fuck," Art whispers as he scrambles up, and Brontë's left sitting on the bed, cold now, watching Art like he can't quite be real. He sits up, trying to process why Art could possibly be panicking. And then he's hit with the realisation that the problems they left at the door will still be waiting there, regardless of if they acknowledge them or not.

"Who-" he begins, but Art makes a ssh motion, silently. He's continuously blinking, but he's actively holding down his left arm with his right, like that's helping him suppress a tic.

Art looks through not the peephole, but the crack in the side of the door, as there's another impatient knock- and then he's suddenly got Brontë's face in his hands, and he kisses him again, just one more time, with a whispered request: "just hold her off, okay? Try and convince her I'm not here, but if that fails, I've got a plan. I-"

He stops, stutters, and then there's a third, more insistent knock, and Art drops to the floor, sliding under the bed.

Brontë gets up, his heart in his throat. "H-hold on!" he calls out, the slurring of his voice making him sound tired. He shoves all the clothes they had abandoned on the floor under the bed. He can feel the weight of multiple phones in pockets, so at least Art has that way out, even if Brontë doesn't. "Just one- second!"

The person knocks a fourth time, as if deliberately ignoring what he's saying, and Brontë can't be annoyed. As much as he wants to be, annoyance isn't something he can spare for her.

-but if it were true, that he had no idea who she was, he would be annoyed. So he's a little slower taking the robe out of the bathroom, a little slower wrapping it around himself and answering the door. Answering the door like he isn't shaking.

"Hello?" He hopes his bleary eyes can pass as sleepiness. He hopes it isn't obvious that he knows exactly who he's opening the door for, and that he's never been more afraid in his life.

The woman who smiles up at him is far shorter than he expected her to be. Her smile is ice-cold, and so are her eyes. Her ponytail is pulled back so tight that he'd worry for her scalp; it's hard to tell what's silver and what's platinum blonde. She doesn't look a lot like Art, although maybe she would, if there was any warmth about her at all.

"Hi." Her voice is clipped. She sounds like every annoying, older white person who speaks to Brontë like they're part of some secret club, that's better than everyone else. Brontë is lucky that he never truly felt he could be a part of that club. He pretends, right now, that that's all he knows about her, and it's easier to draw his eyebrows together in slight disdain. Easier, but the fear still has a grip of him. "My name is Anastasia. Can I speak with you?"

If she could see how fast his pulse is, if she could sense it beating in his neck like a lioness might sense her prey's, she would know it was an act. Did Art get his skills of deduction from her? He's deduced all of Brontë's secrets but one. Can Anastasia deduce that he knows exactly who she is?

Brontë sniffs, rubs his nose. The kinds of things a scared person wouldn't do, but a tired, confused person would. Attention to detail, as if Art is grading him from his hiding place under the bed. "Can you speak with me?"

He tries to put the onus of explaining herself onto her, like she isn't Anastasia fucking Volkov, like he didn't listen merely an hour ago to how she made her eight-year-old child kill people. Like he doesn't know that she's chasing that same child down, that he's hiding under the bed.

"Yes." Her confidence that that's all she needs to say makes Brontë want to believe her instinctively, but as she leans on the door, trying to press it open, that's plausible deniability for Brontë to press back, to keep it held between them. She puts more pressure on, just to test if they're really going to play tug-of-war for her entrance, but they are. "Can I come in?"