#TeaserTuesday - First Meetings

 The day Toly met Maverick. 

Almost a month later, he was washing his hands in a McDonald’s bathroom when a man loomed behind him in the mirror, and said, “Anatoly Kobliska?”

Toly froze, glanced up at his reflection, and then froze again.

The man had a friendly, weather-beaten face, handsome in an easy sort of way. Dark hair getting some salt in it, jaw rough with purposeful stubble, brown eyes. He wore a plain blue hoodie.

And a Lean Dogs cut.

Toly’s pulse spiked, and his fingers twitched toward the front of his jacket, and the knife stashed in the inner pocket.

“Whoa there,” the man said, as though talking to a spooked horse. “Easy, son. There’s no need for that.”

Toly could see his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat, and the side of his neck. Throb-throb-throb. The man behind him had a height and weight advantage, but Toly had youth and speed on his side, and plenty of acquired knife skills besides. The man’s cut declared him the Vice President, but that betrayed nothing of his possible skills and experience.

In a choked voice, Toly said, “How do you know my name?”

Slowly, the man lifted both hands to show his empty palms. Rough, callused hands that had known hard work, old dirt baked into the creases. “I asked around. It wasn’t hard to find somebody Russian who’d spill the beans on you, kid.” He cocked his head to one side, grinned. “You’re the one who shot his own Pakhan.”

There were a dozen defenses he could have offered: the whole, sordid tale of Oleg the terrible leader. But that would require more words than Toly had ever used at one time.

The man said, “My name’s Maverick, by the way. You wanna turn around so we can talk face-to-face?”

No. But it was that or stab the man.

He looked at his own face, the dark, sleepless circles beneath his eyes, the haggard complexion, the greasy hair. He didn’t have money for a hotel room, and so he’d been making use of shelters and the occasional bit of hospitality from people he did odd jobs for: a pallet on a warehouse floor, one night, the back of a moving truck another.

What did he have to lose? Nothing. He had nothing. And he was so, so tired.

He turned, and leaned back against the edge of the sink.

Maverick nodded, and looked pleased, his smile not large, but warm. “I’m not angry,” he said, “and I’m not going to hurt you.” Like Toly was some child. Like he cared about this stranger’s approval.

Toly’s shoulders drew up on instinct. He glared. “I’m not your son.”

“I know,” Maverick said easily, “it’s old habit, I guess. I don’t have any kids, so I end up calling all the boys ‘son’ or ‘sport’ or something lame like that.” He shrugged. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Toly gauged there was a span of three feet between them: far enough that he could draw a weapon, but so close that if Maverick drew too, he wouldn’t be able to get off a decent shot. And then, given their location, someone would come pelting into the restroom, and someone would call 911, and then someone would catch a glimpse of him as he fled and give it to the police. If every Russian in the city was already spreading his whole fucking name around, apparently, there was no chance they’d waste a chance to offer it up to the cops when his sketch appeared on the evening news.

Maverick said, “I know what you’re thinking, and you need to take a deep breath, and at least hear me out.”

Toly’s shoulders jerked up a little higher. He’d begun to shake, faintly, and though he tried, he couldn’t stem it.

Maverick’s gaze said he really did know. You don’t know shit, Toly wanted to snarl, but he couldn’t, throat blocked up with nerves that proved him right.

“I don’t know you,” Maverick said, “but I’ve been a part of my club for a long time. I was a kid running from something once, and so are most of the young guys who are patched in now. It’s not a school Spanish club, is it? Your bratva. I know a little bit about it; it’s a family, just like ours.”

“It’s nothing like your club,” Toly hissed, but his heart wasn’t in it. Exhausted, underfed, terrified, the shakes had turned him cold inside, and now he was freezing. It was a terrible effort to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Okay,” Maverick said. “Maybe it’s not. But I know it’s not the sort of thing a guy can just walk away from because he’s done with it. And I do know that you left. That you did a really brave thing, and then you got Scottie outta there, poor little dipshit. Our president ripped him a new one, lemme tell you. He almost lost all those guns, and nearly got himself killed. He was a dripping mess by the time he got home to Albany, and he was telling us all about how this guy Toly saved his neck. I asked around about you because I wanted to thank you for looking out for him. He’s gonna be mopping floors and scrubbing toilets until he’s thirty, but he’s whole, and that’s no small thing. So.” He extended one of his callused, baked dirt hands, steady and inviting. “Thanks.”

Granted, he was teetering on the verge of a panic attack, and thinking wasn’t his strong suit at the moment, but Toly failed to think of a time when he’d shaken someone’s hand. Andrei’s perhaps, back in the very beginning, when he was still just a boy. He thought of taking Maverick’s hand, now, and realized he couldn’t see the man’s other hand, which could be holding a knife. That he could imagine: a friendly grip turning punishing, a yank, a kiss of pain along his ribs.

Maverick said, “Oh, man. This is worse than I thought.”

Toly felt his glare was lessened by the teeth chattering, no longer preventable.

“Jesus, kid,” Maverick said, smile slipping for the first time. He let his hand fall. “You’re awful paranoid, aren’t you? You don’t have to be so scared.”

“I’m not–” The room tilted dangerously, and Toly tasted blood as he accidently bit down on his tongue.

“Whoa,” Maverick said, and his voice sounded far away. “Are you okay–”

Don’t touch me, Toly thought, but everything turned black before he could say it. The last thing he saw was a hand reaching toward him…and it was empty.

When he came to, he was too drained to startle properly. Blinked at too-bright sunlight and sucked in a breath.

“There he is,” someone said, brightly. “Welcome back to the world of the wakeful. You passed out. I managed to grab you, so you didn’t hit your head. The girls at the counter looked at us like they wanted to call an ambulance, but I convinced them you’d had one too many at lunch and just needed a little coffee and food. Which is sitting in front of you, by the way.”

Maverick.

Toly blinked some more, and managed to turn his head, though it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He expected the back of a van, or a dingy warehouse, maybe a shed in the woods full of rusty farm equipment and angry Lean Dogs. It took him a moment, amidst the flare of panic, to realize he was still in McDonald’s. That he was in fact propped up in a window booth, with Maverick seated across from him, happy pedestrians ambling along on the sidewalk beyond the sun-warmed glass, against which his forehead rested.

Pushing himself upright was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and left the bright interior of the restaurant spinning.

“Easy, easy,” Maverick said, and nudged a tray toward him.

He smelled the promised coffee, and saw a burger, and fries, and even an apple pie.

“How long’s it been since you had a real meal?” Maverick asked.

Toly was too drained to launch himself out of the booth, and the scent of the food was making his stomach growl, besides. “McDonald’s isn’t a real meal,” he protested, but weakly. His mouth was starting to water.

Maverick chuckled. “Probably you’re right, but it’s gotten me through some lean times. I don’t have an old lady, so before I learned to cook, I spent a lotta nights under the Golden Arches.” When Toly only stared at it, fighting the pull of hunger, he said, “Jesus, kid. I promise I didn’t poison it. If I was gonna kill you, I woulda dragged you out the back while you were passed out, yeah?”

Toly looked between the food and the man, his last bit of caution fraying at a rapid pace. His throat was so dry it hurt to swallow. Nothing had ever looked better than that sesame seed bun. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you thank me?”

Maverick’s brows went up. “I swear you didn’t hit your head. I had my hand around the back of it.” He cupped it in empty air, to demonstrate.

Toly frowned at him. “You know what I mean.”

The brows went back down, and a notch formed between them. Concern, though that made no sense, so probably Toly was reading his face wrong. “I told you before: because of Scott. You’d have been well within your rights to stand by and do nothing. Your Pakhan wanted Scott hurt, and you could’ve gotten hurt yourself standing up to him. You didn’t have to do that, but you did, and our dumbass is back home safe and sound. I don’t know about you, but I was raised to thank a man when he did something good for me.”

It made sense, on the face of it. But Toly had not grown up amongst men who did things simply because they made sense. There were no “thanks” within the Kozlov bratva. No returning of favors. Not even kind gestures, like lunch for someone half-starved.

Another dizzy spell washed over him, and he clutched the edge of the table.

“Eat your food,” Maverick said gently. “And we’ll chat.”

Helpless to do otherwise, Toly reached for his burger, and thus sealed his fate.