The Belov Family Reunion

It was the summer of 2005.  There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, which was a little unusual for Russia, even in the summer.  

The heat wasn't normally so bad by itself, but the humidity was nearly unbearable.  

Sonia had shoulder length hair that hung loosely around her face.  

She was out in the garden, sitting on the grass and her face buried in a book.  

She wasn't reading the words though.  

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she did her best to keep from making soft hiccuping sounds.  She didn't want anyone to see the tears.  

Her father was in the house watching some sports and drinking beer, socializing with his sisters and brothers.  

He wasn't at all acting like his wife had just left him and his eleven year old daughter for good.  

In fact, he seemed like he didn't have a care in the world.

Alyosha wanted to be anywhere but here.

Family reunions were generally quite painful. When the twenty two year old had been told that he had to appear and leave his boyfriend in the trash heap they called home, he hadn't been amused.

When he had been told why they were all meeting up, he had been less pissed off.

Lyo leant against the back of the couch, sipping the beer he had in his hand as he gazed over his many aunts and uncles completely ignoring the situation at hand. Fucking family.

He pushed off the couch and wandered into the kitchen.

A few minutes later he crouched besides his crying cousin with two mugs of chilli hot chocolate in his grip. "Here."

Sonia pressed the book up to her face, completely hiding into it.  

"N-no thanks.  It's too hot for h-hot chocolate." She stuttered, her voice tiny and wavering as she did her best to not show she was crying.  

She was failing quite miserably.

"It's Russia," he pointed out with an amused grin.

"It has chilli in it." He saved the mug around slowly. "And whipped cream." What eleven year old didn't want all that sugar? Epsecially when they were feeling crappy.

Lyo sighed softly and carefully lowered himself to sit on the floor. His ass hurt like Hell. "It gets better, Sonia. I promise." He'd felt just as shitty when his father had left him.

Sonia slowly brought the book down so that it was only showing her puffy red eyes.  

She looked far more miserable than any eleven year old girl should look. 

"I don't want it." She said again.  "I feel sick." 

"You want something in you. You'll waste away otherwise."

He took a sip of his hot chocolate, savouring the chilli flavour on his tongue. He kept her mug in his hand as he rested his own on his knee. He could feel the heat of the mug against the carpet burn on his knee. It was a nice heat.

"Promise me you won't starve yourself, Sonia. It doesn't help anyone, trust me."

The young girl was sniffling and trying to stop the tears.  

"How would you know if it gets better?  It will only get better if she comes back.  You had your mother." She whimpered.  

"All I have is my father... you don't know what it's like to live with him." She immediately regretted saying that.  A girl should never talk badly of her father.  

"I... I shouldn't have said that... I'm sorry." She whispered, pulling her knee's up to her chest and covering her face with the book again.

"Our situations are similar, Sonia."

More similar than he had thought, apparently. He wasn't happy about that. His sharp blue eyes turned back to the house.

His father's younger brother had never really sat well with him.

"My father left me and my mother when I was a couple of years younger than you." He set his cup on the ground and scooted forwards so he could wrap one heavily muscled arm around his cousin. "And there's a reason I moved out to be with my boyfriend so young."

"What reason?" She asked, bringing the book down so she could again look up at him.  

The strong arm wrapping around her caused the little girl to melt into his embrace.  She nuzzled her head against his chest and rested her knees towards him.  

Because of the humidity, the places where skin met skin were wet and sweaty.  But Sonia didn't care.  The affectionate touch was like a comforting balm.

Lyo just wrapped his arm tighter around her, pulling her closer as he dropped his head to rets his chin on the crown of her head.

"My mother isn't the easiest person to get along with. She doesn't like my life choices and tries to make my life hell because of them."

He had been through a lot because of his mother.

"It's roough to be left in a shitty situation, but it really does get easier." He didn't realise he had sworn until a second later and he uttered another curse under his breath. "Don't repeat those words, kid. I'll be skinned alive."

Sonia's young heart was full of nothing but pain and mourning.  She was betrayed by the person who had brought her into this world.  

She was left with the person who had driven her mother away.  

She loved her father.  But her father never acted like he loved her.  She felt worthless to him.  

Yet somehow she managed a shy giggle at hearing Lyo curse and then tell her not to repeat the words.  

The girl was always one to let a smile come to her face, no matter how wretched she was feeling.

"Now that's the smile I remember."

He reached up to flick her nose gently and smiled. His lip piercing reflected the burning sun.

"Drink your hot chocolate before it gets cold. Or I start pining for it. If I have too many more calories and put on much more weight, Maks will have a few words to say and I doubt any of them will be nice."

Sonia's small, feminine hands picked up the mug and she dipped her finger into the  melting whip cream, licking it off.  

The smile faded from her face and she looked like she was deep in thought

Lyo dipped his finger in the remains of his own whipped cream and wiped a little on the tip of her nose.

"So what are you reading?"

Lyo was a book whore according to his boyfriend. If there was a book around, he was sniffing at it.

He just couldn't help it.

Sonia jumped when the whipped cream was put on her nose.  She hadn't been expecting that.  

She wiped it off with the back of her arm and then stuck her tongue out at him playfully.  

She then looked down at the book.  The page she'd had it opened too was pretty wet from all of her tears falling on it.  Oops. 

"I don't even know.  I just grabbed it from Grandma's bookshelf.  I wasn't actually reading it." She muttered truthfully.

Lyo laughed as his cousin jumped.

He stukc his tongue out in return. As his tongue slipped back into his mouth, it detoured to stroke his piercing. Something he did a lot without thinking about it.

"Probably won't be very good then." Grandma was a pretty lovely woman, but her reading taste was terrible.

Sonia nodded, setting the book down and then leaning back into her cousin.  

She kept sipping the hot coco, content to sit in silence for the time being.  

Eventually, she opened her mouth.  

"Where's my father now?"  She asked softly.

"Where do you think he is?"

Her father was where he usually was when he came for family reunions.

"Sat in front of the TV with his fifth beer in hand. I'm going to be driving the two of you back home tonight." He'd only had one beer all day. He'd ben good to drive them back home then badger Maks to come get him.

"Only the fifth?  He's doing better than I had thought he was doing.  You should have heard him on the ride over.  I thought he was going ot crash the car on purpose."  She said.  She didn't sound like a little girl.  Her voice was young an childish, but the things she said and the way she said them were indicative of a person who was forced to grow up faster than what was normal.  

"I'm so scared Lyo." She whispered, leaning in close to him again.  

She felt foolish for admitting this, but it was true.  She had no idea what was going to happen now.  She couldn't picture a life with no mother in it.  

She kept telling herself that her mom would come back.  That everything would go back to how it was.  

But deep down she knew that wasn't true.  And that's one of the things that scared her so much.

"He's going slow because the TV's in front of him." If he didn't have the TV to stare gormlessly at, then he'd probably have drunk a hell of a lot more.

As she leaned closer to him, his arm tightened around her shoulders and her hand slid up into her hair, running his fingers through the mousy locks and petting her head gently.

"It's normal to be scared. I was scared when my father left." He had been terrified.

"If you need any help, or want to get away for a couple days, give me a call. Me or Maks will come and pick you up. The couch isn't the best thing in the world to sleep on, but it's always free for you."

"Lyo... can I tell you something?"  She asked meekly.  

Something was weighing heavily on her mind beyond just having her mom walk out on her and her dead-beat dad.

"Sure. I'm good at keeping secrets."

He gave her hair a playful little tug.

His whole life sort of hinged on his ability to not tell people certain things. He was a damned good secret keeper.

 "I... I don't want you to think I'm crazy but.... I knew my Mom was going to leave.  I saw her do it, I saw everything.  The yellling, the doors slamming, the suitcases... I saw it happen... days before it did."  She said to him quietly, staring ahead as she played everything back in her mind.  

"It was like watching parts of a movie.  I saw it and then it happened.... I... I should have tried to stop it from happening..."  She held the mug in her hands tightly, her face looking like she had seen a ghost.  

"Don't tell anyone?  Please?"  She asked, looking up at her cousin.  The last thing she needed was having people think she was making things up for attention or worse yet, losing her mind.  

And in her own childish way, she was worried if her dad had found out she knew this was going to happen, and did nothing about it, he would blame her even more for the woman walking out on their lives.

"Sonia, sweetheart."

Alyosha shofted around so he was facing the girl and laid his hands gently on her shoulders. "Look at me, Sonia."

His thumbs strectedh out and rubbed the tear tracks gently off her face.

"Sometimes people can't be swayed when they've made their mind up. Your mother might not have stayed even if you had tried." It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was the truth.

Her big round eyes cold only stand to look into Lyo's for a moment before she closed them, sniffling as she tried not to whimper.  

But as he spoke she couldn't hold back another blubbering little sob.  

A mother was supposed to look after her children, to protect them and love them when the rest of the world would beat them down and shun them away.  

"I wish I'd been a better daughter.  Maybe then she would have taken me with her."  She cried, leaning forward and clinging onto Alyosha tightly.  

He had been the only one to sit down and talk to her like this.  All her father had done was curse and yell, he didn't care to hear what Sonia was feeling.