Under Covers

four | minsk

A/N: Hi you crazy humans! Can we please up our comment game? Don't pretend y'all don't have it in you, because I *saw* how thirsty you were in my SoS comment section and (forget med school) my sole mission in life is to surpass that xoxo Ami

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four | minsk

despite worries over political instability and civil unrest, Belarus is generally safe for travelers; the biggest threat to visitors is petty theft, especially on public transport and in popular tourist areas

JAKE

May 5th, 11:42 (GMT +3)
10 days until it happens

THE DISDAIN THAT shapes her soft features when she realizes that I'm sat beside her is bloody adorable.

She looks comical beneath her bleached-blonde hairpiece and those ginormous eyeglasses, like a completely different person. Which I suppose is the entire point, isn't it?

The bloodied, bandaged knot on my scalp tingles from when she bludgeoned me yesterday. She looks petite, but bloody hell, she has a good arm on her.

She huffs petulantly, rolling her eyes. "Alright, how did you find me?"

The truth is, while she was busy snatching away my weapons yesterday, I snuck a tiny tracking bug onto her. It's a laser-thin patch, smaller than a sugarpea; I nicked it onto the hollow of her skull, beneath her hairline, where she won't see or feel it. Wonders of modern technology. You know what they say, that shit about your friends and your enemies. "Luck, I suppose," I evade, shooting her a wide, crooked smirk.

She narrows her eyelids, not believing that for a second. Irritated, she shucks her wig and spectacles and jams them into her knapsack. A stream of dark hair shakes loose.

Apparently, my presence has robbed her of her appetite. I scoop up her discarded bowl and spoon a couple final bites of beets and cabbage and potato.

"So did you just come here to eat my food, or can I help you with something?" she snarks, her tone saturated with aspartame. Her round thigh is flush with mine. Neither of us shifts away.

Our elbows bump. "I heard a rumour," I share offhandedly, "That someone stole something valuable from a local mob detachment this morning. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Her eyes focus ahead on the trickle of a nearby fountain, but her jaw flexes with a faint itch of pride. "Oh no. Sounds dangerous."

"Wouldn't it be a bloody shame—" Slow, unbothered; I'm teasing her now, and suspicion wrinkles her eyebrows, "—if the thief somehow lost what they'd stolen?"

A sequence of emotions flits across her face, from boredom to distrust to disbelief to incredulity.

With a flurry of fluid motions, she turns her back to me, tearing desperately through her rucksack. When she discovers the frayed gash gouging the fabric, she whips towards me, pink with anger. My pulse fucking accelarates, thrilled by how livid she is. Practically homicidal, she looks. She lunges at me, but in two long strides I've vacated the bench and put a safe gap between us.

"Looking for this?" She kept the flash-drives in a strawberry-patterned zippered pouch with her tampons and condoms and lip-chap. I dangle it in the air. Her flaming brown eyes squeeze into slits.

I could've just lifted it off her and fled without her ever knowing it was me. That would've been the wise thing to do. But fuck it, I couldn't resist rubbing it in after she got the upper-hand yesterday.