Work Text:
November 1981
By the time they touch down in London, Anatoly feels like a shell of a human being—everything inside him has been wrung out. He is exhausted, emotionally drained, and he thinks he’s coming down with something, but maybe that’s just the anxiety.
And why, when the hard part is already done, when he’s already been granted access to this country and has a place to stay, someone to stay with, would he feel like this, to the point of making himself sick? He should feel relieved. He’s made it.
Florence is the model of a woman under pressure. The trip to the airport in Milan doesn’t get to her at all. She holds his hand in the taxi and squeezes every time he looks back, searching for some sign that they’re being followed. She shoots him comforting smiles through all the lines they stand in, to get on the plane and then through customs, where he’s taken to a room and has to wait for the better part of an hour for them to process all the paperwork. Florence just sits next to him, making sure everything is correct before they go.
Anatoly truly doesn’t know what he would do without her. He doesn’t know how he ever thought he could have done this by himself—what would he have done, if she hadn’t agreed to come with him? He probably would have had a breakdown on the plane, if he’d ever made it that far.
Now… he’s out. He takes his first steps out of the airport, out into his new home, and it’s… a little bit anticlimactic. It’s a cool night. The stars are barely visible. All he owns is on his back or in his suitcase. He takes a few moments to take it all in.
Florence steps up next to him and smiles. “Ready?”
“Where are we going?” Anatoly asks. He heard the plans when they were being made, but he has no frame of reference—he doesn’t know where they are, or where they need to be.
“Our hotel is in the city. I usually take the bus when I visit, but I think we’ve earned a taxi ride, after the week we’ve had,” she says.
Anatoly laughs quietly—he’s shocked he’s still capable of it tonight. If anyone has earned any small luxury, he thinks, they have.
Florence flags down a cab, and the driver hops out to help them with their luggage. Everything Anatoly now owns goes into the boot, along with whatever Florence packed. He hadn’t even brought a chess board. They both slide into the backseat, and Florence gives the driver instructions.
He tries to pay attention to where they’re going, but he’s so exhausted, he can’t keep anything straight. Florence takes his hand, and that’s a comfort. “We’ll have to start looking for a place to live eventually, but I think we can take a few days to relax first. I can call around and see if any of my old friends are still in the area, they might know of somewhere. I think I know a couple of restaurants in the area that should still be open at this hour, for dinner,” she says, fully in logistics mode. It’s a good thing, too—at this moment, Anatoly is certainly in no state to think about the future.
She pauses, and laughs a little, shaken from her thought process. “I don’t even know what you like to eat.”
She’s nervous, he realizes with sudden, stark clarity. And then, he realizes he has no idea how to comfort her—what does she look for, in times like this? This whole thing is so painfully new, and Anatoly has felt out of his depth for days now, but this is different. He’s been up against governments, and bureaucracy, and passport control and the KGB. This, the back of this cab, Florence and Anatoly and the space between them—this is something else entirely.
He musters a smile for him, and squeezes her hand back where they’re entwined. He would embrace her if their seatbelt weren’t in the way. “Right now, I could eat anything,” he says. She smiles back, a beautiful, relieved look that Anatoly thinks he could look at forever and never get tired of. “Once we’ve slept, we can look around together.”
They’re going to figure this out together, the new and confusing world they’ve found themselves in. They’ll make it work—he believes this, perhaps foolishly. When Florence leans her head on his shoulder, he knows. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and he doesn’t know what is going to become of him, but he knows this.
He sleeps through the rest of the trip, his head atop hers.