Chapter Text
1927:
“I hear you saw him—Mister Heller,” only Ivy Pepper has the complete lack of discretion to blurt out, the day Viktor Vasko finally hobbles back into the Lackadaisy, using one of Atlas May's old walking sticks—donated by Mitzi May, who came over specially just to press it in his hand, along with a charmingly self-deprecating apology for not being able to afford better medical care and congratulations on having managed to snag some himself, without somehow managing to mention the name of the person really responsible for that “good luck” at all—as a cane. Everyone else on staff is smart enough to realize that a painfully slow-moving, barely-recovered Viktor is probably someone to not prod, on any subject...but this is the dievka we're talking about, the chatterbox, Miss Flapper. And though it should annoy him, it never does.
So: “Yah,” he allows. “He come by. Don't stay long.”
“And you let him?”
“Look at me, dievka. How I'm going to stop him?”
He's never been exactly sure how much Ivy understands about he and Mordecai—she's innocent in so many ways, yet hardly stupid. But even if she didn't have that note of horror in her voice, he already knows exactly how much she would deplore the idea of him thinking about Mordecai at all these days, given the way they parted.
“He's a terrible man, Viktor!” She tells him, anyways. “Horrible little...flashy-dressing, watch-watching, New York...” To her credit, Viktor can see her clever little mind skipping away from the worst, most obvious insult she could give Mordecai, the one that's not even an insult at all, just the simple truth. Or indeed, the second-most obvious—
(—but that particular brush would tar Viktor as well, and she likes him, after all; about as much as he likes her, really. Or better, probably.)
“...thug!” She settles on, finally. Adding: “He was supposed to look after my uncle, but the minute something happened to him, what did he do? Run away! And after what he did to you, too...I tell you, Viktor, that traitor deserves anything that happens to him—anything!”
To which Viktor can only shrug, and think, in turn: But I am a terrible man also, little girl...far more terrible than you let yourself believe. Perhaps what he deserves is me, and I him. Perhaps what we both deserve is each other.
Still, her rage seems disproportionate, especially when supposedly exercised on his behalf; over-compensation for hidden fear, perhaps, which he can certainly understand. Fearing Mordecai is a very smart impulse, usually, in any context. Viktor certainly knows his knees would be thanking him today if only the sight of Mordecai coming towards him with his tie wrenched uncharacteristically askew had automatically set off the signals which went to his fists, rather than those which lead directly to his cock.
The fact is, though—he misses Mordecai, fiercely. No one else can understand what they've been called upon to do, let alone what they've actually done, together. The graves he's dug while Mordecai shot weeping men in the back of the head, bottle-glass eyes narrowed only slightly through red-misted lenses. The way Mordecai's shoulder occasionally quivers under an unwary touch, no matter how stiff he holds himself. Viktor was in the War, and that's a thing nobody who wasn't there will ever be able to understand; Mordecai, who's never pretended to, has spent his whole life thus far fighting a very different sort of war, one which isn't even close to ending. Both of them have killed for foolish reasons, be it at the behest of kings and Presidents or because Atlas May paid them to. Yet Mordecai, like Ivy, has nevertheless managed to maintain a strange sort of purity—a faith in his own moral code, if nothing else. And that only up until the end.
What does he have to maintain him now? Viktor sometimes wonders.
1924:
That first time between them was fast as anything Viktor'd ever done in the trenches, a drunken hit-and-run mainly consisting of rubbing, jerking, kissing, hard and rough and awkward. After, since there was nowhere pressing either of them had to be right at that moment, Viktor was spurred by curiosity—a spirit of adventure, almost, or haphazard experimentation—to push Mordecai back and use his mouth the way others occasionally had on him, just to see what would happen. And Mordecai, though startled, proved a fast learner, like always; when he reciprocated, his exacting, finicky attention to detail made Viktor first want to scream, then quickly pass through into a state where he found himself unable to keep from doing so.
“You've done...this...before,” Mordecai didn't quite ask him, later still—a statement, though with a definite inquiring upwards lilt to it, an inherent hint of: Elaborate, please. Give details.
“In the Var, yes.” Adding, as a joke, more than anything else: “Vhat, did you tink I vas virgin?” And then, a bit less certain, while Mordecai cast him a cold eye: “I mean, you...this vas not your first time...”
(Was it?)
“Of course not,” Mordecai replied, quick and brisk, with no sort of emphasis at all. So Viktor would know he wanted Viktor to know he was lying.
Not the next day or even the next week, meanwhile, Viktor was working alone in the garage, trying to figure out exactly what else he could remove from the truck to create yet more storage space for contraband and still keep it running fairly efficiently, when Atlas May suddenly appeared behind him, soundless as a cat—a typical trick, though not one you'd necessarily expect from a man pushing fifty—and asked:
“So, Viktor, my friend—the other night, after that bunny hug-tasting incident of his, did Mordecai get home all right? 'Cause I saw him the morning after, from a distance, and it did seem to me as though he might be walkin' a bit funny.”
Viktor took a moment, mind racing—prevarication was hardly his strong suit, as he well knew—and decided that in such a situation, half the truth would probably sound better than none of it. “He, ehhh, had hangover; ve both did, but he vas embarrassed. He is...not so good vith liquor, you may haf noticed.”
“No, most of the Hebrew persuasion aren't, from what I've seen, though they sure do like the money it brings.” Then slipped in, gently enough, as they smiled at each other: “So why was it he ended up at your place again last night, exactly? Don't mean to pry, but I saw him putting on a clean shirt in the washroom this morning, and using the mirror to shave. Not very characteristic behaviour, for our fastidious young Mister Heller.”
“Ve stay up late, doing jobs, you know that. Sometimes, is easier—”
“For two weeks in in a row? Maybe you both need help with your scheduling. Or—tell me the truth now, Viktor, I won't judge. Just like to know how things are apportioned, amongst my employees.”
“You...should ask him, maybe?”
It was the most chivalrous thing he could think of to say, under the circumstances; diplomatic, or as much so as Viktor ever could be. But seeing how they both knew how well that particular conversation was likely to go, Atlas just laughed a bit to himself, before continuing—
“So you're the one finally deflowered the battlin' bookkeeper, after half the drunken flibbertigibbets in St. Louis failed...well, now. He's only a Lucifer-proud young Jew with two guns and no sense of humour; sure it'll all work out, in the end.”
Viktor frowned. “Vhat does him being Jew haf to do vith—”
“Oh, they're not so hot on such shenanigans, culturally. You didn't know that? 'Leviticus' is part of the Old Testament, after all.”
“Huh. Vell, even so...Mordecai does vhat he vants.”
“He does at that,” Atlas agreed, re-adjusting the daisy in his button-hole, “and it's cost him dear. Yet profited me, so I s'pose I've come out all the better, by the bargain.”
It was the most intimate single conversation he and his employer had ever had, Viktor realized, at least thus far. Which was odd in itself, along with the realization that Atlas—who more often than not had his arm slung 'round Mordecai's narrow shoulders, figuratively if not literally, maintaining the pose of mentor and apprentice they'd come back from New York striking—had chosen to come to Viktor with this, first. To appeal to him—what? Man to man?
(No: Mordecai is a man too, now, undoubtedly. Not boy, not anymore...)
But perhaps that was the stumbling-block, in itself. Perhaps Atlas didn't feel like he knew Mordecai the way he once had, and was thus forced to deal with someone who knew him—better. Better than anyone whose last name wasn't Heller, at any rate.
So: “Vhat happened, in New York?” Viktor found himself asking, after literal years of avoiding the subject. To which Atlas at first merely sighed (Better not, my massive Slovak friend) and thought, before replying:
“What happened was...Mordecai killed a number of men he wasn't supposed to kill, right in front of me and the world. Hell, he wasn't supposed to kill any—wasn't what they paid him for. I don't think he even knew he could do it himself, beforehand. But that day, the exact right impetus came along, and—my, my. It was like watching something bein' born, all raw and bloody and screaming. 'Cept for the fact that it was everybody else he was pullin' it out of, of course, and slappin' its ass with a bullet.”
“He has skill.”
“Yes he does. Has a talent, is what. And now we have him, it's that talent's gonna give us our edge up on the competition. You'll see—gonna get to the point where everyone in St. Louis is afraid to say his name out loud, for fear of callin' up the Devil. That's who you popped the cherry on, Viktor: Well done.”
“Yah, vell, they should be scared.”
“And they will be, everyone, from pillar to post—already are. But not you, my boy; you'll be the one person can turn Mordecai off, as well as on, and live. You've seen to that.”
Here he stopped, cocked an eyebrow at Viktor, as though he'd just made a joke only the two of them could understand. While Viktor stared down at him, standing there in his well-cut suit; dirty money dressed up clean, just like the rest of them. Except...smarter, supposedly. If only from his own point of view.
Thinking: And now I start to see why you put us together, maybe, in the first place—because even though like calls to like, unalike sometimes calls stronger. Because it kept your wife's sad, shrewd eyes away from Mordecai, and put him in a place where his own urges kept on building like an itch he couldn't scratch without somebody else's help...even mine. All of which is useful to you, isn't it, Mister May? Useful if it works, or even if it doesn't. Useful, either way.
He didn't like feeling used, necessarily; had had enough of it back in France, really. But having known what he was walking into when he first took Atlas's pay, he really couldn't complain.
“So here's the question,” Atlas said, studying his manicure, probably well aware of every last connection Viktor had just made, and banking on the fact that he'd done it far too slowly to keep any of it from mattering. “Will all...this, between you two, be a problem, Viktor?”
“Vill it?”
“Not for me.”
“For me, either.”
“And Mordecai?”
“You should ask him, like I said. But...no, I don't tink. No.”
“Let's hope you're right,” Atlas said, and disappeared, fading back into the dark.