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"I can't make heads or tails of him, Bess. Not heads nor tails," Boss whines, far too buzzed on booze to sound as fancy or dignified as he normally would.
"Well, he's scared, for one," humored, Bessy says, and gets back to cleaning her rifle.
Snorting, Boss picks up his glass- mostly empty by now- and checks it against the light, swirls the liquid against the walls as pensive as he ever is, "It's been three days, dear. His kind of fear is entrenched down into the bone, that part is clear to me. But his- how it manifests. Have you seen how he acts around me?"
His attention is, as per usual, very piercing. Bessy shifts in the improvised pillow fort of theirs, grabs a fresh pipe cleaner to get between the trigger and the trigger guard properly; lip pinched, hums, "Same as anyone who thinks you're a creep? Maybe a touch more jumpy, like one'a those cutie spiders. I'm workin' on it," she says, and turns over the rifle to see if any nasty dirt will reveal itself if the thing is right side up.
"Yes, of course, but- have you seen how it's changed?" Boss insists, and- huh.
Akira does seem to have shifted slightly, from outright barely contained antagonism- and he had been open about the rumors he's heard, though he said he didn't necessarily believe them very, well, believably- to something more… slow. Like an animal who goes from shaking, snapping, screaming, to a slow and quiet stalk. Hm.
"Maybe he thinks you're too good to be true?" Bess asks, careful as she wipes the forestock with all its little stickers.
A moment of silence. Taking a sip, Boss sighs, relaxes forcefully into the pillows.
"He's afraid of me. If what he'd been saying about believing me innocent and all of his fear and issues being his own were true, I don't feel he'd go from a sort of reflexive defensiveness to a prowling panther the way he had. Of course, it's- it's subtle, I may be making a big deal out of nothing, but-" he hiccups, and downs the rest of his glass like a shot.
"I mean-" Bessy pauses, sets down her polishing cloth back onto the oilcloth, "I mean… he does seem more still around you. Y'know what I mean? 'Course you do, just like- think 'bout it good. He didn' need to have believed the rumors to still feel 'em, 'specially not if his fabled 'personal issues' are what everyone thinks 'em. Not to mention, he said main reason he didn't believe those rumors is 'cause Lyosha's too strong for you to hurt 'im…"
Silence.
"I'm an idiot," very uncharitably, Boss says, "Bess, dear, we're missing something obvious. He's a Blessed, a charmer. He could bend a psyche into a pretzel without trying- he's doing it to ours, for Christ's sake- he's stronger than you or I could imagine being without shuddering. Exactly the same as Alexiy is. He's been victimized, he clearly has, he would not believe the premise of his own lie. Agh," he sighs, and relaxes into the pillows properly.
Huh…? Bessy's brain buffers. The idea of Akira, as a manipulator, a liar…? But that isn't what Boss is saying. He isn't making a moral judgment, he almost never is. Akira isn't wrong, but-
"Fuckin' hell, Boss," Betty pushes her oilcloth off her lap, folds it up out of the way to sit more comfortably, "he's really out to kill you."
Yaroslav huffs, a tightening of Bessy's chest, "Of course he is. But that's just the thing, dear. According to him, he'd spent at least five minutes on our ceiling trying to psych himself up to talk to us; my sweet believes him, though would say it was closer to three. If he chose to kill me then, there'd be nothing either me or Alexiy could do until it was too late, I'm sure of it. This man is cocky enough to leave a calling card at the spots of his crimes, and I know he isn't lying about being infatuated with my sweet, and the strategy he's chosen to get in, get close, is at least in part improvised. He's doing this for a 'good' reason, for all that's worth," he says, piercing brown eyes cutting straight into Betty's soul.
"Can be worth a lot," uncertain, she answers.
"In this case, it's worth more than we can imagine. He's spying on us, almost certainly. His sister, however more open, is almost more dangerous in that regard; as far as I know, she has not a drop of blood on her hands outside of linking with his, she's innocent or close enough to it to not ping as a threat. Whatever we reveal to her, we reveal to him. He has been bringing us information that usually only confirms things we already suspected, he'd been surprised when it's done more than that and tried to play it off as insecurity- it was, of course, insecurity- and given how determined he is to 'earn his keep', we'd best be cautious about the moment he starts to bring entirely new things for that exact reason. But, see…" Boss trails off, a slowly weaving ball of information uncertain where to best unravel, "see… his mind can be changed. He can be thrown off-balance. Easier than his sister, in a sense. She's a new adult, she's got the certainty and stubbornness to match that of god. He's… an elaborate house of cards. Explosive, murderous, locked into a particular coping scheme and likely in possession of a complicated relationship with morality, and as easy as any traumatized person is. All we need is safety, and even before he fully processes it, he'll be working as a propagandist on our leash."
Pouncing on him, Bethany smooshes him into the pillows, "You're sooo calculatin', Big Boss, it's real nasty to hear," she hugs him tighter, and grins, "whaddaya feel about him, though?"
A moment.
"I feel he needs to be saved."
Betty chitters a laugh, nuzzles her bestest friend, "Now that, I can work with," she kisses his temple, and smiles like an imp when he inevitably pushes her off.
"Bethany-" Slava starts, and very evidently gives up immediately. She pats his shoulder with sympathies, and reaches for their iced whisky to fill her own glass and refill his.
They chick the glasses for a toast, and Slava takes a small sip as he once again relaxes against the pillows. He loves her, as evident in his posture as it supposedly would be in his soul; she can't quite tell, as much as she loves him back. She'd though she could, naive as it was, but that was…
Half her glass gone, Betty straightens out her legs from under herself and into the pillows, and wiggles to get comfortable in the sort of nest. Somewhere downstairs, there's a party going; the vibrations of the music and the dance and the laughter wash all through the old hotel, it's real cozy. She'd join, if she didn't know Boss is up here sort of miserably brooding without her illustrious presence; she probably will join, when she's too drunk to care about the volume as much. Or when everyone's gotten tired-er and quiet-er… she takes another sip, savoring the hard apple bitterness of her favorite whisky.
A breath, Boss takes his own kitten lick of a sip, "Just don't go hunting him, dear."
"I'da never been so crass," Betty snorts into her drink.
"Girl," reproachful, clearly unconvinced, Slava says in that exact cadence he does when he uses an unfamiliar slang word, "you know I don't mean with your gun-"
"Rifle,"
"-but rather with the tracking precision of someone who knows exactly how to help. He doesn't need a savior, nor would he accept one. Be gentle, is all I ask."
Huffing, Bessy shifts on her butt to be even more horizontal and sips her whisky, "I know, dad. 'M not five," she mutters, and looks, disgruntled, at the 'bout quarter of an inch of whisky struggling to coat the bottom of her glass.
"People get overzealous regardless of age, sweetheart," because he's weird and gets off on being paternal despite being barely a decade older than her, Slava says. His own whisky is nowhere near running out, but even so, he pushes up from the pillows to grab their bottle from its honorable ice bucket just 'cause he wants to refill Betty's. She holds out her glass, even if it's really quite undignified.
Setting the bottle back, Boss returns to curling up in their makeshift fort like a big cat, "Not to mention, you wouldn't have hurt him regardless. Not on purpose. All I seek is to caution…" he squeezes a pillow tight, "though that may perhaps not have been necessary."
"Always good to caution," Bess shrugs, and takes her nice, spic-and-span cold and delicious whisky back to her lips.
With Yaroslav's quiet responding semantic ramble, she really is glad to have her family exactly as they are.