Work Text:
They say every Wesninski has four children.
The first to be his father’s son.
The daughter is their mother’s.
The second son is to die.
The second daughter is the spare.
Nathan Wesninski was the first of his father’s sons. The first, the strongest, and the fastest.
They say he killed his siblings, a future monarch, slitting his siblings' throats as they rocked in their cradles.
Natalia was Nathan’s first daughter, his second child.
“Father.” Nathaniel greets, fur-lined boots crunching in the snow as he approaches Nathan’s back. He keeps his rifle across his torso, the barrel pointed at the ground.
Nathan turns and smiles at his son, lifting a burly arm out to Nathaniel as if to tuck the smaller redhead against his side like a precious thing.
“Nathaniel, my son.” He speaks in English, his high-class Russian accent ringing with each syllable.
Nathaniel doesn’t flinch when that large, callous hand lands on the back of his neck, hot and possessive in the way that Nathan is with anything he thinks of as his.
They could be two mirror images looking at each other in the snow. Same crimson hair that most assume is a dye job, same crystalline blue eyes, same sharp as glass jaw, and noble nose.
Yet Neil stands at 5 '3 to Nathan’s 6' 4 and has the physique of a gymnast rather than a boxer like his father’s. His skin is the terra cotta brown of his mother’s against his dad’s alabaster Polish complexion.
Still, Nathaniel has seen his father puff up with pride whenever strangers do a double take and coyly remark on the resemblance. (“No wonder he’s his favorite.” they whisper behind unsubtle palms.)
Nathan’s rifle is slung over his shoulder, and in his other hand, he holds a crystal glass, two fingers full of whiskey. Nathaniel eyes it with vague curiosity, wondering which poor fuck his father made run out in two inches of snow into the woods to get him his fix.
Usually, Nathan did these hunts on his own, and when he did invite Nathaniel (and only Nathaniel), they traversed the woods separately and counted their kills after the game was dead. This time, Nathaniel had gotten to the mansion early in the morning to receive orders from Romero that his father had requested his presence on the hunting grounds. And to bring his own rifle.
“Thank you for joining me. I know you have just returned home.” he rumbles, still caressing the nape of Nathaniel’s neck like he’d truly missed his son in the months he’d been gone.
Nathaniel smiles wryly at that. “You half raised me in these woods, batya, they’re as much home as the mansion is.”
(Nathaniel has bled just as much in these woods as he has in that hellhole of the mansion. At least out here, he always went down fighting and snarling.)
Nathan flashes a genuinely fond grin at his son, just a feral as it is loving. (It’s this smile that scares Nathaniel the most; it’s the nightmares where his father carves him to pieces lovingly that leave him shaking and dead-eyed the longest.)
“Ah, solnyshkuh, how I’ve missed you.” he says, making one more pass over the sensitive skin behind Nathaniel’s ear with his thumb. He (finally) releases Nathaniel and turns to survey the frozen lake that Nathaniel had tracked him down to.
“Romero said we need to talk.” Nathaniel drawls out, ensuring his tone indicates how much he appreciates his father’s man ordering him around. Nathan chuckles fondly at his cheek and takes a sip from his glass.
“Yes. We do. It’s about the Moriyamas.”
Nathaniel’s pulse quickens, and he makes himself keep silent for an extra beat to seem properly surprised.
“I’m aware of them.” Nathaniel finally says, making his voice hesitant yet sarcastic. Keeping his snark in check will only make his father suspicious.
Nathaniel has been working in the US for years now, sometimes with the Moriyamas to represent his father’s ambitions. (At least that’s what Nathan believes. The lie Nathaniel has carefully spoon-fed him every step of the way.)
“They trust you. Don’t they, my son?” Nathan asks.
Nathaniel shifts his weight as he deliberates his answer.
“They trust you to have the will and power to fulfill your promises.” he says finally, watching his father inflate with his own ego.
“Power… yes.” Nathan breathes, the words falling from his lips like holy gospel. “The Wesninskis will always hold power.”
He turns back to his son, sunlight cutting a line through his cheek as it shines through the branches.
“We need to keep that power, son. It does not come to those who wait and twiddle their thumbs.” Nathaniel tilts his head like he’s not following. “Perhaps it’s time to move to the States, fill the shoes that Kengo Moriyama is wasting.”
Nathaniel jerks, glancing around the trees as if expecting Moriyama spies to be hiding among the birch trees. Nathan laughs heartily at his son’s reaction.
“It is time, son. You will be a crucial player in the downfall of the Moriyamas.” Nathan practically purrs. (He is a content tiger, lazing on his golden throne, fat on his own arrogance. Nathaniel is half tempted to end this charade here, fingers whitening around his rifle.)
“You overestimate their faith in the second son of a foreign power.” Nathaniel half-hisses. “Ichirou already dislikes how close I am to his father. He does not trust the Wesninski line!”
Nathan barks out a laugh. “As he shouldn’t.” He grins fiercely at his son. “You will do this, Nathaniel. You are my strongest son, my sharpest knife, my…” his grin widens, “my clever fox.”
Nathaniel purses his lips and pretends to worry and deliberate. Suddenly, he catches movement over his father’s shoulder and stills. Nathan turns and goes just as stone cold. Two wolves catching blood on the wind.
A Deer has broken free from the tree line. He’s tracking bright blood through pure white snow, favoring his left leg as he stumbles for the lake. Nathaniel can hear the whimpering and pleading from across the lake. Stupid. He’s left himself open and vulnerable. Nathaniel wonders what he did to anger the Butcher.
Nathan sighs contentedly. “You take this one, Nathaniel. My treat.”
Nathaniel gives the back of his father’s head a long look before lifting his rifle. (The ghost of his mother’s fingers positions his fingers, and the whisper of his voice brushes against his ear. “Do you see your target, Abram?” )
The Deer meets his eyes down the barrel of his gun and freezes in the middle of the clearing, his already pale face going ashen. He turns around and half runs, half trips back towards the trees.
Nathaniel’s breath huffs out in a white cloud. “Stupid bastard.”
His father’s laugh. A gunshot. A cut of scream. The Deer hits the snowy bank, eyes empty and blood splattering the white scenery.
(The red drips from Nathaniel’s hands.)
They say that when Natalia was born, Nathan cried, cradling his baby girl’s tiny head to his chest and refusing to let her go as silent tears streamed down his face. She had his bright hair and blazing blue eyes, the first of his children to inherit his looks.
They say that’s when he broke the tradition. That’s when he discarded his first son. ( “Born traitor.” they say the Wesniniski sire had hissed when Nate had come into the world screaming, sporting the wrong hair and eyes.)
They whisper that he forgot that the second son was to be the mother’s. He forgot that, though he claimed Natalia as his that day, Mary already had a claim on her second child.
“I knew you’d be the one.” Mary said. She was drunk and shamelessly chain-smoking. It made toddler Natalia cough and cough, but at fourteen, Nathaniel had only squinted through the haze of smoke to his mother.
“You’re your father’s son. His chosen one. But that makes you all the more likely to be the one to tear his child’s tower down.”
Nathaniel flicked his eyes to the bedroom door. They don’t speak of Nathan’s downfall in his own house. That was the rule.
“It’ll be you, Nathaniel.” she said, almost dreamily. “His own son will cut off his head. Fucking poetic.”
“It’s a stupid fucking plan and you know it.” Dmitri hisses. The third son inherited their mother’s smoking habit. He’s on his second cigarette of the hour, and his left leg has yet to stop bouncing with nerves.
“Shut up, D, you're not helping.” Anya hisses from her perch on the back of the lounge room's couch. She uncrosses and crosses her legs as she downs the rest of the vodka in her glass.
“It’s true!” Dmitri snaps back, glaring at their only sister. “Dad’s really fucking lost it this time. The Moriyamas are going to burn us to the ground.”
“Ten bucks says you’ll be first, schastlivaya troyka. ” she sneers. Dmitri shoots to his feet and makes toward Anya with fiery rage in dark brown eyes.
“Both of you shut up.” Nathaniel snaps from the window overlooking the woods. “You’re giving me a headache.”
They settle almost instantly, eyeing their brother warily.
“Nathaniel, what are we going to do? You’re going to be there all by yourself and…” Anya trails off, looking to Dmitri for support.
“Nate is all by himself in London.” Nathaniel says absentmindedly.
His father has returned from the woods and sits on the iron table on the back porch. It’s round and inlaid with swirling leaves and flowers, small enough for two. Servants place Nathan’s lunch in front of him as he chatters away to the empty chair in front of him. His voice is inaudible to Neil.
“Dad never cared about Nate, and you know it.” Dmitri grumbles as he takes another drag from his cigarette. “He’s more Uncle Stuart’s kid than he was ever Dad’s.”
Mary used to sit with Nathan at that table. He went through cycles of infatuation with her. One week, he would wax poetic about her beauty, and the next, he would scream and rage about her “scheming.” He would never let her skip their daily lunches, though. Nathaniel used to watch them from this very window.
“Ironic.” Anya mutters scornfully.
They fall silent.
The cuffs they’d had to chain his mother to keep her at the table in the last days still hang from the armrests. Nathaniel thinks he can see flecks of blood on the silvery metal.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” Nathaniel says. He feels his siblings’ eyes on the back of his head, but he doesn't turn to look at them.
His mother is dead. Has been dead for six months now. Nathaniel will bring her plan to fruition even if it kills him.
Cutting off a king's head is always messy work after all.
“I’ll handle it.”
He snatches Dmitri’s cigarette from his lips and puts it out in the ashtray on his way out of the room. He closes the door on Dmitri’s muttered “Asshole.”
They say that the Wesninski line has always been sick. In the roots of their bloodline, each generation has seen devastation of the sickness of the mind.
Nathaniel, then Natalia, remembers his brother’s sickness. Nate had his father’s smile, if not his looks. He was casually cruel in some ways. He didn't understand when Dmitri would burst into tears after he burned his favorite stuffed toy to ash.
Nathaniel remembers him being irritable and quick to anger. Only ever thinking about himself. He never seemed to mind his father’s violence. If anything, he found it fascinating.
And yet.
Mary was terrified of leaving baby Natalia with Nate. Natalia had their father’s love and affection. Nate had his scorn and cruelty.
She was convinced Nate would want his little sister dead.
And yet.
“Damn. You are tiny.”
Nathaniel, then Natalia, had startled from within her playpen. At only three, she was never left unattended. Nathaniel still has no clue how Nate managed to sneak into the nursery when both their mother and the nanny were out.
Nate had been twelve then, so tall to Natalia, with their mother’s darker complexion. He had her hair, too, and her doe brown eyes. He was kneeling at the fence that kept baby Natalia inside, his head pillowed by his crossed arms. His face was strangely blank for a twelve-year-old.
Maybe it was his resemblance to their mother that made Natalia let out a loud, delighted shriek at the sight of her older brother that she had never met.
Nathaniel will always remember the look of pure shock on his older brother’s face. The bewilderment that anyone would be so happy to see him.
Maybe that’s what made him lean over to pluck Natalia from her playpen. Maybe that’s what made him steal his little sister to show her the whole mansion. He wasn’t gentle with Natalia. Not like her mother or her nanny. Nathaniel doesn’t remember if that made him cry. But his brother never let him go. When their mother had finally tracked them down, she yelled and beat him furiously.
That had made Natalia cry. Nathaniel remembers that.
But Nate had only had eyes for Natalia. And even then, Nathaniel had known that that would not be the last he would see of Nate.
Nate stole his little sister many times after that, even when it got harder and harder as their mother got more and more paranoid.
Nathaniel remembers his whispers and possessive hands.
“You're my favorite, Natalia. I don’t need any more siblings. Just you.”
When Nate had been sent to live with Uncle Stuart in London, he’d never gotten to say goodbye.
“Good riddance.” his mother had muttered.
Nathaniel had never been able to agree.
If Dmitri could see Nathaniel smoking on Millport High School’s bleachers, he would never let him needle him about his addiction ever again. He’d also probably shoot Nathaniel dead for wasting so many of his cigarettes.
Neil Josten needs something to anchor him to Nathaniel, though. Cigarette smoke means his mother and his grumpy younger brother. Reminds him why he is sweating in baggy clothes and itchy brown contacts.
Neil sighs out a smoky exhale and lets his head hit the bleacher seats behind him. He’s not smoking it much, only enough to keep it alive.
Kevin Day and David Wymack were in the stands for the game. They’d sat in the back, almost hidden, which he imagines his hard when you’re carting around a high as fuck Andrew Minyard.
Still, Neil had spotted them easily enough (that was Nathaniel’s job after all), making sure not to draw attention to the fact that he knew they were there.
Neil Josten is a runaway. Running as fast and as far as he can until whatever is chasing him takes him out at the knees.
Neil Josten plays like he’s got nothing to lose. Like he’s diving headfirst into a death drop with no parachute.
Neil Josten has nothing left and yet so much to lose.
Neil Josten is a tool Ichirou Moriyama will use until it breaks to build his new empire.
Nathaniel smirks humorlessly at the court ceiling. They have so much in common.
It’s not like Natheniel has much moral high ground to stand on in that regard. He’s using the Little Lord as much as he’s being used.
If he has to bring Riko’s head on a silver platter to get his father’s head in return, what does he care how it gets done?
“Neil.”
Nathaniel blinks, and Neil turns his head to look at Coach Hernandez. Ah. It must be time then.
“Someone’s here to see you.”
Neil smiles.
(Let the games begin.)