Lev knew how to cook, really. He had grown up the youngest of four brothers with no dad and a mom who was busy trying to help the boys survive. As much as his brothers gave him crap, bullied him and tormented him and called him names and punched his little eyes black…. They would never have let him starve. Also, they never would have let anyone but them torment him. They were family in that way, and family took care of each other. However, as the youngest, he was considered “the girl†and told he had to take on the “girl†chores. Not that chores necessarily had gender, though Damyan and the others seemed to think certain things, like cooking, made someone less manly. Lev had grown up used to doing it, though. He cooked. He cleaned the house and especially the kitchen, while Damyan worked odd jobs and pickpocketed and burgled, Alexei stood by Damyan’s side as his “muscle†and Yulian tended to the yard and any outside chores. Between them all, Lev ought to have been Damyan’s partner in crime. He was smarter than Alexei. He was young, but he was stronger, too. Scrappy. Damyan wanted someone to submit to him, though, and follow without question. Alexei was that for him. Yulian was, to an extent, like that to him. Lev never would be.
It was funny the way things turned out, now. Damyan and Alexei had separated dramatically when Alexei moved out of the house to play for Moscow’s second string (much the way Lev had) but had also moved in with a teammate and their dynamic had shifted. It was whispered in the Leskov house the kinds of things that happened between Alexei and his roommate, but no one dared speak it aloud. They denied it. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Lev was fine with whatever Alexei wanted to do, or at least he might have been if Alexei hadn’t been such a horrible jerk to him growing up. It wasn’t that Alexei was involved with a man. It was that Alexei was a jerk. Lev often carried that same sort of thought about other people who were attracted to the same gender. He didn’t care what the man preferred as long as he acted like, and fought like, a man. In Lev’s experience, though, that wasn’t always the case. He had a strong idea of what made a man a man, and his cousin Nikon was not that. Lev loved his cousin Aleksei almost like a brother he never had. They were close in age. They had similar interests. He was intelligent and a duelist and a quidditch player. Nikon, though, Aleksei’s twin… danced around on the back of a broomstick, wearing tight-fitting glittery clothes. He was an artist as much as an athlete. Lev could respect artistic flying for girls, absolutely, and even to some extent as a proper sport—for girls. Girls were allowed to be sensitive and artistic. Nikon just… rubbed him wrong, the way he just looked like he took it in the backside. Lev honestly didn’t care what he did, but the fact that he shoved it around in everyone’s face and acted like a pansy when he was hit really annoyed Lev. He really didn’t consider himself a bigot, even if maybe he was a bit conservative on the topic. Maybe it was simply gender role inversion he didn’t care for, and then he looked at Mihaela and decided that wasn’t it.
She was such a strong woman, so rough and tumble and able to do anything a man could do. That was one of the things he loved about her. He couldn’t understand his own thoughts, so he didn’t try. She was perfect, beautiful, amazing….
….he was burning the bacon. “Shit!†He said, scraping off the black meat from the pan. So much for his “good†cooking. He plated it anyway, for himself, and then looked over to Mihaela when she called him over. He turned the pan off to go take a closer look.
“Mystery woman?†He asked, brows furrowed. Tabloid writers were vultures and had only gotten worse when he became a first-string player. “I don’t even KNOW any women other than you!†He retorted, a bit annoyed at the implication. Obviously, he would never cheat. Wouldn’t she know that?
He looked at the the headline, snatched the paper, and looked at the article. Ring shopping? OH, he realized, suddenly. It had been Valda. Must have been. He had taken her to look at rings for Mihaela a few weeks prior but hadn’t known they have been spotted and photographed. Her face was obscured in the photo, so he couldn’t prove it was her. “Ahhhh…†He didn’t want to explain. “It’s just trash, Mihaela.†He said, trying to sweep it under the rug. He was saving the ring and proposal for the New Year. He didn’t want to ruin it by tipping her off, now. Besides, this would brush over, right?
