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Title: Promises End
Author:

namarie120
Type: RPS / FPS crossover
Pairing: Orlando Bloom / Nikolai Luzhin
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Possible spoilers, though we’ve tried to keep it vague and still make sense to people who haven’t seen the film yet
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, created for entertainment and enjoyment only. With all due respect, we do not own these characters or the actors portraying them. They’re just too compelling to pass up a chance to play with them.
Feedback: would be wonderful
Beta:

tularia
Summary: A police officer and a Russian mobster meet again in London
A/N: Sixth in the No Promises series.
A/N2: Thanks to

tularia for the banner and

tati for the Russian translations

~~~*~*~~~

Can you trust me?

Those words had echoed in Orlando's head for days. He hadn't known what to say that night, had ended up replying honestly that he didn't know. And the question had haunted him ever since. He had no reason to trust Nikolai and a multitude of reasons not to, the stars on his shoulders just one among thousands. And yet despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the reasons to say no, he’d wanted to say yes, even then.

And now...

Now everything had changed. Working with the vice squad had been a crash course in the ways of the vory, and he knew he still had a lot to learn, but even he could tell that something had changed recently. What he'd discovered, what Yuri had confirmed that morning, was even more mind-blowing than he'd expected. He had to talk to Nikolai.

Picking up the phone, he dialed his lover's cell phone and waited.

Nikolai bit off a curse as the cell phone warbled in his pocket. Nearly two weeks had passed since he had last seen Orlando, and he had begun to convince himself that silence was the only answer he would receive to his question. Not that he had expected any different, but hope was a stubborn weed, refusing to die no matter how often he pulled it out by the roots. The phone sounded again and Kirill shot him a suspicious look under lowered brows. Shrugging, Nikolai set the case of wine he'd been unloading onto the dock – suspecting that Kirill ordered him to perform such manual tasks as much to watch the play of his muscles as to remind him of his place – and dug the phone from his pocket, taking a casual step or two further from his captain in the process.

"Luzhin," he snapped.

"I wasn't sure you'd answer," Orlando said with a sigh of relief. "I wasn't sure you'd still want to talk to me. Is it safe for you to talk?" That had never been a given, but now Orlando knew just how much more danger Nikolai was courting.

There was so much he wanted to say to Orlando, so much he wanted to ask, but Nikolai appreciated his lover's discretion. Or could he still consider Orlando his lover? Perhaps he was calling only to tell Nikolai he'd reached a decision, the only decision he could expect from a policeman. All too aware of Kirill's suspicious stare, he muttered a short, "No".

"Meet me tonight then," Orlando requested, "whenever you can get away." Quickly, he gave his address, adding, "It's safe. We can talk without being disturbed. Tonight, Kolya."

"Okay, okay," Nikolai answered dispassionately, memorizing the address as he shut the phone and tossed it on top of his discarded topcoat. "Wrong number," he answered Kirill's unspoken question, hefting another carton from the back of the truck.

The abrupt end to the phone call left Orlando shaken. Nikolai had said it wasn't safe to talk, but that could mean so many different things, none of them good. Even if it was only that he wasn't alone, that almost certainly meant he was with Kirill. Despite himself, Orlando felt his jealousy rearing its head again. He tamped it down forcefully. Nikolai had enough to worry about without Orlando's irrational fears of being displaced by another man. Reminding himself they had made no promises – of fidelity or of anything else – he looked around his flat for something to keep himself busy until Nikolai arrived.

~~~~

Leaning against a light pole, Nikolai watched the nondescript block of flats at the address Orlando had given him. This was unquestionably where the police officer lived, and Nikolai told himself again that the wisest course of action would be to turn away. That he stood here still was proof of how big a fool he truly was. But Orlando had asked to meet again – had trusted him enough to ask to meet at his home – and foolish or not, Nikolai could not reject what was clearly Orlando's answer to his question.

Exhaling the last of his cigarette and grinding it beneath his heel, Nikolai crossed the street toward the flats.

The sharp knock at his door startled Orlando enough that he jumped a little. Telling himself to stay calm, he crossed the room and peeped through the Judas hole to make sure who was there. He couldn't stop the relieved smile when he saw Nikolai. Opening the door, he gestured for the Russian to come inside. "I wasn't sure you'd come, or that you'd stay once you realized where we are," he admitted.

Nikolai looked around the small apartment, not very different from his own, though perhaps cleaner. "You take a big risk asking me here," he stated flatly, fighting the urge to reach for Orlando until he knew exactly where they stood.

"Nothing compared to the risks you take every day," Orlando countered, thinking of everything he had learned about his lover. He wanted to reach for Nikolai, to pull him into an embrace and keep him safe, but he knew the other man wouldn't appreciate the gesture at all.

Frowning, Nikolai shook his head. "You have always known how dangerous this is, for us both, if we are found out. Inviting me to your home only adds to risk."

"I didn't know about the biggest risk of all," Orlando countered. "I talked to Yuri this morning."

Damn Yuri! If the head of the Russian desk had given him away, Nikolai would wring the chief inspector’s neck personally. Focusing his attention on a calendar pinned to the wall rather than trying to read Orlando's face, he kept his response calm despite the anger riding him. "I know many men named Yuri."

Orlando shook his head at Nikolai's stubbornness. "This one works for Scotland Yard."

"Ah, in that case, I never heard of him." The joke fell flat and Nikolai turned away, looking out the window at the dingy street below.

"That's odd," Orlando pressed, stepping closer to Nikolai as if he could wring the truth from the other man by his nearness alone, "because he knows you. He told me all kinds of interesting things about you when we talked this morning."

"All untrue," Nikolai countered, though he knew by now that continued denial was useless.

Frustrated, Orlando moved to stand directly in Nikolai's line of vision. "Kolya, I know," he insisted.

That Orlando was still talking to him at all meant he couldn't possibly have heard the worst of what Yuri could tell him. "What is it you think you know?" he asked tiredly.

"That you're working undercover for Scotland Yard, that you were responsible for Semyon's arrest, that you gave the police the name of at least one girl Semyon and Kirill had enslaved," Orlando enumerated. "Beyond that, I don't know for sure, but I can make some guesses, like the fact that the last raid of Kirill's brothels didn't find a single underage girl. Did you do that, too, Nikolai?"

Nikolai wondered if Orlando would still be so passionate if he knew some of the darker deeds he could also lay claim to. "Even if you are right, it changes nothing," he answered heavily. "The risk is just as great."

"You asked me to trust you, and I do. Now I'm asking for the same. Trust me to keep your secret. Trust me to help you," Orlando pleaded. He couldn't see any other way forward for them.

"You don't understand," Nikolai protested. Right now, if the vory discovered the truth about him, he risked no one but himself. He would not be able to keep Orlando safe if he became involved and his role was discovered, and that was a risk Nikolai could not take. Beyond that, the more Orlando learned, the more likely he would be to eventually turn from Nikolai in disgust. "You can't possibly understand."

"Because you won't talk to me!" Orlando shouted, pushing at Nikolai's shoulders. "How the bloody hell am I supposed to understand when all I get are evasions and half-truths?" He shoved again, herding Nikolai in the direction of the couch. "I'm not some random person off the street, you know. This is my profession. I know how to be discreet, but more that, if you don't talk to me, I could end up endangering you far worse because of my ignorance." Shoving hard, he forced Nikolai to the couch, the other man having no choice but to sit when his knees hit the edge of the furniture. "Talk to me! Help me understand." He straddled his lover, keeping him pinned in place. A part of him immediately focused on the hard body beneath him, remembering what it felt like to ride Nikolai's cock to completion, but he pushed that awareness away. They had to talk first, had to resolve this before they had sex again. Otherwise, this was just another fuck, despite what he wanted to pretend.

His pulse racing at Orlando's commanding actions and the hard cock pressing into his thigh, Nikolai took a deep breath, knowing Orlando was right. He owed his lover as much truth as he could share with him. Most important of all, he focused on Orlando's first plea. "I trust you," he admitted, lifting a hand to the one pinning his shoulder to the couch and intertwining their fingers. "I would never have returned after the first time if I did not trust you."

"Talk to me," Orlando repeated, squeezing the fingers clasping his as his temper calmed. Nikolai was right in a way. They did trust each other, had trusted each other from the first, on one level anyway. They had each trusted the other not to betray what they had, whatever that was. To hear the words, though, eased one concern. Now maybe Nikolai could ease the rest. "Help me understand what you're doing and why."

"What do you want to know?" Nikolai asked. He had kept his own secrets for too many years to volunteer anything, but he promised himself he would answer any question Orlando asked. He only hoped his lover would not ask about subjects he would not want to hear the answers to.

"How many of your tattoos are real?" Orlando asked, thinking about everything he had learned of their significance, from Nikolai himself and from his own research.

"All of them," Nikolai answered with a grim smile. "Among vor, wearing a tattoo that is not earned is punishable by death."

"Not the most forgiving bunch, are they?" Orlando grimaced. "I don't think they'd be any happier if they found out you were working for the authorities."

Nikolai inclined his head in agreement. "Is why I don't tell them."

"Don't make jokes," Orlando scolded, a chill running the length of his spine at the thought of his lover at the mercy of the vory. "I couldn't stand it if I lost you that way." He took a deep breath and rested his forehead against Nikolai's. "How long?"

Nikolai's lips twitched – sometimes black humour was all that had helped him survive the hell of prison life. He wondered if Orlando would appreciate the tattoos on his feet – the one on the right that asked 'Where are you going?', and its mate on the left that answered 'What the hell do you care?' But the honest emotion of Orlando's next comment left him with no clever response. "How long?" he repeated, not sure exactly what Orlando was asking. "Was I in prison?"

"How long have you been a mole?" Orlando clarified, though he was curious about the other as well.

"Long time," Nikolai shrugged. "Takes long time to work my way up to where I am now." There had been other undercover agents before him, but none that had risen high enough in the organization to earn stars. As he'd finally managed to convince Yuri, it was an advantage they couldn't afford to waste. It had to work, he'd insisted. It had to be worth all the atrocities he had committed along the way.

Orlando nodded. He'd learned enough to accept the veracity of that statement. "What made you decide to do it?" That was the crux of the matter, the one burning question Yuri refused to answer.

"Is long story," Nikolai warned with a quirk of his head. And not one that he looked forward to telling, especially not to the still-idealistic young man straddling his lap.

"We have all night. We're safe here."

"We are safe nowhere!" Nikolai exclaimed, seizing Orlando by the shoulders and forcing him to meet his gaze. "You cannot let guard down for an instant, do you hear me?" His voice grated with the intensity of his emotions. "Is why it is better we are not together."

"I'm a cop, remember?" Orlando retorted, refusing to flinch beneath Nikolai's bruising grip. He would let his lover manhandle him, indeed, felt his body react despite himself, but no one else would get the chance. "I know how to take care of myself, and it's not better not being together. I'll sneak around and hide what we're doing, but I won't give you up. I tried that once. I didn't like it. Tell me your long story. I want to know."

Shaking his head in resignation, Nikolai settled back against the faded sofa cushions, drawing Orlando beside him to rest with his head pillowed on Nikolai's shoulder. "I was fifteen first time I went to prison," he said quietly. "My father fixed cars for local officials. I sold spare parts to earn money." He shrugged a shoulder and Orlando's arm wrapped around his waist, pulling them closer. "I was caught."

"Fifteen," Orlando repeated, shaking his head. He could see the boy Nikolai must have been, caught on the cusp of adulthood, trying to prove his worth to his father, in over his head in a world he couldn't begin to understand. His grip tightened as if he could somehow protect the young man from that past. "You were just a boy."

"Boys grow up quick in prison colonies," Nikolai replied darkly. "First time, was juvenile facility in Ukraine. Always fighting there – for food ... for cigarettes ... for sex." Nikolai had never been with anyone, man or woman, before entering the colony, but he had plenty of experience by the time he left.

Orlando flinched slightly at the casual comment. He knew what prison was like there in the U.K. He didn't imagine it was very different in Russia. Still, Nikolai was strong. He could look out for himself. "And then?" he prompted, not yet having heard what he needed to know. His fingers moved slightly up and down Nikolai’s arm, trying to soften his questions. He didn’t want his lover to feel like he was being interrogated.

Nikolai grimaced. "In prison I met Piotr." His expression softened as he remembered those early days of discovering that sex could be about more than pain, that there could be tenderness and joy as well. "We were released around the same time, so we went to St. Petersburg together. Foolish, really – we knew no one there, we had no jobs, no money." He shook his head in remembered sorrow. "We were arrested together for stealing from a grocer. That earned us extra time as 'organized criminals'. We were sent to Kresty – they call it 'The Crosses'." His face hardened again as he continued, "In Kresty, the vory is very strong. Piotr was slender, blond ... beautiful. There was a vor there, Igor Surov – like Kirill, the son of a powerful leader – who wanted him."

"I recognize that name," Orlando said slowly, imagining far too easily the fate of Piotr. Without his conscious volition, his hand stroked soothingly across Nikolai's chest. "He's one of the vory here in London."

"Is same man," Nikolai confirmed. "He did not recognize me, the night they made me vor, but I remembered him." No reason, after all, that Surov should remember one prisoner from so many years ago – but Nikolai would never forget. "I tried to protect Piotr ... Igor showed me how powerless I was against them." His eyes closed in remembered pain, not of his own violation, but of being forced to watch Piotr raped, again and again, by Surov and his men. Without his awareness, his grip tightened around Orlando’s frame. "The vory killed him." His voice turned cold and indurate as steel. "I vowed to avenge him, to do anything it took to bring them down."

Orlando's eyes closed against the pain in Nikolai's voice. He imagined it wasn't nearly as quick as Nikolai portrayed it. A part of him wanted to call a halt to the conversation, to simply pull his lover against him and wash away all memory of the past, at least for a time. He could do it, too. They'd proven repeatedly how capable they were of making each other forget everything but the incredible desire that sprang up between them whenever they touched. This was his chance, though, probably his only chance, to learn the truth about Nikolai's past. He doubted he'd get the incredibly secretive man to open up like this again. Instead, he settled for pressing a quick kiss to the side of Nikolai’s neck. "When did you meet Kirill?"

The brief intimacy relaxed a little of the tension from Nikolai’s frame. "After Soviet Union fell, many vory left Russia. In prison I knew some who worked for the Volkovs. When I came to London, one of them recommended me to Semyon. He needed driver, and Kirill needed – protection." Nikolai shrugged. "Was lucky break." Kirill's rash behaviour and unguarded tongue had given Nikolai the opening he needed to win the younger man's confidence and work his way deeper into the vory's secrets.

"With Semyon gone, Kirill is in a position to tell you anything you want to know, isn't he?" Orlando surmised, mind racing as he absorbed the implications of Nikolai’s coup. "Did you engineer that, or was it just another lucky break?"

"Was nothing to engineer," Nikolai answered. "The diary, and his own blood, were proof enough he had raped the girl." It had given Nikolai grim satisfaction to avenge Tatiana's fate – so much like Piotr's. His only regret was that Semyon would serve his sentence in a British prison, not a Russian one.

Orlando chuckled ruefully. "I don't imagine he handed over the diary voluntarily. Deny it all you want, Kolya. There's a good man underneath your bravado." He considered the situation for a moment. "It won't be long now before you have your revenge," he observed. He didn’t mention his hopes for their future. There would be time for that discussion when Nikolai was free of the vory. "All you have to do is find something so Surov can be arrested and you'll have completed your task."

As if it were that simple. Nikolai knew Orlando could not understand that he would never be wholly free. "And Bukolov, and Tchechenko, and Putyatin," he added, naming the other three vor leaders.

So that was the way of it. "And when others rise to take their places?" Orlando asked bitterly. "How much will be enough, Nikolai? How many of them will you have to bring down before you're satisfied?"

Frustrated, Nikolai shook his head. "How do I walk away?" he ground out acridly. "How do I leave children to be sold as slaves, knowing I could stop it?" He laughed once, a harsh, strangled sound. "You know what changed in Kirill's brothels? I convinced him no real man could be attracted to a child. I brought him a woman and watched as he took her, to prove he could perform." Nikolai suspected it was his own presence watching, his words of salacious encouragement, that had finally gotten Kirill off, but that was nothing he could share with his lover. "They are still whores, but at least they are no longer children."

"It's not a battle you can win, you know," Orlando said sadly, though he knew it was one he, too, would fight while he could. "No matter how many children you keep out of Kirill's brothels, that many or more will end up in brothels elsewhere. I'm not belittling what you did, not at all, but at some point, you're allowed to think of yourself, too. I don't want us to still be sneaking around to meet each other twenty years from now."

"Nothing is changed," Nikolai said wearily. He had known from the start this discussion would solve nothing. "Is best I go." He ran a hand through Orlando's hair, brushing his thumb along the younger man's cheek, his leg muscles tightening to rise.

"No!"

It couldn't end this way. Orlando refused to let it. He had to make Nikolai see that they were worth fighting for, too. He moved from his place against his lover's side, straddling him again as he had when they first landed on the couch. "You don't get to just walk away." He crashed their lips together, fear adding urgency to the kiss, to the movement of his hands over Nikolai's chest, pulling at clothes, parting fabric as he searched for the sensitive skin beneath. His words had failed, but he still had hope that the union of their bodies would be powerful enough to persuade Nikolai not to give up on them yet.

Nikolai groaned at the sudden assault, the spark of arousal that always burned in Orlando's presence flaring to life at his lover's urgent touch. Nikolai returned the kiss as fiercely as it was given, sucking Orlando's tongue as it thrust in his mouth, tugging away whatever clothing his hands could reach, afire for the feel of bare skin pressed together. He fell back on the couch, carrying Orlando with him, the younger man still straddling his hips as their cocks ground together through layers of silk and denim.

Orlando managed to strip away Nikolai's shirt and coat, leaving him bare to the waist. He released his lover's mouth, attacking the tight nipples instead, sucking hard on the pebbled points, reveling in the way the other man arched beneath him. He needed this contact, needed to know he could leave Nikolai as mindless as his lover had always left him. Raising up enough to reach between them, he fought with Nikolai's trousers, wanting nothing between their bodies. Too much separated their hearts and the rest of their lives. He couldn't stand for anything to separate their flesh.

Lifting his hips, Nikolai worked his lover's belt open as Orlando slid his trousers as far down his legs as he could reach. As soon as his bare backside hit the couch he arched upward, inviting Orlando's hungry mouth to feast on his chest. His fingers slid down the zip of his lover's jeans and burrowed inside, closing around the hard length of his shaft as he thrust the stiff fabric out of his way, mating flesh against flesh.

Orlando worked his way lower, learning Nikolai's body with his lips. He'd never really had the chance before, and he didn't know if the opportunity would come around again. He intended to make the most of it. His tongue traced the outline of the various tattoos, those whose meanings he knew and those he didn’t. Regardless, they were part of his lover’s past, part of the sacrifices he’d made to reach the point where he was now. His lips coasted over the tight stomach, pausing to circle his lover's navel, his hands sliding over Nikolai's hips to cup his buttocks, tilting him to a better angle as he closed his mouth around the tip of the leaking cock. The taste exploded on his tongue, making him moan with the decadent pleasure of it. It wasn't the first time they'd done this, but last time Nikolai had been doing his best to distract him. This time, Orlando refused to be distracted. He would give Nikolai the best blow job he'd ever gotten, and when the older man was relaxed and sated, he'd show his lover what else he was good at.

Biting back another groan, Nikolai's head dropped back on the cushion as Orlando's lips surrounded him. Panting roughly, he twined his fingers through his lover's longish hair, fighting the urge to thrust upward with dissolute abandon. As the hot, wet suction drew him closer toward losing control, he tried to pull back, wanting to bury himself deep inside his Orlik and carry him along in the waves of pleasure as they spent themselves.

Orlando felt Nikolai try to pull away and tightened his grip, fingers sinking into heavy muscle as he drew harder on the thick shaft filling his mouth. In an effort to assure his lover they weren't done yet, he slid one finger into the shadowy crease of Nikolai's arse, brushing across the tight hole.

Nikolai tensed at the unexpected touch, the memories of Piotr's violation, and his own, still vivid. Ignoring or misreading his flinch, the finger continued to probe and Nikolai froze with instinctive revulsion. "Nyet!" he rasped, pulling Orlando's head from his cock and thrusting him away roughly. Shocked at his own reaction, he ran a hand through his hair, noticing with almost detached interest that it was trembling. Taking a deep breath, he held it for a moment, struggling for composure before exhaling harshly. "Orlik," he murmured, reaching for his startled lover in apology. "Prosti."

From his place on the floor, Orlando stared at the hand Nikolai offered with the same horrified fascination one might feel upon discovering a viper in one's bed. He stayed where he was for a moment, understanding dawning slowly. He'd been naive enough to think Nikolai's strength had been enough to protect him. Obviously, he'd been wrong. "Piotr wasn't the only one they hurt, was he?" he asked, unable to keep the pity he felt from his voice.

"Piotr was the one who died," Nikolai countered coldly, closing himself off from the pity in the younger man’s voice. "I survived. Was surprise only," he added dismissively.

Survived was the right word, Orlando thought bleakly, wondering if he would ever be able to touch Nikolai again without worrying about triggering another memory. His lover had certainly not learned how to live again. He took Nikolai's hand and let himself be drawn back onto the couch, but he didn't reach for the other man, didn't try in any way to renew their embrace. He didn't dare.

Nikolai bent back to Orlando, his mouth closing over his lover's, easing them back to recline again as his hands mapped over the quiescent body. Orlando lay passive beneath him, not deepening the kiss, not touching him in return. Lifting his head, Nikolai's eyes darkened in accusation. "Too damaged for you?" he demanded acidly.

Orlando wanted to deny it, but there was a kernel of truth in Nikolai's words. He didn't know how not to damage Nikolai worse than he already was. "I'm sorry," he said softly, not knowing what else to say. Not wanting the evening to end this way, he took a deep breath. "Just give me a minute."

"Take all the time you need," Nikolai grated, reaching for his shirt. "If I want a lifeless body to fuck, I have only to go back to Kirill's stable."

The words hit Orlando hard. "I'm sorry," he repeated. Sorry he couldn't change his reaction. Sorry he couldn't undo Nikolai's past. Sorry he wasn't enough to change Nikolai's future. He looked away, unable to watch Nikolai pull away from him. He'd counted on making love to fix things between them, but that clearly wasn't going to happen. And if they couldn't even have sex, what did they have? Despair hitting him hard, he rested his forehead against the back of the couch. "Maybe you should leave."

Pulling on the rest of his clothes in silence, Nikolai took a last look at the man on the couch, the man he had given what was left of his heart. He tried to feel anger, or disdain, but he was too empty, too gutted for anything but numb resignation. What else had he expected? He had known it would end this way from the start. Picking up his topcoat, he walked to the door. Nothing called him back.

"This is second time you throw me out," he said, his hand on the knob. "Don't look for a third."

The door clicked shut, leaving behind a deafening silence.