steelartisan | Not a member of defy_ka with this journal. Oops. So the random AU thread goes here instead!

"Da," he says, with a half-smile that says of course, and his pencil adds Майя Антарэс an inch or so below his names.

She squints at it, blonde hair tumbling out from behind her ear and fanning across her cheek.

"It's so close," she says, wonderingly, and then she takes the pencil back, but doesn't bother moving the sketchpad from where it is balanced on Piotr's thigh. She leans over and writes, just below his version of her name: MAYA AИTAЯES.

She studies the two for an appraising moment, her hand resting on the warm rock beside his leg, and then she says, "I like yours." There's a strength to it -- and the mystery of being unable to read it -- that draws her attention.

The corner of Piotr's mouth quirks up.

He steals the pencil back for a moment, and silently adds the English he'd forgotten to: Maya Antares, and after a moment's thought MAYA ANTARES in block capitals next to it.

"You just flipped--" She looks at her name; looks at Piotr. "Is that another language?"

"Capital letters. They are both English." His pencil hovers, indicating one then the other. "All capitals, like that, you would use in a newspaper headline, or perhaps a sign. Some people write so, too. Mostly it is this."

"Russian is similar -- this is the usual. But in all capitals it would be so." He writes, quickly: МАЙЯ АНТАРЭС.

"So--" She leans over again, and she circles the Cyrillic-lettered names, and points with the pencil. "Russian." She circles the English names, with another pencil point. "English." Finally, she circles and indicates the names written in her hand. "And me."

She regards the page full of names and loopy circles for a moment, tapping the pencil thoughtfully.

"I wonder how much of it is due to the translating magic of the bar, and how much is actual similarity."

"I have never figured that out," he admits, ruefully.

"I know that I speak English here, and that is what translates. That is what I hear. If I speak Russian, others seem to hear it as Russian. Another language, something else, and the same for writing. But I spoke those when I came in, and I live in America. I have never been sure how it decides to translate."

"I've had a couple of people try to talk to me in Russian, and I can never understand a word of it," she says, and she reaches out to snag the sketchpad between thumb and forefinger, and pull it back into her lap. She shoots him a smile. "Besides what you've taught me, of course."

The page is becoming pretty crowded; Maya flips to the next, her pencil already lowering. "I always th--"

There are doodles in the corners and along the right side of the page: a small, sketchy head-and-shoulders drawing of a woman without real features; a quick figure of a man bending over to talk to a boy perched on a barstool; a cluster of daffodils.

It has all been drawn with the sort of skill that Maya has come to expect from Piotr, but what she sees is the pen-and-ink headshot taking up most of the page. It is a large-scale version of the little sketch of the woman, and it is unmistakably her. She's tossing a grin over her shoulder, joyful, looking on the edge of a laugh. Her eyes lack pupils and her hair -- wind-tousled and a little tangled -- falls to mid-cheek.

Her pencil hovers, momentarily frozen.

--Oh hey. He'd forgotten that that drawing was in there. (Piotr draws kind of a lot.)

Um.

As before, he tries to read her reaction, and waits for it to become clearer. He likes that drawing -- he's satisfied with it, more than with most; he likes the expression he captured -- but he's not sure, yet, if Maya does.

It looks like this was rendered with the same care and attention to detail as the first. Weird white eyes and shorn hair; an impossibly bright smile. Maya's heart twists queerly.

"Am I going to keep stumbling across these, Piotr?" she finally asks, lifting her face to look him in the eye, and from the upturned corners of her mouth and the faint flush in her cheeks -- she likes it.

"There are a few others," he says, with a shrug that's slightly more awkward than he might like; the kind of shrug of someone who's trying not to be embarrassed, and not entirely sure of his success.

"You have always had an interesting face. Do you mind?"

She seems to consider this for a moment -- and then she shakes her head, just a little; not enough that she takes her eyes off of him.

"No," she says. "I don't."

Piotr smiles, small and genuine.

(And there's no hesitation when he meets her eyes, those blank white orbs that used to have pupils and blue irises; there never has been. Ororo Munroe, blue-eyed as Ororo and white-eyed as Storm, has been a good friend of his for years.)

"All right."

Her mouth crooks in response, a small smile in kind; it can't not.

She realizes, belatedly, that she hasn't said anything in quite a few seconds; her eyes hurriedly lower to the sketchpage. "It's--" She traces a daffodil with a slender finger. "They're really very flattering."

Aaaand suddenly this is faintly awkward.

"They are not perfect. I try to draw what I see. Is all."

"You," says Maya to the sketchpad, "are a perfectionist, Piotr Nikolaievitch."

(When she smiles, it's at him, not the paper.)

Piotr rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, but he's grinning.

"Da. I have been told."

Her smile strengthens again; solidifies.

She makes as if to lift the next page, and looks up at him. "Do you mind...?"

Piotr's large hands lift in a quick oh, no, go ahead gesture.

She'll find a collection of sketches: some rough, some detailed, and mostly in pen and ink with a few colored (or half-colored) in pencils or markers. Most of the drawings are of people, though there are some landscapes and objects and abstract collections of shapes mixed in. She'll see familiar faces from Milliways scattered through the book. Other faces are unfamiliar, but several of them recurring: sometimes in civilian clothes, sometimes in spandex, and sometimes figures (abstract, or half-finished, or with faces obscured or turned away) whose identity is unclear.

Maya flips through slowly, devoting an equal amount of time and attention to each page. Her fingers are on the edges, careful not to touch the artwork, to avoid smudging delicate lines in pencil and charcoal. There are pages of trees and vines, a tea kettle, the Milliways lake spread out in front of the mountains; there are forests and countryside and farms that she doesn't recognize. Pages of hands and disembodied eyes staring out at the viewer.

Where Piotr's talent truly lies, Maya thinks, is in capturing faces. A man frowning with a glint of surly humor in his eyes (Logan, Maya recognizes, and her smile is swift and sudden); a white-haired woman staring regally out of the page (the white eyes catch Maya's attention; this must be Storm, she thinks, and she lingers over it). There is a page of half-colored blonde girls, each abandoned before completion, and in the largest drawing, Maya sees a smile that she thinks looks like Piotr's at its brightest.

There are groups of men and women in spandex, and in ordinary clothes; her eye is drawn to the grinning woman with a small dragon wrapped around her neck, and she smiles again, softer this time. On another page, Laura, caught mid-kick, her hair fanned out behind her.

There are dozens of them, some thumbnail sketches, some looking fleshed out, like they could step off the page if they so chose.

"How long have you been drawing in this book?" she asks, finally. ('My God' goes unspoken but heavily implied.) She turns the next page.

"That one? Ah." He thinks. "Several months?"

"I am not sure. I have a few."

Art is a hobby; it's also a coping mechanism for stress (most of the time) and for boredom, and there are times when Piotr has a lot of free time.

And, of course, times when he has none at all, and is nowhere near a sketchbook.

"Very prolific," Maya says, grinning up at him, and she closes the lid on the final page and offers the pad to him.

Piotr shrugs a little, amicably, as he accepts it back.

"It is good for many moods. And the only way to get better."

And he's never liked to spend long stretches of time doing nothing. He has the value of work too much ingrained for that.

"I think you're pretty good already, мой друг." She shakes her head lightly at him, shifting her legs under the warmth of the sun. Boots scrape rock.

--Did he teach her that word? He can't remember if he did, and it gets a quick glance and a pleased half-smile.

"There is always room to improve," he says, but placidly, and teasing a little in return. He's good, and he knows it; still, there is always room.

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