PRETTY SICK!
— a collective sigh of reluctance ☆

Some things just weren't meant to be: oil and water, left and right, parallel lines — they all existed on the same plain, but they were never meant to co-exist together. They would never fully combine, always on their own paths, but still appeared to be a pair.

That's how it was supposed to be for Gen and Boris Papalosky. They were meant to keep each other at arm's length, just in case. Both were taught from a young age that letting your walls down for someone, anyone, meant that-that was a weakness and it would be exploited whether you liked it or not. They, of course, came from different backgrounds — Boris, one of poverty in a small village as he worked his way up through buttering up to the KGB — and Gen, given up to a facility by her parents who didn't want nor knew how to take care of a supernatural lab baby.

Presumably.

When they paired them together to find out what the hell those idiot Americans were up to, they expected them to keep each other circumvented as they did what they were trained to do. Find information. Take out anyone who got in your way. Simple instructions, really, as neither of them appeared to get along, but were both proficient in their jobs. Boris lied well, he smoothly talked his way through issues and adopted the American lifestyle as a way to "blend in more". Though, it was obvious he secretly enjoyed it. As for Gen, she was neither convincing nor charming enough to do what Boris did, instead she opted to muscle her way into conflict and use brute force to get what she wanted.

(It was faster that way.)

Their employers didn't seem to understand human nature and what would happen when they placed two previously isolated people on a year and a half long road trip together, not to mention generally unsupervised.

Although Boris was a finicky man, one who worked for his personal gain only, and rarely cared about Gen's feelings unless he could get something out of it; Gen and Boris became friends, in a way, she stopped hitting him when he would give her pats on the shoulder, and he never mentioned the looks that she gave to the American women on magazines and billboards whenever they made pit stops.

They found solace in each other when a wrong turn led them to death and one wrong move could have made them a "traitor", despite Gen's coldness and Boris' need to do and say things that only benefited him. This worked well. They worked well together.

That made it so much harder for Boris to leave her behind when she went missing, but it gave him the push he needed to play hooky like she had, or what he thought she'd done. It was either that or she was found and taken, which meant he got compromised too, so he decided to skip town and abandoned their duties as well.

He recounted his many endeavors in the year they were separated over his favorite restaurant, Burger King. Boris told her of the bright neon signs from Las Vegas, and the quiet forests of Colorado, how he searched the land far and wide for her — he said the stars must have aligned for them to meet again, but she barely paid attention. Gen kept rolling her shoulders forwards and backwards uncomfortably with glances over her her often towards the citizens of Chicago, none of them appeared to be suspicious, but even the kindest faces could have been waiting to strike.

Boris, unbothered by the amount of people around clapped her on the back, "Ты сейчас такая злая, Шенечка. Почему?" (You're so angry now, Shenyechka. Why?)

Her eyes trailed a family that pulled their children closer as the foreign language fell on their ears. Gen sighed and pushed the brightly colored tray towards Boris. "Speak English — you're scaring the Americans. What do I have to be joyful about?" she questioned moodily, her brows knitting into a deep scowl.

"Why, our reunion, of course!" he informed her, and her scowl intensified, if that was even possible. Gen felt the buzz of electricity in her ears, like a kettle whistling, and tried to make an effort to relax — not for the sake of anyone's safety, but she'd rather avoid a scene full of gore if she happened to short circuit and blow somebody's head off.

Something about Boris' tone irked her, how he lied so fluently through his teeth as he pretended to not know why she could be angry at him. They were friends reuniting, after all. But Gen knew better than to trust his flashy, happy-go-lucky demeanor; as much as they enjoyed each other's company, Boris' needs came before Gen, and she couldn't afford him anonymously tipping any Russian personnel over something trivial. So she treaded carefully. The only real reason Boris had to contact her then, at that point, was if he needed something done or someone gone. Gen wanted no part in either.

"Don't play stupid," the girl scoffed, her eyes wandered around the fast food restaurant for any snooping ears, "Hopper is going to be shitting himself, there's too many people in this fucking city, and I've been sitting in a van listening to Kino for the past six hours. Forgive me for not being enthusiastic about your arrival. It's almost like it's dangerous for either of us to know the whereabouts of the other, too. What do you want from me?"

He rolled his eyes behind his stupid looking red sun glasses and pushed the ice around in his sprite with the white and red straw that sat in the cup. Boris' dirty blonde hair stayed unmoving as he shook his head, Gen guessed he still used the strongest gel he could find to spike it upwards, "You're even more of a hardass than I remember, lighten up. I missed my little friend. Is it a crime to look for you?" He replied, "I take you to my sanctuary, my castle where I am the Burger King and you accuse me of only speaking to you for my own needs. I even got you a little crown."

"Oh, please. You could miss me from afar, why did you come find me? At school of all places." She narrowed her eyes at him as he placed the thick paper crown on her head. His faux attempts at manipulation flew right over Gen's head.

Boris sighed and set the cup down on the table, pushing used wrappers out of the way to do so. The crinkling noises made Gen's face screw up into a cringe as she reached for them and set them on the tray. "I have people, ones who give me information if I get them American goods — we aren't directly connected, of course. It goes through a line of people. But there's talk of you-know-who scheming back at home. Scheming what? I don't know. But I thought I should let you know."

"And?" she beckoned him to continue, knowing better than to believe that Boris Papalosky decided to do this out of the kindness of his heart.

He licked his lips and leaned back in the booth, the buzzing light above him illuminated his face unpleasantly, and Gen could see that he genuinely looked annoyed with her response. "I am being serious, that was all I needed you for originally."

"Originally," Gen repeated and stared at him, "Why not just tell me in Indiana? I don't want to be anywhere near the city. It hurts my head." Boris, of course, knew this. He wanted her guard down.

"I wanted to show you my favorite place in the whole world, right after my Mama's kitchen, of course," Boris chuckled to himself, as if Gen had ever met his mother. If she did, she would have asked her why she didn't try to use contraceptives. "I needed some help to find you, Shenyechka. And he, well, would like to speak to you too — it's no trap, just a man by the name of Murray Bauman. He wanted to ask you some things."

"You're feeding me to the fucking pigs?" she derided and stood up, as if she could go anywhere without his help, Gen had about twenty dollars on her and no idea how to use public transportation. "Go to hell."

"He's not a cop," Boris explained quickly as he mimicked her actions, unsure if she was about to run for it or not (it wouldn't have been the first time.), "He's a friend of mine, a real friend. We sit and chat and drink — he says I won't need to pay if he could just speak to you for a little while, you don't need to say anything of worth. Lie, for all I care, but I would like to not be out hundreds of dollars because you want to be stubborn."

The girl tossed everything in the nearby trash can, tray included as she stormed out onto the busy city sidewalk, Boris in frantic tow. "Gen, please! It helps me save face and he can get you Russian alcohol, lots of it, so much alcohol," he pleaded, despite her pace never ceasing. "It can be five minutes and I will take you back to that shitshow of a town. He just wants to know what happened to you. I want to know what happened to you. You aren't the same, Shenyechka—"

She stopped in front of the passenger's side door of Boris' extremely conspicuous white van and grabbed ahold of the handle to open it, her teeth grit unpleasantly within the confines of her mouth. "Я пойду к твоему тупому ебаному другу если ты заткнешься и отвезешь меня домой после — я ничего не скажу тебе, и особенно ничего не скажу ему." (I'm going to see your stupid fucking friend if you shut up and take me home after — I won't tell you anything, and I especially won't tell him anything.)

Boris beamed.

"Так точно, капитан!" (Aye, aye captain!) He saluted her dramatically, so dramatically in fact, he nearly toppled over and knocked his sunglasses to the ground when he scrambled to the driver's side door. Gen shut her eyes for a moment and sighed once she realized that it would be another long, long drive to the opposite end of Illinois.

𓆩♡𓆪

"There's too much fucking corn here," Gen cursed under her breath as she got out of the van, her legs stretched out first, then her arms and finally her back and spine once she placed her hand over her brows and squinted at the bright orange sun that came over the horizon. It peaked through the leaves and brush that surrounded the secluded bunker, there were threat's graffitied on the doors and walls, and Gen began to wonder where the hell Boris found this man.

"That's the midwest for you," Boris replied with a simple shrug and got out of the van too, only he rounded to the side and started to pull out crates of canned food from the back of it. The teen curled a brow at him and he shrugged again, "Murray likes his canned beans. Non-perishables are valuable in this day and age."

She crossed her arms and shook her head at him as Gen wondered what kind of nutcases Boris had to speak to to find anyone close to this paranoid and isolated. "If this is some crazy theorist, I swear to God, Boris—"

"Relax, I have a feeling you two might get along — help me with these crates," he cut her off as he picked up a crate and made his way towards the door. Gen, begrudgingly, obliged as she slung her backpack over her shoulders and picked up the crate, which was indeed full of canned food.

"Why would I get along with him?" she hissed, offended at the implication that she was some lunatic who would live in a shack and only ate canned food. Gen behaved like a feral dog half of the time, but she was far from being one of the nuts that wore tinfoil on their heads and swore that the KGB were watching each of their irrelevant moves.

Boris, nonchalantly as ever, just shrugged in response as he rang a bell. It buzzed ear-bleedingly loud and a voice came from the small box inside of it, "Look at the camera."

While he glanced upwards, Gen tried to get eye-level with the box, it made sense for the camera to be where the noise was coming from, right? Except the man over the speaker sighed in exasperation and spat out, "Look up and to your left!"

She cursed and looked at the camera, set up on an overhang on the building, and Boris chuckled to himself as the door squealed open with a thud and revealed a very ugly man. "Boris, Genevieve — save me the story of being his unofficial niece and come in, I've been expecting you."

Gen imagined the look on her face described how she felt extremely accurately, because Boris laughed at her and clapped her on the shoulder for the hundredth time in the past 16 hours as he walked into the dinghy building. She followed begrudgingly, and somehow it was worse on the inside than the outside. The entire home (if she could even call it that) looked like it'd been covered in a decent layer of grime, and all of the furniture seemed long past worn-out. She pursed her lips and looked at the man who brought her to this godforsaken place, "Really?" she questioned despite his friend, the owner, being right there.

The man had to be Murray Bauman because he was the only living thing in sight, despite looking as decrepit as the walls and built-in shelves of the "house". He still had on his pajamas, a stained white tank-top and his hair stuck out of each side of his head like a clown as he walked throughout his house and forced the two Russians to follow him. Gen thought it had to be some kind of practical joke Boris wanted to play on her.

Boris merely shrugged as Murray pushed a set of doors open, which revealed a wall of photos, documents, and drawings behind it. Each pertained to Barbara's disappearance, and Gen bit back a shudder as she reminded herself why she kept her heart close to her chest. "So?" the dark-haired girl inquired, glancing at Murray and Boris.

"So? Barbara is missing, you went missing — and I've heard the story of the bear in the Harrington's backyard and the boy who... fell in the quarry and drowned — the boy who "wasn't" William Byers. And I've especially heard of the druggie who decided to run off at the first sight of trouble," Murray started, his voice booming throughout the small room, and her brows cinched into a deep frown as she pushed the memories of the Upside Down into the back of her head. "If you'd please, tell me where you ran off to — it'd be—"

He was cut off by the sound of the buzzer going off again, and all heads turned towards the source. Boris glanced at Murray quizzically as he went to go look in the video display and respond. Gen's eyes followed him as they landed on the screen, then bugged out at the sight, "Nancy?"

Of course, she languished, of fucking course. Nancy stood next to Jonathan Byers as they turned to stare at the camera in response to Murray directing them where to look, and Gen's fists clenched as her chewed fingernails dug against the palm of her hand. She didn't know why she was feeling this way, why she wanted Jonathan to get the fuck away from her, but a primal instinct was a primal instinct and her gut was rarely wrong when she chose to judge others.

Boris dandied along into the kitchen and calmly poured a drink for Gen, and by "a drink', it was just straight vodka. It stung her nose as he thrusted it into her face and chuckled, "To calm you. Drink up, we don't need any exploding heads today, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed through a clenched jaw and took the drink. It fell down her throat as soon as she knocked it back, and the burn that followed made her face screw up into a cringe. Gen never drank because of how she felt, that's what alcoholics did, but in that moment she swore Jonathan's head would have popped off of his neck the moment he stepped foot in Gen's eyeline. Hell, the goddamn building itself.

There had to be something wrong with her, surely, she was so deeply disturbed that she projected it onto others — onto Jonathan, who hadn't done anything to her, but instead just made her feel so bleh. The way he looked at Nancy made her stomach drop to her feet; but it wasn't fear. Genevieve Volkova simply didn't get scared of things. It wasn't plausible for her to be scared, Jonathan Byers was barely a threat to her in the slightest, so why was she so fucking... bleh when she saw them together?

Surely it was because she knew Jonathan only stuck around Nancy — only pretended to help her because he wanted to date her, right? Gen didn't want her friend to be exploited because of some man.

"Well... I hope you didn't come all this way to tell me about the bear in the Harrington kid's backyard," Murray began his speech again, his voice muffled against the four walls that contained Gen and Boris as she regained her composure. "I've heard that one already. Come on, take a look, go ahead — don't be shy."

The doors slid open and all Gen could do was stand around awkwardly, much like a plank of wood as Boris smiled at them. "Hello, friends!" he greeted kindly as Gen looked away from the shocked faces of Nancy and Jonathan. "Well, Gen's friends. But her friends are as good as mine, no?"

"Gen?" they questioned in unison.

"Hi," she breathed out and wished she was anywhere but there.

"Wha— what are you doing here? You know them?" Nancy questioned, her brows furrowed and her jaw slack. She couldn't tell if Nancy was angry with her or if she'd simply surprised her so badly that she couldn't find the words to express herself.

Jonathan looked equally as perturbed, in his stupid, ugly, fat-headed Jonathan way. "Does Hopper know you're here?"

"No," Gen replied, suddenly feeling defensive. Why did Jonathan Byers have a right to question her like she was some child? He was also running off without his guardian's knowledge. "Does Joyce know you're here?"

He looked away.

Boris slung an arm around Gen's shoulder and patted her on the chest like she was one of his drinking buddies. "Now, now, let's do the questions later, no? Right now, you both have something to share. You would not be here just for fun, unless you're a friend of Murray's," he chuckled at his own sarcasm, "But we all know that's not the case."

There was an air of uncertainty as Jonathan and Nancy's eyes flickered between Boris and Gen, who shrugged his arm off of her and went to take a seat in the nearest chair. Boris wanted answers just as much as Murray wanted them, it seemed, Gen knew he wouldn't have diffused the situation if he hadn't.

Of course, Gen wouldn't back down without a fight.

"So, what? Are you just telling anyone now?" she scoffed and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest that ached for her to just shut the fuck up before she said something she regretted.

Nancy sighed in response, "That's not — we just want justice for Barb, and Will, and Pete, those assholes at the lab are just getting away with everything and I can't just stand and watch!"

Gen felt her face harden at the mention of Pete's name, and before she could respond, Murray started exclaiming in protest. "As much as I'd love to watch you duke it out before your inevitable heart to heart — let's hurry up and get the ball rolling, please," he cut them off, exasperated. "I followed up on 200 tips, most bogis, but that's how these things always go, okay? I know every last step that Barbara took that day, every last person she talked to. The answer to what happened to your friend, it's up there somewhere. I assure you that. I just gotta connect the right dots."

As much as Gen wished she could stop Nancy, she knew that nothing would end her determination to find justice for Barbara in some way — she couldn't fight it. She didn't want to make Nancy's life harder than it had to be, or rather, than it already was. She sighed and rubbed her face, "There's no dots to connect."

"And the timeline's wrong," Nancy added.

"I'm sorry?" Murray asked.

"Your timeline is wrong. And the girl with the buzzed hair, she's not Russian, she's from Hawkins lab. Her name was Eleven," the curly haired girl pointed out, smiling at Gen appreciatively as she gave her a passing nod.

Was. Was Eleven. Sometimes she forgot that she and Hopper were the only ones who knew of El's whereabouts, how she even still existed.

"There's no dots to connect because Barbara Holland is dead, the same with Peter Bell. I watched him die," Gen explained shortly and reached for a stress ball, instantly regretting the words the moment they came out of her mouth.

Jonathan glanced over at Murray. "You might want to sit down for this."

—————
——— AUTHOR'S NOTE
boris' introduction 🙀 he's not
that important this season, but
he will be in season 3... so...
lawl. also i DO NOT speak russian
so the translations could be off
or sound strange because i used
an online translator (captions
are in parenthesis)

school starts in about a month,
so i'm nervous for that, but i
almost have the entire first act
prewritten 🥳 and then the second
act will be way shorter

okay. this chapter was really long
i hope you enjoyed! don't forget to
vote and comment 🙏

PRETTY SICK!
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