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The Pripyat hotel was built for bureaucrats. Pripyat, being a town constructed specifically to house the workers of the Vladimir I. Lenin powerplant, didn't exactly see a lot of tourists. It did, however, see a fair bit of traveling statesmen who needed a place to lay their heads after the long journey from Moscow. Reflecting all this, it was a nice hotel. It had a bar, a restaurant, and, most importantly, a versatile, albeit small banquet hall. Whether it was to host speeches, parties, weddings, or, nowadays, emergency meetings, it did its job.
Boris had made liberal use of it. Every morning, earlier than anyone would like, he'd be the first one awake in all of the Oblast, perhaps except the milkmaids, and everyone would gather at his behest to go over Pikalov's report from the night-shift soldiers and dosimetrists, and then the schedule for the day. After, the various subordinate staff would push aside the long tables, and stack the chairs, leaving the room tidy and empty. Valery didn't see much of a point to this ritual, but he supposed it helped morale, that there was some semblance of order to things.
However, Valery was not quite as good at keeping order.
"Oh, shoot," he hissed, stopping dead in his tracks. Boris turned to look at him as they approached the hotel's main entrance.
"What?"
"I forgot— The copy of the byproduct matrix," Valery said, and swiveled his head as if it could be anywhere in the lobby. Boris raised a brow.
"You haven't committed it to memory?"
Valery tsked with vague annoyance. "No, I have not... I didn't bring it to my room, did I?" He furrowed his brow, and Boris cocked his head to the side.
"How would I know?"
"You wouldn't. I was talking to myself."
"That's a rude habit, Valery."
"Oh hush, I'm thinking... Ah!" Valery exclaimed; "It must be in the banquet hall."
He quickly turned, and marched straight towards the double-doors. Boris sauntered after behind him.
Whilst Valery searched the tables tucked up against the walls, Boris stood in the middle of the floor, leisurely gazing up towards the ceiling. When Valery located the paper, and tucked it into his pocket with a relieved sigh, he heard Boris' voice in the resonance of the room.
“I was here, once. Before all this happened.”
“Oh?”
“It was a celebratory event, it must've been... nine years ago now, when they finished the first reactor. There was lots of drinking. And dancing.” Boris shrugged, hands in his pockets. Valery adjusted his glasses as he walked back to him. He faced the same way as he did, and tried to imagine this drab locale, full of laughter and music. It was difficult to do so.
"How come the minister for the construction of oil and gas industries was invited to Pripyat?" Valery asked, rather cheekily, looking over at Boris, whose mouth made a movement similar to a smile.
"Exactly why you'd think," Boris said, turning to face him head-on. "To rub it in my face. You don't think Slavsky, the autocratic bastard, thought this would be the finest achievement of Soviet technology, after everything I'd done to staple this union together with pipes and dreams?"
Valery held his mouth shut, knowing very well this wasn't the time to defend the efficiency of nuclear energy as opposed to Boris' beloved oil.
"...I take it you didn't enjoy the festivities?" Valery asked, clasping his hands behind his back.
"Of course I did. I even smiled!" Boris exclaimed defensively. "When I had to," he added.
Valery scoffed, smiling a bit down at the patterned carpet. He could sense, in his blurry periphery, that Boris was looking at him. Then, he looked away again.
“After this, you’re gonna be promoted so high up you’ll get vertigo,” Boris said.
Valery smiled sheepishly; “Oh, surely not…”
“You’ll have to dance a lot, too.”
That made Valery blanch a bit. Sure, he very much didn't mind the idea of a promotion, if, for nothing else, to push out his opponents at the institute, but all the frills that came with a higher status... Cocktail parties, tuxedos, constant social meetings... He got goosebumps.
“I think the last time I danced… was when I was in Komsomol,” he muttered, thinking about the girls in their long dresses and flower crowns. He wasn’t exactly the most sought after partner. Of course, when there were parties among the Kurchatov staff, there was dancing as well; but it wasn’t exactly the formal kind. Valery cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Oh dear,” Boris sighed, but he was smiling; “Then I have my work cut out for me.”
Valery's gaze flew up to him.
"Your... your work?" Valery repeated, raising his eyebrows. Boris looked down at him challengingly, eyes narrowed.
"You don't get far by digging your heels in, Valera."
Boris extended his hand to the side: “We’ll start with me leading, a simple waltz, then we can switch once you’ve gotten the hang of the steps."
Valery stared at him, mouth agape. He stuttered out some strange sounds, and rolled his heel back, not quite committing to stepping away. "Oh, no... We have things to do," he reminded them both, but Boris didn't budge.
"Ten minutes," he said, firmly. "You can skip your smoke breaks instead."
Valery was offended at the insinuation that he didn't work while he was smoking, but Boris' authoritative tone actually worked on him for once. He said nothing, but gave a halfhearted nod.
Boris put his hand on Valery’s waist, and when there wasn’t much to anchor onto there, he slid it further down to his hip. In Valery’s brain, an incandescent red bulb immediately began blinking and spinning. Then, Boris took his hand, his palm slipping upward against it, until it slotted perfectly with Valery's, their fingers gently hooked over each other. In just a moment, Valery felt he was transported somewhere else. Boris shrugged his shoulder, and Valery remembered to put his hand there.
"You move in a square, sliding one foot at a time, six steps in all. Just follow where I go. Then we turn, and do it again," Boris explained, slowly, whilst Valery was shifting, trying to stand comfortably. Valery stared down at his feet, between Boris' considerably larger shoe size. Boris' foot gently tapped at the side of Valery's, to get it closer to the other, and he shuffled himself into a prim and proper stance.
Thankfully, the carpet made it less likely for Valery to slip. That was a very important factor.
"Now... One," Boris whispered, and, in slow-motion, he dragged his foot along the carpet, and waited for Valery to copy him. He pulled the other foot, then took a step back. Valery filled the empty space with a step forward. They finished the square, Boris counting each step, and he tried to speed up the next one, but was rebuffed by Valery's full-body uncertainty, jerking him back from moving, or taking him in the wrong direction.
“One, two… don't stare at your feet, you’ll just confuse yourself,” Boris said, and Valery quickly snapped his head upward.
“Look at me instead,” Boris explained, calmly, rather than sternly. "The better you know your partner, the better you can predict how they'll move," he added, and Valery, in a vulnerable position where he absorbed any information he was given, made the attempt to trust his gut. Boris was being gentle with him, so he assumed he would be moving them in a small circle on the floor, rather than taking him across the whole breadth of the floor. He was correct; he slid along the floor at the correct interval, mirroring Boris' languid gait.
They repeated it, with only a few instances of Valery stepping on Boris' toes, finishing a few squares, until they were back where they'd begun. Valery recognized it by a grey spot rubbed into the carpet, left by cigarette ash.
“See? All it takes is practice,” Boris leant down and whispered, against Valery’s ear.
Valery wrinkled his nose. “You’re awfully patronizing.”
“Comes with the job.”
"Which of your jobs?" Valery asked.
"All of them."
"That doesn't surprise me," Valery murmured; they were still dancing as they spoke, Valery concentrating hard to make the moves instinctual, rather than a calculated effort, though the method was a bit counterproductive. As he focused, Boris' voice was fuzzy above the static of his brain.
“Do you get dizzy easily, Valera?”
“Uhm—“
Before he even bothered to listen for an answer, Boris spun Valery around— Several times— Perhaps an infinite amount, if you asked poor Valery, before he was swung back towards Boris, who caught him with an arm around his back, as he nearly tipped onto one foot.
“You’ll be doing a lot of that as the evening progresses and everyone gets drunker," Boris explained. Valery felt weak in the knees.
"But, if you're invited to the more exclusive sort of dinner party, at someone's humble abode—" Boris said, with no lack of sarcasm, and suddenly, both his hands were around the small of Valery's back, wreathing together where they fell naturally. He pushed them chest-to-chest. "You'll get to slow-dance."
His face was incredibly close, to the point where their foreheads were nearly touching. Valery could hear him breathe. It was ragged in the same way his voice was. By now, it was a comfort to hear. Valery wasn't sure exactly where to look.
"Well, slow-dancing is— I don't have a wife," Valery muttered, sheepishly, and Boris smirked.
"That won't matter. You'll just dance with one of your colleague's wives instead," he teased, and the hair on Valery's neck stood on end.
"That doesn't cause trouble?" He asked, and, hoping they were still roleplaying enough for it to be acceptable, he wrapped his hands behind Boris' neck. Now, they moved without lifting their feet, synchronously, making them sway side to side. Boris hummed. It seemed he was still enjoying himself.
"Only if you offend the cuckold politically."
"I hope you're not speaking from experience," Valery tutted disapprovingly, and Boris chuckled heartily in reply; his hands adjusted their grip. Somehow, the grip ended up tighter, and they ended up closer than they were before.
"Of course not. I've just seen some things in my time. Besides, I worked too much to have time for extramarital affairs,” Boris said with a shrug, and, lifting slightly at Valery’s back, he turned them around in a half-circle spin. For a second, Valery almost felt like his feet had left the ground. Boris was about as strong as he looked; like a mountain. Afterwards, they slowly spun in place, like a ballerina in a music box.
Valery wetted his lips.
"Wasn't I supposed to try leading, too?" He asked.
"Hm?" Boris looked like he hadn't been listening. "Is this not enjoyable enough for you?"
Valery blushed. What exactly was he supposed to answer to that?
"It's hardly a help, unless I start dressing up as a woman," he said, a little too rushed, too bitter, and Boris chuckled.
"Now that'd be a sight," Boris said, and Valery probably looked scary enough for Boris to back down. Or pathetic enough for him to take pity.
"Right, right. Go ahead." Boris put his arms out to the side, and Valery paused a moment too long. Boris quirked a brow, until Valery finally pulled himself together, and put his hand on Boris' hip. It felt fundamentally off to do so. Did Boris really not think so, too? Valery tried not to overthink it. Boris placed his hand on Valery's shoulder. It should've felt heavy, but he cupped it in a way that made it seamless. Valery slid his hand under Boris', and raised them up together. Suddenly, he was forced to look Boris squarely in the face, since he didn't have to worry about where he was stepping. Boris' expression was severe, like this was a deeply serious thing they were doing, and Valery wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. He decided not to.
He maintained eye contact, as he stepped to the side, and Boris, like he were his shadow, took no moment to follow. For some reason, it stole Valery's breath from his lungs. He took the next step, and the next, and suddenly, they were moving like water, spiraling outward from their starting point: A maelstrom, reversed.
Valery didn't know why, but he followed the sudden urge to close his eyes, perhaps to prove to himself that he had memorized sufficiently.
"You're humming the numbers," Boris said, quietly. "Let them go."
Valery, without meaning to, squeezed Boris' hand. "Of course."
He tried to empty his head, and instead fill it with music. Let the strings of his nerve fibers play the meter. Let the synapses blow like horns.
He imagined Borodin's Polovtsian dances, the way they boomed through the Bolshoi theater. In his seat, he'd felt the music move through his body like a butterfly trapped in a glass cage: he decided. The Allegro, in 3/4ths.
Boris' fingers curled around his shoulder as they sped up, dancing to something more fluid than a metronome, leaping with great steps through the banquet hall like it wasn't all concrete and hotel air.
Valery clasped his arm around Boris' waist, and now, he was the one dragging Boris along, through peaking waves and twirling currents.
When Valery opened his eyes again during the slowing of the piece, Boris was looking at him with the same amazement and confusion as if he'd lassoed the moon. Valery, suddenly embarrassed, slowed them to a stop, as the bassoons petered out.
"Easy, Rudolf Nureyev," Boris said, a trace of laughter in his breath, which had become labored by the dance.
Valery turned his head away. "What an unbecoming comparison," he muttered, and retracted his arms from Boris' person. However, Boris was slower to withdraw entirely. His hand lingered on Valery's shoulder, and then clasped and rubbed it in a comradely way.
"I don't think so," he said, enough to make Valery's face pulse with warmth. He averted the feeling by instead looking at his watch.
"Oh...!" He sighed, immediately brought back to reality. "I won't get a smoke break for two days now..." he muttered, and Boris sniffed with amusement.
"Good. It's better for you," he said, and, with his hand still on Valery's shoulder, began to lead them out of the banquet hall.
"We make good partners, don't you think?" Boris then said, apropos of nothing, his voice strangely soft. Valery looked up at him, allowing a smile.
"I'll save the first dance of my promotion for you," Valery replied.
The satisfaction upon Boris' face reflected onto his own, like the sun onto the moon. Valery dared to hope he meant it.
Perhaps they'd have to do it alone, in the Kurchatov director's office, out of sight. He wouldn't mind that. Not at all.