Makarovia! Yes, I Know Where That is! Sophomore Year - 1. Chapter 1

Drew and Wayne took us to the airport to see us off. We’d had a nice visit with Drew and Wayne as they showed us London.

“We had a nice time with you guys,” Peter said smiling at them. “Thanks for showing us around.”

“We enjoyed it,” Wayne assured.

Drew nodded and assured me. “I’ll send you the translations of Milo’s diaries when Cassie gets them organized by date. They will be in English. She’s very thorough.”

“I look forward to it. And the tapes?”

“Those, too.” Drew nodded.

“You both promised to come to Boston.” I reminded them what they said before. “We’ll show you around there.”

“As soon as we find where we’re living,” Peter grunted sourly.

“You don’t know?” Drew asked surprised.

“Not a clue,” I admitted.

“For needed security and more people, the home before was too small,” Peter said and shrugged. “The Americans thought we needed to be…more secure and protected.”

“But the internet works and so does our phones,” I said. “You’ve got our numbers and Penny will make sure you get through.”

Peter chuckled. “Oh, yeah, we have Penny again.”

“Penny?” Drew asked.

“Penelope Baldwin,” I said smiling. “She’s in charge of who gets through and who doesn’t. She’s our…social and press secretary.”

“You have a…” Wayne began and then nodded as he thought. “Of course, you do.”

“It’s good to be a king.” Drew chuckled. “In your case, princes.”

Peter looked at his watch. “It’s about six to seven hours to Boston with possible delays, time change and it will be evening when we get there so…”

“Yes, traffic in Boston is a bitch, even worse at rush hour…we hopefully will miss that.” I grumbled. “We’d better go.”

We hugged Wayne and Drew then got on the plane. There are always delays. Delays taking off and delays landing. We circled a little over Boston and landed finally, but not too bad. We were followed by our own security from the plane and met with other security who escorted us to the limousine. They followed us again in black SUVs. The people of the US wanted our uranium, they made sure Peter and I were safe. The ones that came with us were Makarovian, the ones here were American. They knew what we were doing, marrying so they were told not to or they didn’t care about us being a future couple. I think most wanted a job and they were good at what they did, so they didn’t care. I was anxious to see where we were living now and…my mouth dropped open when the limo pulled in the drive of…well, it was a mansion! Sort of an English style red brick and three stories. Not a lot of yard in front, but we were close to downtown. A yard at all may be a luxury, I don’t know.

“It’s not a townhouse or the condo,” Peter said as our doors from the car were opened for us. Again, I can open my own doors, but I thanked the man that smiled at me as I got out. I’d never seen him before. I never wanted to forget to be grateful. Never would I take them for granted.

Going to the front door, which again opened for us, only this time, I knew the man in dark suit pants and vest that smiled at us.

“Boris!!” I greeted instantly hugging him.

Boris let out a little “oh”, but smiled hugged me back. “Welcome back, You’re Lordship.”

I pushed him back a little. “You knew me since…October or November last year…I’m still Eric. We’re friends, Boris!”

“Of course, we are.” Boris smiled and gestured to Peter. “Blame him for that. He sent a message to me to…get you used to the new title, I needed…to help you.”

I looked back at Peter who was not looking at me and began whistling to look innocent. “Did he?” I asked

“Welcome back, Peter. It’s good to see you.” Boris said shaking Peter’s hand, which Peter did, but brought Boris in for one of those man hugs. Geez.

We were led more into the house. The entrance way was raised and you went down into a foyer. That’s foyer with the fo-yea, not fo-yer. It was huge! I thought so. It was round with a polished marble floor with the mosaic tile with a kind of…burst from browns in the decorative points that came from the center out in a decorative design. The center had this round table with a flowering plant in the center, above it…two floors up hung a huge a crystal chandelier set in a molding in the ceiling and around the edges. Elegant pictures on the wall that I saw, but really didn’t look at. Wallpaper up the wall by the stairs was…pretty in a light color of white and a darker whitish color…cream? It was well lit. At the opposite wall of the entrance was a curved stairwell that led upstairs to a door that led to the rest of the center of the house’s hidden interior. Under the stairwell was an archway that led down a hall. There were two other larger archways to the left and right opposite each other of the for-yea. (Wanted to say it again to show I knew the difference. Foyer.) The first word I could think was… “Чорт!” As I explained, Makarovian was similar to Ukranian, only some pronunciations and some words are different, but “damn” was the same in both languages.

Boris just chuckled. “I agree. My thoughts caused me to say Черт.” He said damn in Russian. Again, pronunciation was a little different, but it is the same word. “More house to clean.” He shrugged.

“More staff, I hope,” Peter said.

Boris nodded. “Oh, yes.”

Yuri came in with a big smile. “Welcome back!” He greeted. “What do you think? The US State Department, by command of the White House, deemed it the best choice.”

Peter shook his head. “There’s only two of us.” He said and leaned closer to me and said. “I liked our apartment last year!”

I chuckled putting my arm around his waist. “We’ll make this home, Peter.”

“There are ten bedrooms. Twelve if you count the two downstairs, one is Boris and my bedroom we share and the other for our internal security to stay here.” Yuri said. “You need a place if Queen Alla comes and King Olek. Add if you grandmother comes…”

I held my hand up. “I got it, Yuri. We’ll adjust. Just tell me where breakfast will be served.”

“Well, there are three choices,” Boris said shrugged.

“Three!?” I repeated. “Who needs three?”

“You will,” Yuri said. “King Olek wants this to be sort of…a kind of Embassy. He’s planning some dinners and what have you. You have a formal dining room and a family dining room.”

“And there’s a place off the kitchen,” Boris explained more. “And the kitchen is very good. Everything needed to make a simple or even a complicated dinner.”

“This is a kind of an Embassy?” I asked.

“The other is in Washington, but yes, he wanted this one to be the Makarovian Embassy,” Yuri said simply.

“Who’s paying for this!?” I waved at the house.

“We are now,” Yuri said.

“Olek said we’d get the first paycheck from the uranium.” Peter nodded.

Boris pointed to an archway to the right of the entrance. “There’s a music room there, behind it is a library.” He pointed to the left. “Through that archway is the living area, behind it is the formal dining room. “Down the center takes you to the family dining room where I can serve breakfast, or go further down to the kitchen. There are offices back there, one I use with Yuri. One Ms. Baldwin uses.”

“Where is she now?” Peter looked down the hall below the stairs to see if she was coming.

“She said she’d be here in the morning to get…things straightened out with the two of you.” Yuri grinned.

I smiled. “I don’t want to be straight.”

“Organized?” Boris offered with a chuckle.

Peter suddenly was stifling something. I grinned, when Peter's stomach growled, I found out we didn't do that. Now he didn’t yawn?

“Okay, it is late in London and even later in Stryia, so…” I took Peter’s hand. “Where’s our room?”

“Follow me,” Boris said and headed to the stairs. “There’s another staircase down in the back. We took the liberty of unpacking your things in a master suite, there are three if this one isn’t to your liking we can move you.”

“Whoever built this had a thing for number three,” I muttered as we climbed the stair. The center running carpet up the stone stairs to the hallway and down a wide hall past some other doors and he stopped at one on the end of the hall that was the right side of the house. “There are four more rooms up the stairs. They were children’s rooms so they didn’t have what we thought you’d like.” He opened the door and waved us in.

I smiled at him. “I like it!” I said coming in the room. The entrance way had the walled sides as there were rooms on either side. Our bedroom had rooms! What I liked was the bedroom…as in the room with the bed was not that big. It was big, but the one at the condo townhouse we’d used was bigger. There was a king-sized bed at the center of two windows. To the left of the bed was a fireplace with a small sofa in front with a little coffee table. To the right side of the entry hall was a study! Two desks in there facing the center of the room, opposite each other and each with its own computer! To the left was the entrance to a walk-in closet. Further to the left was a door from the bedroom to our bathroom, but the closet had a door to the bathroom, too. Come into the bathroom from the bedroom, or go in the closet from the bathroom. An elegant four poster bed that was large and masculine with the large sizes, but a nice spread over the bed. If you want a better description…it won’t be from me. I am not that kind of gay if you didn’t know by now! Odd names for colors and that sort of thing just isn’t me. The furniture was a dark polished wood okay, but had a reddish tone in it. However, I will say, the bed only left a few feet on either side before you hit the far right wall with the window after the study, or to the left before you hit the little living area. A single word? It was COZY! In many ways, I thought of the room Peter and shared in Makarovia. Makarovia’s was smaller to keep heat in, remember? That was cozy, too! This was kind of like that.

“This is awesome!” I said in English. Yuri and Boris spoke English and got what I said. I went back to Makarovian. “Back at the condo townhouse, when one of us studied, we’d worry about the light bothering the other who might be sleeping. We have a separate room now.”

Boris nodded smiling. “You weren’t comfortable with the…” he thought of a nice word, “grandness of the other one, I thought this would meet your approval. There are more if you change your minds.”

Peter was nodding as he looked around. “I think this will be good!”

“One more thing before we go.” Yuri walked to the entrance door of the bedroom. “There is a keypad here. If there is…trouble…” he said looking at us, “this is a saferoom. All of the bedrooms are. If there any trouble, an alarm will go off and this room will be sealed. To unseal it here, use this button.” He pointed to a button on the pad. He pointed to the door. “This is galvanized steel. It would take more than a bomb to get through. Even C4 would have a hard time breaking this down.”

“Черт.” I said again. “The builder had a thing for threes and security.”

Yuri nodded. “Now, you know why you’re here in this house.”

Boris smiled. “Are you hungry? I could bring a little something up if you want.”

Peter shook his head and had a harder time stopping the next yawn this time. “I’m more tired than anything else.” He looked at me. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m fine,” I said walking around what would be our room for the year. “We ate on the plane.”

“Very good.” Boris nodded. “I’ve put your things in the bureau there. Arranging it the same as before.”

Peter grinned. “Which you did there, you determined where things were there, too. We’re good.”

Yuri knew me, but…he looked with a smile. “It’s good to see you two. I heard what you did in Makarovia. I saw the proposal. That was pretty amazing.”

“You know what I want from you.” I grinned at him.

Yuri nodded smiling. “Only, you have to initialize it. It’s protocol.” He said simply with a shrug.

“I know you do a job and do it well, but we are friends, right?” I asked. “Protocol is fine. We are friends, though.”

“Yes.”

Yes, I’m a big hugger, you know that by now. I hugged Yuri, too. Okay? Not those second long ones people do occasionally, but arms around him and hold him a while, a real hug. I love those. “Thank you both. Now, Peter and I would like to get some sleep.”

“Good night,” Boris said and walked with Yuri out the door.

“I guess you won’t struggle with this room?” Peter asked me giving me another hug, but more…a full embrace as he rested his lips to the side of my head as we shared the embrace.

“No struggle at all,” I said. “As long as you’re here with me, I won’t struggle, it’s home,” I said kissing him. “I love you, Peter.”

“I know.” He said. “I love you, Eric.”

“Yes, I know.” I caressed the side of his face.

The bathroom. It was a nice size, not one of those overly large ones, but had a tub we could share if we wanted and a stand-alone shower and two sinks. A water closet. There were fresh toothbrushes and other needed things and we did our nightly rituals. I watched Peter move using more effort to do it. “You’re tired.”

“Aren’t you!?”

“I am.” I grinned. “We’ll go to sleep. I don’t have the energy for anything else. You can choose a couple of things from your gift box…when we wake up.”

“I’m holding you to that.” Peter grinned and this time he didn’t stop the yawn.

“Come on,” I said leading to the bed. His side was always the right side, mine was always the left. I pulled the bed down and got his pillows ready.

“Are you tucking me in?” Peter grinned as he slid in.

I nodded. “I always do in one way or another.”

Climbing into bed next to him, he had already begun to go to sleep, but as I settled down, I hadn’t turned my back to him yet. He always spooned me before, but even in sleep, he rolled, put his arm over me, I smiled as I moved to the correct position where he drifted off. I took his right arm bringing it closer to me. “I love you, Peter.”

“I love you, Eric.” He said groggily hardly understandable with sleep and barely audible.

I couldn’t wait for this year. It was going to be full of things to happen, but we’d be fine…as long as we were together.