Chapter 74: The First Medallion and the Hardest Smile
The halls of the main academic building on Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue smelled of old books, pine disinfectant, and the ghost of a million anxious breaths. It was past official hours, the institutional fluorescence humming over empty linoleum, their footsteps echoing like secrets in a cathedral. Otar led the way, his clue from Vaso—a name, whispered over the phone Izolda held—burning in his mind: Nino Baratashvili. The post-grad literature tutor who ran study labs in Room 217.
“She’ll have it,” Izolda had said, her voice stripped of its social glitter, pared down to a sharp, annoyed efficiency. “She’s exactly the type Varek would use. Quiet. Observant. Likes to watch.”
They found the door slightly ajar, a wedge of warmer, dimmer light cutting across the corridor floor. Inside, the room was a canyon of stacked chairs, the blackboard smeared with the ghosts of half-erased theories. At a single table sat Nino, a thin woman with severe glasses and a calm, waiting posture. The brass medallion lay before her, next to a steaming ceramic cup of tea, catching the glow of a desk lamp.
She looked up as they entered, her expression neither surprised nor welcoming. “Otar Jinjikhashvili. Izolda Shervashidze. I wondered which pair ‘whisper’ would bring.” Her voice was low, a fitting instrument for the word itself.
“We need that,” Izolda said, bypassing any greeting, pointing at the medallion.
“I know,” Nino said. She didn’t touch it. “Varek explained the rules. It’s not a handout. It’s an exchange.”
Otar’s mouth was dry. “What do you want?”
Nino removed her glasses, polishing them slowly on the edge of her sweater. “One uncomfortable truth. From each of you. About how you see the other. Not an insult. A truth. The kind that sits in your gut and makes you feel naked.” She replaced her glasses, her gaze magnified and unnervingly direct. “If I believe you, you get the medallion. If I sense you’re performing, you leave empty-handed. And I’ll know.”
Silence pooled in the room, thick and hot. Otar could feel Izolda vibrating beside him, a live wire of impatience and pride. He stared at Nino, then at the medallion, then at the faded Georgian script on the blackboard. This was the price. Not money. Not favor. A piece of his own interior wreckage, laid bare before the girl he’d mythologized and the quiet arbiter who held their future.
Izolda laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “This is childish.”
“It’s the task,” Nino said, unmoved. “Begin.”
Otar felt something break loose inside him, a dam cracked by the accumulated pressure of the hilltop, of Vaso’s contempt, of his mother’s disappointed eyes, of a lifetime of being nobody’s first choice. The words came out before he could craft them, raw and damp, like stones pulled from a riverbed.
“I turned you into an idea,” he said, not looking at Izolda, but at the dust motes swirling in the lamp light. “Because it was easier. Worshipping something from far away… it’s clean. It doesn’t talk back. It doesn’t have flaws or smell like someone else’s cigarettes or laugh at the wrong time.” He swallowed, the truth acidic in his throat. “If I saw you as real, as a person, then I’d have to be real, too. And I didn’t know how to do that. So I made you a statue. And I put myself in a shadow at your feet. It was cowardice. That’s the truth.”
The room absorbed his words. Izolda had gone very still. Nino watched him, then gave a single, slight nod.
“Your turn,” Nino said to Izolda.
Izolda crossed her arms, hugging herself. For a moment, the polished, popular girl was gone, replaced by someone younger, more brittle. “I knew,” she said, her voice quieter now. “Of course I knew about your crush. Everybody did. It was… obvious. Pathetic.” She winced at her own word, but pushed on. “And sometimes I enjoyed it. When I felt small, or Vaso was being an asshole, or I just needed to feel… shimmering. I’d catch you staring and I’d stand a little straighter. I’d laugh a little louder. I used that admiration. It wasn’t fair. It was like taking coins from a beggar when I had a vault full of gold.”
She finally looked at Otar, her eyes glittering with a harsh, unsparing light. “And you let me. You act like someone who’s begging the world not to take him seriously. You wear your vulnerability like a sign saying ‘Kick Me.’ You make it so easy to be cruel because you seem to expect nothing else.”
The truth, flung from her lips, was a physical impact. It didn’t feel like a revelation; it felt like a surgical incision, opening something they’d both silently agreed to keep closed. Otar felt his face burn, but beneath the shame, a strange, cold clarity emerged. She saw him. The real, pitiable him. And she had named him.
Nino watched the space between them, now charged with a painful new intimacy. She smiled, a thin, knowing curve of her lips. “Good,” she said. She picked up the medallion, her fingers closing around it. “Now you have to fuck.”
The statement hung in the air, obscene and absolute.
“What?” Izolda breathed.
“You heard me,” Nino said, her voice still that calm, tutorial tone. “You’ve named the sickness. Now perform the antidote. Translate that truth into action. Physical proof of the pact. Here. Now.”
“This is insane,” Izolda snapped, but her eyes flicked to Otar, assessing, calculating. The race. The medallion. Vaso’s expectation. Her own desperate need to win, to be first at something that mattered.
Otar’s mind emptied. All the fantasy, all the trembling, yearning nights alone in his room, collided with this stark, transactional command. It was the furthest thing from his dreams. It was a desecration of them. And yet, the medallion glinted in Nino’s hand.
“It’s the price,” Otar heard himself say, his voice a stranger’s. He was looking at Izolda, seeing her not as a statue, but as a fellow animal, trapped in the same brutal experiment. Flawed. Real. “We’re grafted. Our fates.”
Izolda held his gaze for a long, searing moment. The socialite, the queen, the prize… all those titles fell away. She was just a girl in a dusty room, offered a way forward through a door of humiliation. A wild, reckless light entered her eyes. The same instability that made her so magnetic now tilted towards this abyss.
“Fine,” she spat, the word a challenge. “Just… fine.”
She stepped towards him, her movements abruptly decisive. She grabbed the collar of his soft sweater and pulled him to her, her mouth crashing against his. It wasn’t a kiss of passion; it was a collision, a seal on a bargain. Her tongue pushed past his lips, aggressive, tasting of mint and the sour undertone of anxiety. Her hands went to his belt, fumbling with the buckle.
Nino leaned back in her chair, observing with detached academic interest, the medallion held loosely in her palm.
Otar’s body reacted with a shocking, autonomous hunger. The feel of her, the smell of her perfume mingled with sweat, the brutal honesty of her tongue in his mouth—it shattered the remaining pillars of his fantasy. This was not worship. This was a negotiation with flesh. He groped for the hem of her tight dress, yanking it up around her hips. She wasn’t wearing tights, just delicate lace panthers, black against her pale skin. He tore at them, the fabric giving way with a sharp rip.
“Fucking finally,” Izolda muttered against his mouth, her breath hot. She shoved his trousers and boxers down over his hips. His cock sprang free, already fully, painfully hard. “Look at you. All this time staring, and now you’ve got your little dick out in a classroom.” Her dirty talk was a weapon, laced with the truth she’d just spoken. “You want to put it in me, Otar? You want to fuck the idea until it breaks?”
She turned her back to him, bracing her hands on the tutor’s table, scattering papers. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes fierce. “Do it. Don’t pretend you don’t know how. Just fuck me.”
Nino watched, unfazed, from just feet away.
Otar moved behind her, his heart hammering against his ribs. He guided himself, the head of his cock nudging against her exposed heat. She was slick, a shocking, wet readiness that contradicted her harsh words. He pushed inside her, a tight, engulfing resistance that gave way all at once. She gasped, a sharp, inward sound, and her head dropped.
He started to move, shallow, frantic thrusts. The room filled with the sound of their bodies connecting, skin slapping against skin, the creak of the table under their weight. The clinical smell of dust and old paper was now undercut by the musk of sex.
“Is that all?” Izolda taunted, her voice strained. “You worship from far away, you fuck from far away too? Come on, mother’s boy. Show me you can do something real. Fuck me like you mean it. Fuck me like you hate me a little bit.”
Her words unlocked something. A raw, surging anger—at her, at Vaso, at himself, at Varek’s entire designed hell. He grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into her skin, and drove into her deeper, harder. Each thrust was a punctuation to their painful truths. You–used–me. I–let–you. Flawed. Real.
Izolda cried out, a ragged noise that wasn’t pretend. “Yes! God, yes, like that. Fuck your statue, Otar. Break it. See what’s inside.” She reached a hand between her own legs, rubbing herself in rough circles, her moans becoming louder, less controlled, genuinely frantic. “You’re in me. You’re actually in me. How does it feel? To be the one for five minutes?”
It felt like drowning and flying at once. The tight, hot clutch of her, the brutal poetry of her dirty talk that sliced through every illusion, the surreal horror of Nino’s silent observation—it coalesced into a brutal, accelerating peak. His orgasm built, a tsunami of sensation divorced from affection, a pure physical release of tension, shame, and a seizing of the offered, degrading power.
“I’m gonna come,” he grunted, the words torn from him.
“Do it,” she snarled. “Come inside me. Leave your mark. Something real for once.”
With a final, shuddering thrust, he did. He spilled into her, a hot, pulses jets, his body collapsing forward over her back, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades. She clenched around him, her own body taut, and let out a sharp, sustained cry as her own climax hit, her back arching, her nails scraping across the wooden tabletop.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the smell of sex thick in the stale air.
Slowly, Otar pulled out, a wave of startling, hollow cold following the heat. He fumbled with his clothes. Izolda straightened up, letting her dress fall back down, not looking at him, her face flushed, eyes avoiding both him and Nino.
Nino extended her hand. The medallion lay on her palm. “Proof received,” she said, her tone unchanged.
Izolda snatched it. Her hands were trembling. She pulled out her phone, her jaw set. Otar stood there, disheveled, emptied, a new and terrible knowledge sitting in his gut.
Izolda held the medallion up. She turned, and with a look of fierce, defiant triumph that didn’t reach her shaken eyes, she pulled Otar against her. He stood there, numb, as she held the phone at arm’s length. The flash went off, bleaching their faces—his stunned and ravaged, hers a mask of savage victory.
She typed swiftly, attaching the image.
The whoosh of the sent message was the loudest sound in the room.
Nino finally stood, gathering her papers. “You should go now.”
They left the room without another word, walking separately down the fluorescent hallway, the space between them now an infinite, complicated chasm, bridged only by a digital image winging its way to Varek.
In the quiet darkness of a borrowed sedan parked near the Axis Towers, Varek’s phone buzzed on the dashboard. The screen illuminated his placid face. He opened the message. The image loaded: Otar and Izolda, clasping the brass disc, their faces telling two different chapters of the same brutal story.
He examined it, zooming in on their eyes. Then he gave a slow, approving nod. They were first.
He tapped a reply, a single word: Confirmed.
Then he sat back, waiting for the next photograph to arrive, watching the city lights through the windscreen, a map of pressures patiently applied. The game was progressing exactly as designed.
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Meidan Bazaar, Tbilisi, Georgia — in Old Tbilisi, around Meidani Square.
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Meidan Bazaar, Tbilisi, Georgia — in Old Tbilisi, around Meidani Square.
The underground labyrinth of Meidan Bazaar was a throat of history, exhaling scents of spice, old wool, and damp stone. Besarion moved through the narrow, arched passageways with the grim familiarity of a man descending into a foundation excavation. Makvala followed, her usual playful glide subdued into wary observance. The clue ‘bench’ had led them here, to a specific alcove off the main spur where antique dealer Davit Abashidze held court amid piles of carpet and rusted artifacts.
Davit was a man built like a worn wardrobe, his eyes small and bright beneath wooly brows. He sat not on a bench, but behind one, a splintered timber relic serving as his display table. The brass medallion rested there, half-hidden under a fragment of a ceramic jug. He said nothing as they approached, merely watched.
“We’re here for the disc,” Besarion stated, dispensing with preamble.
“I know why you are here,” Davit replied, his voice a gravelly rumble. He nudged the medallion with a thick finger. “It does not leave for free. First, you sell this.” From beneath the table he produced a wine cup, Georgian kanci, its silver battered, a crack running like a fault line from rim to base. He set it on the bench between them. “Together. To a tourist. Not for a sob story. Not for a sly promise. You sell the truth of it. And you do it your opposite ways.”
Makvala eyed the cup, then Davit. “Our opposite ways?”
“You,” he said, pointing a blunt finger at Besarion, “cannot be brutal. No stating the obvious flaw like a demolition report. And you,” the finger swung to Makvala, “cannot flirt. No lies, no charming performance. Just the thing, as it is. A pair sale. Start.”
The task was a form of torture tailored to each of them. Besarion stared at the flawed object, his mind grappling with a demand for softness. Makvala’s smile, her primary tool, felt surgically removed. They stood paralyzed for a full minute, the silence broken only by the murmur of the bazaar around them.
An older German couple, maps in hand, drifted near their alcove, eyes scanning the wares. Makvala caught Besarion’s eye, a flicker of sheer panic in hers. He gave a stiff, almost imperceptible nod.
“Excuse,” Makvala began, her voice strangely stripped of its melodic lilt. It was just a voice. “This cup. It is old.”
The couple paused politely. Besarion felt the words clot in his throat. He picked up the cup, his calloused hands looking huge and clumsy around its delicate form. He turned it, the crack catching the dim electric light. “It is damaged,” he said, the truth wanting to stop there. He forced more. “The damage is part of its history now. It did not shatter. It survived. That is a different truth than perfection.”
The German man peered closer. His wife frowned. “A crack weakens it,” the man said.
Makvala stepped forward, not into the man’s space, but toward the cup itself. She pointed to the intricate chasing on the side, a pattern of vines. “Perfection is forgettable. It is a copy of an idea. This… you remember this. Your eye follows the crack, wonders about the hand that dropped it, the toast that was spilled. The flaw holds the story.” She wasn’t smiling. Her face was earnest, open in a way Besarion had never seen, utterly devoid of calculation. It was unnerving. “It is honest. Like a face with lines.”
The couple exchanged a look. Besarion held the cup out, feeling the weight of its brokenness. “It will hold wine,” he said. “It just has a scar.”
A moment stretched, taut. Then the German man nodded, reaching for his wallet. “A honest thing,” he said. A price, modest but real, was negotiated and paid. The couple walked away with the cracked kanci wrapped in newspaper.
Davit watched the bills hit his bench. He made no move to collect them. He looked from Besarion’s strained face to Makvala’s strangely vulnerable one. A low, approving grunt echoed in his chest.
“Good,” he said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His next words were delivered flatly, a simple transaction. “Now, you fuck.”
Besarion’s head snapped up. “What?”
“You heard. Performance is over. Now a different seal. On the bench. Where the cup was.” Davit’s expression offered no room for debate. It was the next condition. “Or you leave without the brass.”
Makvala laughed, a sharp, unsteady sound. She looked at the rough, stained timber of the bench, then at Besarion. The builder’s face was a mask of affronted practicality. But beneath it, she saw the same coiled tension that had been there since the square, since the hilltop, since the moment their partnership was forced. A different heat, born of frustration and this bizarre, shared vulnerability.
“Fine,” she breathed, the word tasting of spice and acquiescence. “Fuck it. Fuck me. Just get it over with.”
She approached the bench, sweeping a dusty rug fragment off its surface. She didn’t look at Davit. She hiked her dress up around her hips, revealing bare skin, no tights in the underground warmth. She bent over the rough wood, bracing her palms flat. The position was stark, utilitarian. An offering.
Besarion stood frozen for a heartbeat. This was insanity. Yet the medallion glinted. The clock was ticking. Otar and Izolda were somewhere in the city, perhaps already done, already sending their photo. The thought of failing because of his own prudishness felt like a deeper humiliation. He unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a harsh whisper. He shoved his trousers and boxers down just enough.
He moved behind her. He was already hard, a purely animal response to the absurdity, the pressure, the sight of her curved over the bench like a sacrifice. He spat into his palm, slicking himself roughly. He positioned the head of his cock at her entrance, finding her surprisingly wet. Heat radiated from her.
“Just do it,” Makvala muttered into the wood, her cheek pressed against the grain.
He pushed into her. She was tight, a slick, resisting grip that yielded all at once. A choked gasp escaped her, echoing in the stone alcove. He began to move, deep, measured strokes that made the bench legs creak against the stone floor. The air, already thick with age, filled with the raw, wet sound of their coupling.
“Damn,” Besarion grunted, the sensation undermining his anger.
Makvala let out a shaky laugh. “That’s it? ‘Damn’? Your big romantic talk?” She pushed back against him, taking him deeper. “Fuck me properly, builder. Show me how you lay a foundation. Hard and straight and true.”
Her dirty talk was a provocation, but it lacked her usual theatrical flair. It was guttural, real. It ignited him. He gripped her hips, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh, and drove into her with a renewed, punishing rhythm. Each thrust slammed her body against the unyielding bench.
“You like this?” he growled, the words torn out of him. “This honest work? No flirtation. No lies. Just this.”
“Yes! Fuck, yes,” she moaned, the sound ragged. “It’s just a fuck. It’s just bodies. It’s just this fucking pressure in my cunt. Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.” She reached a hand between her legs, rubbing frantic circles on her clit. “God, you’re so fucking straightforward. Like a hammer. Just hammer me, Besarion. Nail me to this goddamn bench.”
Her words, filthy and direct, coiled the tension in his gut impossibly tighter. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, his world narrowing to the heat of her, the slap of skin, the smell of sex rising to mix with dust and turmeric. Davit watched, impassive as a stone idol.
Makvala’s breathing hitched, her cries becoming sharp, insistent barks. “I’m gonna come. Right here on this flea-market bench. Make me come, you stubborn fuck!”
Her internal muscles clamped around him, a violent, fluttering pulse. The sensation ripped a roar from Besarion’s throat. He surged into her one last time, holding himself deep as his own climax erupted, hot and claiming, spilling into her with shuddering pulses.
They slumped, spent, still joined, breathing in ragged unison. The silence of the alcove rushed back in, now layered with the intimate scent of their bodies.
Slowly, Besarion pulled out. He turned away, hastily rearranging his clothes. Makvala straightened up, letting her dress fall. She didn’t look at him. Her hands trembled slightly as she smoothed her hair.
Davit stood. He picked up the medallion. Without a word, he placed it in Makvala’s still-trembling hand. Then he pointed to the entrance of the alcove.
They left without looking back. Out in the slightly brighter main passage, Makvala leaned against a cool stone wall, catching her breath. She pulled out her phone. Her face was flushed, her expression unreadable. She held up the medallion.
Besarion stood beside her, not touching her, his own body thrumming with a strange, angry emptiness. She snapped the picture: their faces, close but not intimate, the brass disc held between them, the shadowed arch of the bazaar behind them.
She sent it.
In the parked sedan, Varek’s phone buzzed a second time. He opened the new image. He studied Besarion’s stony, shell-shocked face, the sheen on Makvala’s skin. He compared the timestamp to the first. A close second. He tapped a quick note into his device: Pair Two: B/M. Completed. Physical compliance achieved. Emotional recalibration in progress.
He allowed himself a small, private smile. The grafts were taking. The bonds, however brutal, were forming. He started the car, the engine a soft purr in the night. Two medallions were accounted for. The hunt for the third was underway somewhere in the dark streets above, its outcome already shaping the next necessary collision.