There. Arseny Zakirov, picture of composure. Who will absolutely not crumble the second he is alone.
I take one last look around the admin room to make sure it doesn’t scream“we just committed multiple offences in here,”then step out into the corridor. The fluorescent hallway lighting feels suddenly too bright. It feels like every soldier who walks past me might as well have a spotlight in their pupils. I tell myself no one knows because no one could possibly know.
“They can smell sex,”a paranoid little voice whispers. It’s in the air. On your skin. You’re marked. I tell my brain to shutup and start walking. A pair of privates nod at me as they pass. “Sergeant,” one says, and I grunt back.
I make it all the way back to the barracks without exploding. Sadly, they aren’t empty. Ivanov is sprawled on his bunk, boots still on, flipping through a dog-eared magazine.
He glances up as I come in. “You look happy,” he says suspiciously. “Who did you yell at?” See— this is why I keep him. He has a very particular picture of me, and I like to maintain it.
“No one important,” I say. “Where’s Niko?”
“Meeting,” Ivanov says. “Paperwork. Talks. Who knows. He said if you break anything while he’s gone, he will make you clean the latrines with a toothbrush.”
“His or mine?” I ask.
“Yours,” he says. “Obviously.”
“Rude,” I mutter, dropping onto my own bunk. Ivanov eyes me for another moment, as if deciding whether to poke. Then he apparently remembers that he values his continued existence and goes back to his magazine.
I stay exactly ten minutes. Long enough not to look like I’m running, short enough that I don’t start climbing out of my own body. Then I stand up again. “Going out,” I announce.
Ivanov doesn’t even look up. “Try not to start a war.”
“No promises,” I say lightly, and slip back out.
The roof is always my first choice when I’m in danger of feeling... feelings. It’s cold enough up there that anything soft freezes solid and falls off, in theory. In practice, I get up there, light a cigarette with fingers that aren’t entirely steady, and the first image that hits me as I exhale is Caiden again.
On his knees just now, obedient and furious and wanting like I’ve never seen him. I take a hard drag and blow smoke at the indifferent stars. “Fuck,” I say again.
Okay. Let’s think. On the surface, everything is glorious. I got exactly what I wanted. More, even. I’d told myself I’d hold the line, no sex on base, keep it to kisses and innuendo until we had somewhere we could breathe. Then I dragged him into a room, his mouth on mine like he wanted to climb inside my skin, and my noble intentions evaporated like cheap vodka.
How the fuck am I supposed to not want more after that? I stub the cigarette out on the concrete, then light another immediately. My lungs protest and I ignore them.
Underneath the smug — and there is a lot of smug, I’m not a saint — there’s something sour curling in my stomach. If anyone had heard—
I drag smoke into my lungs until they sting. “Idiot. Complete, fucking, glorious idiot.” The worst part is that I would do it again. If he looked at me the way he had down there, I would go on my knees for him this time without thinking twice.
I flop down onto the low parapet, one boot planted on the concrete, the other swinging out over the drop. My hands are still shaking mildly from leftover adrenaline, and my brain is having the time of its life. It plays back every twitch, every sound, every breathless curse. It even adds commentary.“Look at him, on his knees for you. Told you he’d come back. Look how good he is when he stops fighting himself. Look how much more you could take.”
The rest of me is trying, and mostly failing, to be an adult about it. To say things like “we have to be careful,”and “this can’t happen again on base.”Just survive, Arseny, fuck. Wanting someone like this is not surviving. It’s laying your own throat over the wire. And yet. He makes me feel... alive.
That’s the only word for it.
I feel awake when we’re fighting. I feel electric when he looks at me like he’s furious and fascinated in the same breath. I feel, which is the problem and the point.
I take another drag, tap ash off the end, and finally let the smug rise properly to the surface, because if I don’t, I’m going to drown in my own anxiety. I grin into the dark. “Fuck,” I say again, but this time it sounds almost delighted.
And I am. I’ve been pulling him in this direction from the first briefing, from the first time I caught him staring at Niko and decided he was too interesting to ignore. Every insult, shove, sparring match, taunt in the shower— all of it was pressure. And finally, he cracked.
So what now?
Someday soon, we’re getting off this base — even if I have to steal a jeep and drive us into the woods. Because I’m not doing this dance with bullets at our backs forever.
I hop down off the parapet, stamp life back into my toes, and head back toward the stairs. By the time I reach my bunk again, the plan has settled in my bones like a new rhythm.
Twenty-Five
Caiden
