It takes my brain a moment to process that. “What?”
“I’m not a patient man, Caiden. You have noticed this, yes?” he says, smiling at me.
“I’ve noticed you’re a menace,” I mutter.
“Same thing,” he says, dismissing that with a flicker of amusement. “I’m also not restrained enough to keep teasing myself with your mouth, hands, and your terrible self-control without... resolution.” He says resolution like it’s a mission objective. “So,” he goes on, a little shrug rolling through his shoulders, “we leave.”
I stare at him. “Leave. As in—”
“As in off-base,” he says. “For the weekend.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m many things, detka,” he says, “but not funny.”
I blink at him. My heart is pounding so hard it’s making my fingertips buzz. “Ari, we can’t just go on a damn holiday,” I say. “This is still a deployment. We can’t...”
“Officially,” he says, “we are enhancing inter-unit cohesion.” His mouth curves. “Unofficially, I’m going to find out exactly how you sound when I don’t have to worry about who hears you.”
He steps in that last tiny bit, just enough that his shoulder almost brushes mine, our arms almost touching through the fabric of our uniforms. From a distance, we probably look like two men standing close, talking quietly. Nothing more. Up close, it feels like the world’s shifted ten degrees on its axis.
“I’ve already cleared it with my CO,” he says. “Two days. Off-base liaison. There’s some paperwork with many acronyms that says we’re doing something strategic. Your Sergeant will get a message in the morning. Everything clean and tidy.” He leans in the tiniest bit more. “So. Pack a bag.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
“Yes,” he agrees easily. “Pack a bag anyway.”
“I can’t just—”
“You can,” he interrupts softly. “You can do many things, Caiden. You just don’t let yourself.” His gaze softens, and that’s somehow worse than the teasing. “You follow the rules until they bleed. You hold yourself together so tight you squeak when you walk. You think wanting things makes you weak.”
“I don’t —”
“You do,” he says. “And you’re wrong.”
My mouth feels dry. “What if someone finds out?” I ask. My biggest fear dragged up between us like a shield. “What if this goes sideways? What if—” I can’t even find the right words for the what if. Court-martial? Discharge? Worse?
“Niko knows, more or less,” he says, with a little shrug that shouldn’t make my head spin like it does. “He doesn’t like it. He likes you. It’s... complicated.” His eyes don’t leave my face. “But he won’t put a bullet in you for touching me. I’ve made that very clear.”
I don’t quite know what to do with that. “He’s your brother, he shouldn’t have to—”
“Debate whether or not it’s acceptable to let someone fuck me?” Ari supplies dryly. “No. But the world is broken, detka. We do what we can inside the cracks.”
My face goes hot at his bluntness. “You could say ‘sleep with’ like a normal person.”
Hesnorts softly. “You are very cute when you pretend ‘fuck me’ is the worst thing you’ve heard this month,” he says. “You’re the one who dragged me into that watchtower last week like you were drowning.” I look away, grinding my teeth together. “What was it you said? Ah, ‘please Arseny, make me come Arseny, oh fuck right there Arseny.’”
“That was a mistake,” I lie.
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh. “Da,” he says. “A very thorough mistake. One you have repeated several times since, in slightly different locations.”
Images flash behind my eyes. Storage rooms. Dark corners. His back hitting a wall. My teeth biting his chest. His hand over my mouth to stifle the sounds I couldn’t hold in.
“Don’t,” I say quietly. “Don’t make this a joke.”
“I’m not,” he says simply. “I’m telling you what’s already happening. You think leaving it like this is safer? That if we keep doing it in pieces, in closets and corridors and shared showers, that somehow it doesn’t count? That the risk is less?” I don’t answer, because that’s exactly what I’ve been telling myself. “We’re already in it, Caiden,” he says softly. “You are already in it. Your hands on me, my mouth on you, your eyes on me every time you think I don’t see.” He pauses. “The only difference between this and what I’m asking is whether we keep pretending we are just accidents.”
My chest does that painful, too-full thing it does when I’m trying very hard not to feel something and failing. “And what exactly are we if it’s not an accident?” I ask. It comes out more brittle than I mean it to.
