As we get out, he pauses, his hand still on the door.“You know,” he adds, not looking at me, “he won’t forget you.”
“You don’t know that,” I scoff.
Niko finally meets my eyes. “I do.” We shut the car doors, and the cold bites immediately.
I square my shoulders, pull the mask back into place, and follow him toward the lights like nothing’s wrong.
I’m fine.
Completely and utterly, fine.
Thirty-Three
Caiden
Base air has a certain... taste. It’s hard to explain it until you’ve experienced it. If I had to describe it with a gun held to my head, I would say it tastes sour. Bitter maybe. A mix of concrete dust, diesel, and a faint undercurrent of disinfectant. By the time the gates had swallowed us again, it was like the weekend had never happened — as if the cabin was a hallucination I had because I hit my head too hard on the way in.
That was yesterday.
Today, we snap back into it on instinct. Stand in line, eyes forward, and names that are ranks again. You can practically hear the place click into place around us, every hinge, rule and habit settling like it’s been waiting for us to stop pretending we’re human instead of just a number.
Ari hasn’t looked at me properly all day.
He’s there, obviously, he’s always there. Call it paranoia, or some fucked up sixth sense. But you feel him in the air, almost like it shifts around him.
He has that expression he uses when he wants to be made of stone — Sergeant Zakirov. No cabin, snow, or hands in my hair, and lips on mine like he was trying to climb inside me via my mouth. It should be easier when he does that. It should even be relief. Instead, it feels like my insides have been shoved into a blender and are being blitzed as we speak.
I tell myself it’s fine, which isn’t even a lie at first. It’s sensible and expected. We were getting stupid. A weekend off base was supposed to take the edge off, not turn us into idiotswho start thinking the word ‘us’ has meaning outside a room with a locked door.
So, yes. He’s colder. Fine. He’s doing what he should.
I can do that too.
I’m very good at doing what I should.
The first couple of days back, I keep busy to the point of calling it self-harm. Paperwork, equipment checks, a radio issue that isn’t actually an issue, but gives me an excuse to be in the comms room until my eyes ache. My unit does the usual post-trip banter, half of them acting like the weekend was a pub crawl and not an illegal sex retreat in a Russian cabin that may or may not be registered with anyone.
I laugh at the right bits, make the right jokes, and I don’t mention frostbite or the fact that everything from the waist down feels like I got run over multiple times.
I don’t look for him. Fuck. I absolutely look for him. I can’t even lie to myself.
He’s in my peripheral vision all day — a flash of blond hair near the admin building, a sharp voice snapping out orders somewhere behind me. Every time I catch a glimpse, my body does the same humiliating thing.
I’m all hot, flustered and... irritated. Ridiculous, I’m a grown man. I’ve survived actual explosions and yet here I am.
The next few days after that, I notice the shift properly, but not in a dramatic ‘he’s avoiding me at all costs’ way. He’s in the mess hall when I walk in, standing by the far wall, speaking to someone with his arms folded. He looks up as the door opens, his eyes flick over the room, and they land on me for a second.
Then they move on.
The look isn’t hostile; it isn’t even cold. It’s blank. Like I’m a piece of furniture, a rank, or nothing but a draft in the room.
I almost laugh, not because it’s funny, but because it’s so on brand it’s absurd. Of course, that’s what he does. Put the mask back, pretend nothing happened, pretend he didn’t have me against the wall in his shower less than a week ago and fucking me hard enough that it felt like he was trying to knock the thoughts out of my skull.
I grab a tray, queue, and make small talk with another Yuri whose opinions on eggs could fill a novel. My brain nods in the right places while another part of me keeps replaying that split-second glance like it contained a secret message.
It didn’t, it was nothing, obviously. And if I keep telling myself that, eventually, it might start to sound convincing.
By the end of the week, the cabin has stopped feeling like a weekend and started feeling like a dare. Like we got away with something, and the base is now watching to see if we’ll slip. That paranoia is probably mine. It’s not like anyone’s following me around with a clipboard. No one’s leaning in and whispering, ‘Hello, Lance Corporal Varrik, did you have a nice time getting railed?’ But my body is permanently on high alert anyway. Add Ari to the equation, and suddenly every corridor feels like it has eyes.
