SIX
ARSENY
It’s just after midnight for him. I don’t need to check the time again. I’ve already worked it out in my head twice. The phone sits on the desk of the empty barracks room — that I may or may not have “borrowed” the key to — like it’s nothing. It has no history, no name attached, no questions asked.
In short, completely untraceable.
He said he’d be in comms most evenings now. Radios needing babysitting after midnight, apparently. He wrote it like a throwaway detail, like it means nothing.
I sit back in the chair and let the room settle around me. It’s 0300, pitch black, and the base is practically dead.
Email was fine for a while, until I read the last one. There are things you can shape in writing. Things you can avoid. Tone can be rearranged. Silence can be strategic. But I read his last message twice, and what hides in the context isn’t something I want left open to interpretation.
I reach for the phone, then I dial the number I stole from the admin office. The line connects with a soft click, then the low, familiar wash of static.
First, there’s silence, then the voice I recognise. “Comms.”
“Privet, detka.”
“Ari? What are you playing at?”
“I wanted to hear your voice,” I say, leaning back in the chair. I can almost picture his mouth; he’s deciding whether to make a joke or pretend to tell me off.
“Oh?” he asks. “Any reason in particular?”
“Maybe.” There’s a quiet exhale. He knows me too well for that to pass without a comment.
“That’s not ominous at all,” he says. “How did you get a phone?”
“Don’t worry about that. I have it handled.”
“I should hang up,” he says. “You know that, right?”
“You won’t.” I imagine him turning slightly away from the desk, lowering his voice without even thinking. “I called because we need to talk properly.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” His voice shifts immediately. I can picture the expression on his face and the careful stillness he gets when he thinks something’s about to go wrong.
“Not like that,” I say quickly.
“Like what then?”
“About what you said. About things being temporary.”
Temporary.
That word doesn’t belong here. Especially not between us. “Am I about to be dumped?” he jokes.
“Be serious for a second. What did you mean by temporary?” I ask; the question has been eating away at me since I read his email.
There’s a pause. “I don't know, I guess I was just thinking out loud. You’re across the world, I was thinking about being here, and the future.”
“Do you want there to be a future, with us I mean?”
“We have the direct Ari today, I see.”
“You’re deflecting. Answer the question.”
“Yes, I do.”
The way he says it makes me stop because there’s no hesitation. “Okay then.”
“Okay then, just like that?”
“No, I mean, I want you to really consider what that means. If we do this properly, then we’re all in.” I don’t say the rest of it. All in means consequences. It means no half measures. It means this becomes something we build around.
“That’s what I want. Don’t you?” His voice is steady. There’s no teasing in his tone, just honesty.
“More than anything. But I need you to be sure.” Because if he isn’t, I’m not sure I’ll survive it. But I don’t admit that out loud.
“And if I’m sure?”
“Then we make a plan. But take some time first. I want you to be really sure.”
“Okay, I can do that. I missed your voice,” he says. “You menace.”
I don’t answer it the way he expects. “How much?” The silence that follows isn’t empty anymore.
It’s charged.
He understands the question immediately, and I hear him swallow. “Oh, so that’s what you really want?”
I shift forward in the chair, smirking. “It wasn’t. But now... maybe. Maybe now I’m sitting here, thinking about that filthy mouth of yours. How good it feels wrapped around me.”
“Arseny—”
“Maybe I’m thinking about how you choke with tears in your eyes, but you never fucking stop.” My breath hitches as I paint the picture for him; my grip tightens around my length through my uniform. “And now I’m hard as fuck, and it’s your fault.”
A choked sound comes through the line. “Fuck’s sake, Ari—” His voice cracks. “You can’t do this shit to me here.” My mouth waters just thinking about how hard he is, fighting the urge to touch himself.
“Take it out,” I order, my voice dropping into that dark, commanding register that makes his breathing change.
“Stroke yourself for me. Slow. Let me hear it.” I pull my own cock free, spreading the slickness of my pre-cum down my shaft as I listen to the telltale sounds of him do as he’s told, imagining his palm dragging up his length.
“Mmph, like this?” Caiden’s voice is strained, breathless. “Fuck, I’m already leaking for you.”
“Good boy,” I growl, my own hand moving in lazy, deliberate strokes.
“Now imagine it’s my hand on you. I’ve got you pinned down, my knees forcing your thighs apart, my fingers digging into your wrists, hard.
” I can see it — the way his muscles tense under my grip, the way his cock jerks when I bite down on his neck.
“I’ll spit on your hole first, just to watch you whimper.
Then push in with my thumb, nice and slow, until you’re begging me for more. ”
Caiden groans; the sound is raw and needy. “Fuck— yes—" His breathing is ragged now. His strokes are faster, wetter. I can hear the slick sounds, and it makes my own hand speed up.
“You’d take it, wouldn’t you?” I taunt. “Taking my fingers, then my cock, even though you know it’ll hurt.
You’d still spread your legs wider, beg me to fuck you rough.
” I twist my wrist. My pre-cum drips down my shaft, my stomach clenches with the need to bury myself inside him.
“Tell me how bad you want it. Tell me how you’d whine when I finally give it to you. ”
“I— I’d take it,” he gasps, his voice breaking. “Fuck, Ari, I’d take all of it. Split me open, I don’t care, just— please—”
A dark, possessive thrill shoots through me at the sound of him begging. “Please, what?” I demand, my strokes turn punishing. My cock is throbbing in my grip. “Use your words, Caiden. Tell me exactly what you want me to do to you.”
There’s a pause, then a shuddering breath. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t walk,” he whispers, his voice rough with desire. “I want you to ruin me. Bite me, mark me. And when you’re done, I want you to come so deep inside me I can taste you for days.”
“Fuck, detka.” My hand stutters on my cock; my vision blurs for a second at the filthy, perfect image he just painted. “You’d let me fill you up until you’re dripping with me and my teeth marks all over you?”
“Yes— fuck yes.” His breaths are coming in short, desperate gasps now. I can hear the wet slap of his palm. “I’d take it all. Every. Fucking. Drop. Oh God—”
That’s it. That’s the fucking end of me.
“Caiden, blyat!” His name tears out of me.
My spine locks, my cock kicks violently in my grip as I come with a guttural groan.
Ropes of my release paint my hand, my fingers still stroking through the mess as my orgasm wrings me dry.
His own groan echoes through the phone, and I know he’s right there with me; the sound of it is almost enough to make me hard again.
Then he lets out a shaky laugh. “You’re a fucking monster,” he mutters. “No one has ever made me come that hard from just words.”
“That’s because no one else knows you like I do,” I tease, my voice still rough with post-orgasm gravel. “No one else knows exactly how to make you beg.”
He exhales sharply, the sound almost a whimper. “Fuck you.”
“Oh, detka, you wish.”
I get the excuse to leave base just after lunch the next day, which is the closest thing to divine intervention I’m likely to get in Murmansk.
Some paperwork needs to be dropped off across town, and because nobody else wants to drive the rattling death trap we call a pool car, I take the keys before anyone can change their mind.
The heating in the thing works when it feels patriotic, the passenger door sticks, and there is a noise coming from somewhere under the bonnet that sounds expensive, but it moves, and that’s enough.
I tell myself I’m going because Niko has been riding my nerves for two weeks straight, and I want answers I can’t get out of him. I also tell myself I am not interfering, I’m just checking in, being a decent brother, using an errand that already exists.
That part is less convincing.
The roads are filthy with old snow and grey slush.
Murmansk always looks half-tired this time of year.
The buildings are tired, the sky is tired, the men shovelling outside shopfronts look tired, and the sea off in the distance has that hard steel colour that makes you think getting in it would count as a suicide attempt.
I drive with one hand on the wheel and the other drumming against my thigh, going over every conversation I have had with Niko this past month and getting more irritated the more I think about them.
He says Cassie is struggling, she’s tired, the baby has been difficult, she’s had a bad day, then a bad week, then a bad patch, each explanation laid down so casually you would think we were talking about something mechanical.
What kind of struggling?
What kind of tired?
What kind of bad?
Niko has never been good at asking for help, even when it matters. He will ask to borrow money, ask to borrow a jacket, ask you to lie to a sergeant for him while he runs off for a cigarette, but ask for help when he’s actually frightened?
No. He would rather chew his own arm off.
Which is exactly why I’m driving across town in a car that sounds haunted.
Cassie and the baby are still in the same flat. It’s a concrete block on a street that manages to look bleak even by local standards. I park badly — because the space is half ice and half wishful thinking — grab my jacket, and head up the stairwell.
By the time I reach the right floor, I’m already annoyed.
Not at Cassie or Niko, at the whole stupid situation.
I knock once and wait.
Nothing.