One #3
“Now we’re talking,” Mason says, immediately lighting up. Hall gives him a look but doesn’t comment; he’s probably dying for one too.
Niko doesn’t smoke. He stands with his hands in his pockets, letting the wind tug at his jacket. There’s a small scar along his jaw I hadn’t noticed before. It’s pale and catches the light when he turns his head.
“How many Brits have you had through here?” I ask, trying to distract myself from staring.
“You are the first,” Niko replies. “We’ve worked with NATO officers in conferences and training. But not like this. Not a full group.” He shrugs. “You are the pilot programme.”
“Christ. No pressure then,” Hall says while wincing.
Niko’s mouth twitches. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We will tell them you’re very brave. Very strong. Very polite.”
“Fuck me, he’s funny,” Mason says, letting out a snort of smoke.
I find myself smiling. It’s subtle, this thing he does — the humour threaded under the formality — and it makes the whole place feel less like enemy territory and more like some weird extended training camp where half the lads happen to speak another language.
“You’re stuck with us for how long?” I ask.
“Three months,” Niko replies. “Maybe four, if the colonels enjoy paperwork too much.”
Three months doesn’t sound like much, said out loud, but in soldier time, three months is a lifetime.
Long enough for grudges, friendships, or to find out whether you like the bloke they’ve paired you with...
or if you’ll be trying to drown him by the end.
“Enough time to see what you can do,” Niko adds, almost as an afterthought.
We head back as the sky darkens and the base settles into a different rhythm.
Lights flick on one by one as the sounds change from shouting to muted conversation.
When Niko leaves us back in the accommodation block, Hall releases us with a few last instructions.
“Don’t wander off. Don’t drink anything offered by a bloke who won’t taste it first. Don’t start fights.
Don’t sleep with anyone in uniform, and that includes each other, before anyone gets ideas. ”
His gaze flicks theatrically over us, then lands on me, and heat prickles at the back of my neck. “Why are you looking at me, Sarge?” I say lightly.
“Because you’re trouble, Varrik,” he replies. “Have been since you walked into my platoon.” He leaves before I can decide if that was an insult or not.
The room slowly fills with low chatter as everyone claims their bunks properly. Boots are kicked off, and the ritual of settling in begins. The photos come out, followed by tins of contraband biscuits, then someone’s hidden Walkman.
I drop onto my mattress and stare up at the underside of the bunk above. The springs sag interestingly. If the bloke above me moves too much, I might end up with the entire thing in my face. “Oi.” Mason’s leg thumps my foot. “What do you think of them, then? Our brave comrades.”
“They seem alright,” I say. “Didn’t arrest you on sight. That’s a good start.”
“Niko’s alright,” Collins says from across the room. “A bit serious, but alright.”
“Serious is good,” Bennett adds. “You want the bloke leading you round an unfamiliar base to have a brain.”
“What about you, Varrik?” Mason asks, dropping onto the bunk opposite. “You seem to have made friends already.” He mimics my earlier tone. “‘Just Caiden.’ That’s what you said to him? You’re shameless, kissing arse already.”
“Shut up,” I mumble. I’m too tired for Mason’s mouth right now.
Too tired to unpack the weird flicker of awareness when Niko said three months.
I’m definitely too tired to examine why I remember the exact angle of that scar on his jaw, or do anything more than acknowledge that he made an impression.
The thing about being not completely straight, in this job, is that you get very, very good at hiding things away.
You notice a bloke — his hands, his mouth, the way he laughs and the way he moves — and you let yourself look for one second before you lock it all in a box in the back of your skull and sit on the lid.
You call it professional respect, admiration even, and you laugh at the same jokes as everyone else, making sure you don’t let anything show.
Especially not in a foreign barracks, where it’s literally a death sentence.
“I reckon he’ll be a bastard on the assault course,” Mason continues. “He’s got that look.”
“What look?” Collins asks.
“The ‘I’m going to make you run until you throw up’ look,” Mason says solemnly.
To be fair, he’s not wrong.
“Shut up and sleep,” Bennett says. “Before Sarge comes back and finds us still talking. He’ll cry, then he’ll make us all pay.”
The lights go out, and I close my eyes.
Murmansk, three to four months, snow coming, and a Russian Senior Sergeant called Niko, who jokes about cigarettes, broken ankles, and looks at us like we’re a puzzle he’s mostly solved but not quite.
I’m here to work, train, and not fuck anything up.
That’s the plan.
I fall asleep before I can think too hard about how often my mind drifted back to the way he said my name.