Seventeen
Caiden
I don’t sleep at all. I lie there in my bunk, staring at the underside of the bed above me, counting the flaking chips of paint on the metal frame, the cracks in the concrete wall, the seconds between each drip in the pipes somewhere in the building.
Anything except counting the number of times I replay that stupid fucking kiss in my head.
One Russian sergeant with soft lips backs me into a fence, I kisses me back, walks away, and apparently that’s enough to completely brick my operating system.
Every time I close my eyes, I’m back there.
The heat of his body crowding mine, as if he’d decided how much space I was allowed to have.
That low, lazy, infuriating tone he used right before my mouth hit his — and Christ, the way he kissed.
I’ve kissed boys before, after too much vodka and not enough sense. Quick, messy, and forgettable. Every time, the point of those kisses was to get to something else. This wasn’t like that.
He kissed me like he already knew what it would take to drive me over the edge — his fingers pulling my hair, the other braced by my head, not quite touching — And he went slow.
I opened for him before I’d even consciously decided to, my traitor brain just kicking the doors wide and leaving a sign out that said ‘Come on in, we’re open, rob us blind’.
My brain keeps trying to assign a word to how it felt and then failing. Hot, maybe. Mean, definitely. Familiar, somehow, like I’d been walking around waiting for that specific combination of heat and teeth without knowing it.
His tongue slid against mine, and my knees nearly went. I actually gripped his jacket. Fisted it. Like some idiot in a film. And then just when my hands started to move where I really wanted them, he pulled back.
I shift restlessly on the thin mattress, trying to adjust myself, because now my dick is hard enough to be a tactical problem.
I press the heel of my hand over my eyes and breathe out slowly.
You cannot be doing this. He’s your NCO on foreign soil; he’s Niko’s brother.
He’s... him. Sharp-tongued, insufferable, and a man.
That bit, on its own, isn’t new. I’ve known what I am for a while.
Bi. Bisexual. Whatever label you shove on it.
It never felt like a big identity moment, more like a background setting.
I like girls. I like guys. I like whoever makes my brain go fuzzy, and my body go ‘oh, hello.’ I also like not getting kicked out of the army or going to prison.
The unspoken rule has always been the same: you can be whatever the fuck you like as long as you pretend not to be and never get caught. So I learned to keep it internal. To clock people and file it away, and never, ever act on it where it mattered.
A hot squaddie in my own unit? Off-limits. A superior? Suicide. A foreign ally? I might as well write ‘I beg for consequences’ on my damn forehead.
I tell myself that’s why I’m freaking out.
Regulations, risk, career. But that’s not the whole truth, and I know it, because underneath the panic there’s this...
burning. Every time my mind drifts, it’s back to his mouth, his voice, the feel of his lips against mine, and the way my whole body lit up when he shoved his thigh in between mine, as if he’d been waiting weeks to do it.
I roll onto my side and punch my pillow flat, then give up and stare at the dim line of light under the door. My heart does that annoying little kick, like it thinks Ari’s going to saunter in at 0200 to see if I’m awake enough to torment.
He wouldn’t, obviously. The bastard’s probably asleep, sprawled on his bunk like a smug cat, dreaming about creative new ways to wind me up. The thought pisses me off enough that it finally edges out some of the panic. I focus on the anger; I know what to do with anger.
This is his fault. He’s the one who’s been poking at me, calculating how to get under my skin. He pushes and pushes until I bite, then acts like I’m the one who started it.
He started this, so he can deal with the consequences.
The plan should be simple — avoid him, keep it professional, pretend nothing happened, and if he tries to pull that shit again, shut him down hard and walk away.
That’s the plan I’m still repeating to myself when grey light starts leaking around the window and the day shift pipes clang to life.
I’ve slept maybe... twenty minutes, thirty?
My head feels stuffed with cotton wool, and my eyes sting.
I drag my uniform on anyway, shove my boots on, and wash my face in the ice-cold water.
My reflection in the cracked mirror looks like shit. Dark smudges under my eyes, hair sticking up in all the wrong directions. “Pull it together, Varrik,” I mutter at myself. “It was one kiss. You’re a fucking mess.”
The mess hall is already buzzing when I get there.
Russian voices are layered with English ones.
It’s the incomprehensible hum of too many tired people pretending coffee is a solution to war crimes committed by the catering department.
I join the queue, grab a tray, letting muscle memory do the work of selecting food while my brain runs three seconds behind.
Don’t look for him.
Don’t fucking look.
I fail immediately. My gaze sweeps the room as if my eyes are on rails. He’s easy to spot even in a crowd, that messy blond hair, that lazy posture that somehow still looks ready for violence, and the way he occupies space like he paid for it in blood and dares anyone to complain.
He’s at a table near the back with a couple of his own men, his chair tipped onto two legs, talking with his hands, a smirk curving on his mouth. He’s not looking at me; he doesn’t even skim the room for me. At least not that I catch. He looks... normal. Same as he always does.
I sit with my own lads, force food down my throat while half-listening to some story about a training accident back home. My eyes betray me again and again, flicking over to him.
He laughs at something one of his NCOs says, stretches in that lazy sprawl that shows just a slice of skin where his T-shirt has ridden up, and my stomach flips traitorously.
For fuck’s sake.
I drop my gaze back to my plate and stab a sausage, trying not to think about anything else that shape or size.
“Caiden?” Bennett says. “You alright? You look knackered.”
“Didn’t sleep well,” I say, it’s technically not a lie. “Don’t worry about it.”
We’ve got joint drills all morning. Comms integration, command handover practice, everyone playing nice in the sandbox so the adults in charge can tick boxes about ‘interoperability.’ Niko’s running half of it, and Ari’s floating somewhere between units like the universe’s least helpful poltergeist.
I throw myself into the work. Comms checks, signal routing, encryption handshakes between their kit and ours. This is something I understand. Systems, logic, inputs and outputs. Radios don’t care who you kissed. Satellites aren’t going to tell on you.
Whenever Niko’s near, I feel fine. He’s easy to be around.
And he asks good questions, then actually listens to the answer, and cracks a joke when the mood gets too stiff.
The crush I had on him feels like something I read in an old diary belonging to a different person. Embarrassing, distant, and harmless.
Then Ari breezes into my periphery, and my whole body goes back to red alert.
He doesn’t do anything, that’s what’s crazy.
No sniping, lingering looks, or sly innuendo with my name on it.
He’s just... there. Talking Russian with another sergeant, correcting a private’s stance, or leaning over Niko’s shoulder to point at a map and making some snide comment that makes his brother shove him half-heartedly.
At one point, he catches me watching, and our eyes meet for a few seconds. Then he glances away, already moving on. That slaps me harder than any taunt he’s given me up to now.
By midday, I’m strung so tight I could probably be used as an antenna.
The lack of reaction is somehow worse than if he’d sauntered up mid-briefing and whispered something filthy in my ear.
He kissed me back, shook my entire internal architecture loose, and now he’s acting like it was just another episode of ‘how much can I fuck with the visiting Brit.’ Which, yeah. It probably was.
The rational part of my brain — the small, exhausted, and apparently on fire part — tries to use that as fuel. It’s good that he’s not making it a thing. That makes it easier to forget. You can move on. Let it go, I tell my brain. The rest of me doesn’t want to move on, one part specifically.
By the time afternoon comes, I’ve made a decision.
Pretending nothing happened isn’t working.
Ignoring him? Impossible. So instead of trying to dodge the fire, I’m going to walk straight into it.
On my own terms. It’s a terrible plan. I know it’s a terrible plan.
But it’s the only one I can look straight at without my stomach doing backflips.
I catch one of the Russian corporals I’ve been working with, Yuri... something, loud laugh, terrible English, good with wiring, as we’re packing away gear.
“Armoury,” I say, tapping his clipboard and then myself.
“Inventory check? British weapons. Before the next joint exercise.” He squints, but the idea of extra bureaucracy seems to satisfy something in him.
He rattles off a stream of Russian that I mostly assume means “yeah, fine, whatever, you love paperwork, go for it,” and waves me toward the building with the weapons stores.
I know Ari’s rotation. I check the board every morning. He’s due to sign out some kit for his own squad training in about half an hour. Which is plenty of time for me to get in there first and work out what the hell I’m going to say.