Twenty-Five #2
My lungs forget their job and seize up in my chest. For a second, I actually forget to breathe. “Arseny,” I warn.
“What?” he asks with his fake innocence. “We agreed no sex on base. We didn’t say no thinking about it. I do a lot of thinking, Caiden.”
I shut my eyes. Big mistake. It just makes the images sharper. His hands on my hips, his mouth, the feel of his breath against my skin as he looks up from being on his knees. “Stop,” I say quietly.
“No,” he says, just as quietly. “I don’t think I will.
” He shifts, just enough that I feel the warmth of his breath right at the curve of my neck.
“Do you know what else I thought about?” he murmurs.
“How you’d sound if I finally got all of you.
Not just your hand, or your mouth. The whole of you.
Spread out underneath me somewhere we can be loud.
Somewhere you don’t have to bite your lip so hard it bleeds. ”
My whole body flushes hot and cold in the same second. My brain trips, and I clutch at rational thought and come up with nothing. “We’re in a corridor,” I snap. “On a military base.”
“I noticed,” he says mildly. “That’s why we’re not doing anything. Yet.”
Yet is a dangerous word. Yet is a cliff edge.
“You can’t say shit like that here,” I snap, finally turning.
“Anyone could walk around that corner. If they hear...” I break off when I see his face.
He’s closer than I realised. Enough that I have to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes properly.
He looks like he’s the picture of restraint.
There’s a faint flush along his cheekbones, like the fight never fully left his blood.
He’s looking at me like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved and is now just enjoying handling.
“No one’s listening,” he says calmly. “They’re all still in the hall, shouting about whose turn it is to get beaten next.” His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then back up. “Your English paranoia is cute, detka, but unnecessary.”
“Don’t call me...”
“Besides,” he cuts in, “you’re not really worried about what they will hear.” His head tilts, studying me. “You’re worried about what you’ll do if I keep talking.”
That... stings. Because he’s not wrong, I am worried. Worried that if he keeps painting pictures like that in my head, I’m going to say yes to something that’s going to get me shot. “We can’t,” I say. It sounds weak even to my own ears. “We said we wouldn’t. On base. It’s too...”
“On base,” he echoes. “Da. That’s why we’re not staying on base.”
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.”
He snorts 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.