Thirty-Two
Arseny
The road back to base is a ribbon of grey cutting through white.
The snow is piled high on either side, trees stripped bare, sky low and colourless, like it’s pressing down on the world.
I drive with one hand on the wheel, the other resting uselessly on Caiden’s thigh.
The cabin disappears behind us quicker than I expected it to.
Caiden is in the passenger seat, his boots kicked off, jacket unzipped, looking far too relaxed for someone who’s about to be put back into the grinder of reality. He’s leaned back with his head resting against the window, watching the trees slide past like he’s memorising them.
He’s been silent since we left.
The radio crackles, switches stations, then lands on something loud and familiar. I don’t change it. The song fills the silence in the car while Caiden taps his fingers against his knee in time with it, like he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.
This is the part I hate. I’m good at leaving, I was built for it.
I know how to compartmentalise, how to shut doors, and step back into who the world expects me to be.
What I hate is this limbo. The space between then and now.
The stretch of road where my body still remembers things and my brain is already trying to erase them.
I can still feel him. The way he fit against me in bed this morning, hear the way he laughed into my shoulder like nothing in the world was wrong. But time was already sharpening its knives.
The music surges, something about time slipping, pressure building, and I swallow, hard, focusing on the mechanics of driving.
I focus on anything that isn’t the fact that every mile we put between ourselves and that cabin is one less I get with him untouched by consequence.
“You always drive like you’re angry at the road,” Caiden says suddenly.
I glance at him. He’s smiling faintly, his eyes half-lidded, relaxed in a way that makes something flip low in my gut. “I am,” I reply. “It’s inefficient.”
He snorts. “You know most people just... drive.”
“I’m not most people.”
“That much is painfully obvious.”
I exhale through my nose and turn the music down a notch, and the rest of the drive passes in silence. The base looms in the distance eventually, concrete, wire, and routine waiting for both of us. My shoulders tighten instinctively, my body slipping back into the familiar.
The cabin feels unreal now, like something that happened to someone else. I remove my hand from his thigh, and he straightens in his seat, rolls his shoulders, and pulls his boots back on. Watching him do it feels wrong, like I’m losing something.
I hate it.
I pull into the lot and cut the engine, and the song dies mid-note, leaving the air too still. “This was good,” Caiden says quietly.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding in agreement. Saying anything else doesn’t feel safe in this moment.
He opens the door, pauses, then looks back at me. “Hey.” I meet his eyes. “I’m glad we did it,” he says softly.
Something in me flares up, and I force it back down.
“Get out of the car, Varrik,” I say dryly.
“Or next time I’ll run you over.” He laughs, and for a second, I almost reach for him.
Instead, I watch him walk away, shoulders squared, back straight, already shifting into the version of himself the world understands.
I sit there until he’s gone inside. Then I turn the radio back on — loud enough to drown out the thoughts I don’t want to hear — and drive the last few metres to my own parking spot as if nothing happened. Like I didn’t just leave part of myself at the cabin, and time isn’t running out.
I’m still sitting in the driver’s seat a long time after Caiden disappears back toward the mess hall.
Snow ticks softly against the windshield, melting in slow, uneven trails.
I light another cigarette even though I just finished one.
That’s when the passenger door opens, cold rushing in, as Niko slides into the seat and pulls the door shut behind him.
He doesn’t say anything at first. He turns off the radio and fishes his own cigarette out, tapping it against the dashboard. “You know,” Niko says eventually, staring out the windshield, “from a distance this looks very dramatic.”
I exhale smoke through my nose. “Go away.”
“Can’t,” he says, flicking ash out the cracked window. “You’re on base. That makes you, my problem now.” I snort, and there’s another stretch of silence. It would make most people nervous; it doesn’t faze me; however, I wish he’d spit out whatever he came to say.
“He’s gone?” he asks, and I nod along. Niko hums. “You didn’t follow him in?”
“I’m not a dog,” I say, the words coming out sharp and defensive. I keep my eyes on the windshield, on the snow piling up in uneven drifts like it’s trying to erase the world one layer at a time.
“No,” Niko says easily. “You’re worse.” I don’t look at him. If I do, he’ll see what I’m fighting in my head. So, I focus on the white blur beyond the glass and breathe out smoke like it might carry the thought away with it.
“He leaves soon,” I say, as if it’s just a statement of fact, like I’m reading off a timetable. That’s the trick, say it flat enough, and maybe it won’t hurt.
Niko doesn’t answer right away. He lets the words sit between us. “Yeah,” he says finally. “That was always going to happen.”
“That’s the problem with things that are always going to happen,” I mutter. “You still feel them.” Shit, I didn’t mean to say that. My mouth keeps betraying me today.
Niko turns his head and studies me openly now. “You’re thinking about doing something stupid?”
“No, I’m thinking about doing nothing.” That earns a grimace.
I drag a hand down my face, scrub at my mouth like I can wipe the thoughts away if I try hard enough.
My jaw aches from how tight I’ve been holding it the whole drive back.
“I don’t want to be the kind of man who needs this,” I say.
“Or him. Or—” I cut myself off hard, because the sentence is already going somewhere I refuse to follow. “I don’t know how to un-feel it.”
“You know what I think?”
“No,” I say. “But you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“I think you’re angry because this snuck up on you. You didn’t choose it. It happened to you.”
My fingers curl tighter around the steering wheel, and the leather creaks under the pressure. “I don’t let things happen to me,” I mutter. “He looks at me like I’m...” I don’t finish the thought.
Niko turns fully toward me now. “Dangerous?” he says mildly.
“He sees past the bullshit, past the teeth and the noise. I don’t know how to make him stop.”
Niko doesn’t say you don’t want him to. He doesn’t need to; I’m already thinking it. “You don’t have to decide anything tonight,” he says instead. “Or tomorrow, or even when he leaves.”
“That’s not how it works.” I say shaking my head.
“No,” Niko agrees. “But it’s how you survive.”
I stub out my cigarette and immediately light another. I don’t look at him because I don’t trust my face. “I’m going to pretend I’m fine. I’m going to be normal and do my job.”
Niko nods. “You always do.”
“And then,” I add, quieter now, “I’m going to stay on this empty fucking base, and it’s going to be quiet.” Niko winces a little. “If I let myself feel it, it’s going to ruin me.”
He studies me for a long moment, then speaks gently.
“Only if you pretend it didn’t matter.” I don’t answer.
I can’t. My mouth won’t cooperate anymore.
After a moment, Niko opens the door, and the cold air rushes in.
“Come on,” he says. “Before someone wonders why you’re brooding like a rejected movie character. ”
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.