Thirty-Seven
Caiden
They come back just before lunch. Ari walks in first, and Niko follows a few steps behind him; his eyes red-rimmed and shining, the exhaustion clinging to him.
There’s something different about Ari. It wouldn’t be visible if you didn’t know him, but I see it a mile off. His movements are slower, and his face is tight with restraint.
Our eyes meet across the room; he doesn’t smile, smirk, or do anything that would draw attention.
He tilts his head toward the corridor, and I don’t hesitate.
I mumble something to the person sitting next to me and push away from the table.
Ari peels off from Niko smoothly, as if it were planned, and follows a moment later.
We make it to the stairwell before he grabs me. His hand catches my arm and pulls me back into him, chest to chest, and the door swings shut behind us with a quiet click.
“Hi,” I say stupidly. Ari exhales something that might be a laugh and kisses me. It’s soft and unrushed. His mouth presses to mine like he’s checking that something is still here, and I kiss him back, my hands coming up automatically, fingers sliding up his back, feeling the solidness of him.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “He’s okay,” he says.
“Yeah?” I ask quietly.
Ari nods. “He’s small,” he adds, like that’s the most important detail in the world. “Angry. Loud.”
I smile. “Zakirov, then.”
That gets me a real smile. It’s brief, crooked, and exhausted. “Absolutely.” We stand there for a second. I can feel the pull of time again, but it’s not like before. Ari shifts first, his hands dropping reluctantly from my sides. “I can’t stay,” he says.
“I know.”
“We’ll—” He stops himself. “Later. After lights out.”
I nod. “Motor pool?”
He tilts his head. “As usual.” He kisses me once more, quickly, then steps back, already pulling the mask into place. The soldier, brother and man with responsibilities stacked on his shoulders. Before he opens the door, he glances back at me. “You’d like him,” he says.
“I already do.” That softens something in his expression.
Then he’s gone.
I spend the next few hours doing exactly what I’m supposed to do — paperwork, equipment checks, and a conversation about nothing with a man whose name I immediately forget.
I keep my hands busy because if I don’t, my brain fills in the gaps with things I’m not ready to deal with yet. It’s dangerous territory.
By dinner, the mess is louder than usual. Word has travelled — because news of babies does that. They ripple outward, pulling attention in their wake. I grab a tray and move through the line on autopilot, my eyes scanning the room without really meaning to.
Then I see Niko.
He’s sat near the centre; his arms cradled around something impossibly small, wrapped in a blanket that looks about three sizes too big. His expression is wrecked in the best way: awe, terror, pride, all jumbled together.
People hover, someone claps him on the shoulder, someone else leans in too close, then Niko looks up, catches my eye, and grins.
Oh no. Shit.
Before I can escape, he’s waving me over with his free hand, and I approach slowly, like the thing in his arms might explode if startled. “Come here,” Niko says, already shifting the bundle. “Meet him.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say weakly.
“Too late,” he says, and then there’s a baby in my arms. He’s warmer than I expected.
Heavier, too. His face is scrunched in deep concentration, tiny fists tucked up near his chin like he’s preparing for a fight.
His hair is dark and fine, his skin is pink and new, and when he opens his eyes — something in me caves.
“Oh,” I breathe. Niko watches my face like he’s just won a bet.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That’s the look.”
“He’s...” I trail off, because there’s no word that fits. Small doesn’t do it justice. Perfect feels embarrassing.
“He’s Vladimir,” Niko says. “Vlad, if you’re not trying to be formal.”
The baby makes a small, indignant sound, and I laugh before I can stop myself. “I think he hates me,” I say.
“No,” Niko replies. “That’s just his face.” I adjust my grip instinctively, my thumb brushing the edge of the blanket. Vladimir settles, his eyes fluttering closed again, like he’s decided I’m acceptable.
“Ari’s going to be unbearable.”
Niko snorts. “He already is.” He leans closer, voice dropping. “I like the sound of Uncle Caiden.”
I choke. “Don’t.”
“Oh, absolutely do.” He grins. “You should see your face.” I look down at the baby again; there’s something soft and terrifying blooming behind my ribs.
“The Zakirovs are going to be the death of me,” I whisper to Vladimir.
“Probably,” he agrees. When I hand the baby back, my arms feel oddly empty. I take my seat and eat mechanically, and the noise of the mess fades into the background. Across the room, I watch as Niko rocks his son carefully, murmuring something too quiet for me to hear.
The next ten days don’t pass so much as collapse.
Time stops behaving properly, and mornings bleed into nights.
I blink, and suddenly it’s dark again, Ari’s hand gripping the back of my neck, his mouth finding mine in whatever corner we’ve stolen for ourselves this time.
It isn’t frantic, exactly. It’s focused, as if we’ve both decided, without saying it out loud, that if the world is going to take something from us, we’re going to make it work for it.
The watchtower is Ari’s idea this time. Again, this should have worried me more than it does. He gets me there just after dark, steering me toward the ladder. I’m expecting the usual: cold, metal, a quick kiss if we’re lucky. What I’m not expecting is the sight that greets us at the top.
Blankets. Actual blankets. Laid out carefully against the wall and on the floor. A thermos, a bag with food in it, and mugs.
I stop dead.
I look at him, back at the setup, then at him again. “Ari,” I say slowly, “is this a picnic?” He shrugs, already kneeling to adjust the blankets like this is completely normal behaviour. “You carried all this up here?” I snort.
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
He glances up at me, his expression flat. “Obviously.”
I sit down because if I don’t, I might start laughing and never stop. “Are you trying to seduce me, Sergeant?”
“You are very easy to seduce,” he replies, handing me a mug, calm as ever. Rude, but accurate.
We settle in side by side, backs against the wall, legs stretched out under the blankets like this is something we’re allowed to do. Ari passes me food and watches me eat with that quiet focus he gets when he’s paying attention and pretending he isn’t. “This feels like a date,” I say.
He exhales through his nose. “It’s not.”
“You brought blankets,” I point out.
“It’s cold.”
“You brought food.”
“You get hungry.” Our shoulders brush, then his knee nudges mine under the blanket. I turn my head and find him already looking at me, his eyes flicking briefly to my mouth before locking back onto mine.
I lean in first. Slow. Giving him time to stop me, he never does, though. His hand comes up to the back of my neck, and he holds me there while he kisses me. “We should really stop,” he murmurs.
“You won’t,” I say.
His mouth curves faintly. “Neither will you.” He kisses me again, and my hands slide into his jacket, fingers curling there because I need to hold onto something solid.
The blankets shift. The mugs tip over harmlessly.
The base lights glow below us, distant and irrelevant.
I kiss him again, deeper this time, and the watchtower disappears into dark and quiet certainty.
We get sloppy. Not careless, never that, but hungry.
The kind of hunger that sharpens instead of dulls.
We meet over and over again. In stairwells, in the equipment shed where the lights flicker, and Ari mutters about it being a death trap while kissing me anyway.
In the back of trucks with canvas sides, hands everywhere, laughter muffled when something creaks too loudly.
We don’t always have sex. Sometimes it’s just his shoulder pressed into mine while he smokes behind a building we’re not supposed to be behind. Other times, it’s him fixing my jacket zip with an irritated click of his tongue because it’s twisted.
He even teaches me a Russian word that has nothing to do with sex. Just a stupid, ordinary thing. I repeat it wrong on purpose until he sighs and corrects me again, his finger tapping on my nose in time with the syllables. When I finally get it right, he looks absurdly pleased.
Sometimes it’s his thumb drawing slow, absent lines over my knuckles while we sit on a bench, pretending not to know each other. Once, he passes me a mug in the mess hall without looking and our fingers brush, and it feels more intimate than half the things we’ve done horizontal.
We break the rules we already broke before and invent new ones to ignore.
He drags me into storage rooms under the pretence of ‘inventory.’ He learns exactly how much pressure it takes to make me forget where we are without tipping me over the edge.
We don’t cross that line every time, but when we do, it’s deliberate.
He starts sleeping badly. I can tell because he goes quiet in the early hours. When I ask, he shrugs it off or kisses me like an apology, like a promise. When I push, he shuts me up with his mouth and a look that says not now. So, I let him have not now. We’ve learned when to stop asking.
He gets smug about it. About me. About how easily I come undone for him.
About how I can barely walk straight some mornings and still show up to drills like nothing’s wrong.
“British endurance is a myth,” he murmurs once, watching me lace my boots with an infuriatingly pleased expression.
I flip him off, and he laughs like he’s won something.
Maybe he has.
By day seven, it feels like the walls are closing in.
Every corridor holds a memory. Every shadow feels like it knows our names.
I start counting things without meaning to.
Meals, cigarettes, times he says my name.
I stop checking the schedule because it doesn’t change and knowing exactly when the axe will fall doesn’t make it lighter.
On the ninth night, he looks at me longer. Holds on tighter. Smiles like he’s trying to memorise the shape of my face from the inside out.
I catch him watching me eat, watching me breathe, watching me exist like that alone is something he’s afraid of losing.
When I ask him what he’s thinking, he kisses me instead, and I let him pretend that it’s not almost over.