THIRTY-ONE #2
When he finally pulls back, his thumb drags over my lower lip. “Don’t shut me out again,” he murmurs, his voice still rough but stripped of the earlier edge.
I don’t make promises I can’t keep. “I won’t,” I say, meaning it as completely as I can.
We put ourselves back together in silence, the same motions as always, only my legs are less steady than I’d like, and Ari’s mouth — because he’s still a smug prick — keeps threatening to turn into a grin.
We leave separately, back into the base’s ordinary rhythm as if nothing’s happened except I’ve got his teeth marks on my shoulder, and his cum still cooling inside me.
When I’m alone again, the anger doesn’t come roaring back the way I expect. It’s still there, obviously, but it’s calmed into something usable instead of something corrosive.
What unsettles me the most is how close I was to letting it fester inside me until it became something uglier than anger.
It wasn’t actually directed at Ari, Mason, Niko, or even me.
It’s all of it. The constant business of being watched and pretending it doesn’t matter.
The pressure of caring and having nowhere respectable to put it.
The fear is that if I keep swallowing everything, one day it’ll come back up in a way I can’t pull back.
Ari hasn’t fixed any of that, but he hasn’t let me lie to myself either. He gives me the choice, he always does, even when he’s being an unbearable bastard about it, even when he’s pushing so hard I can feel the shape of his fingerprints long after the fact.
I choose, that’s what matters to me.
I smooth my uniform back into place, breathe until my pulse drops, and sit with the simple truth underneath all of it. I’m not angry because I care too much. I’m angry because I’m scared of losing people, and I don’t know how to stop it.
But next time I won’t wait until it turns into something this volatile. And even if I did, I know exactly who’ll drag it out of me anyway.
The anger is still here for most of the next day, but it feels quieter now, almost packed down. It hasn’t gone anywhere overnight, but it’s stopped leaking out through my mouth, which is probably a mercy for everyone involved.
I get through most of my day on autopilot, doing the bare minimum required of me, trying my hardest not to be a problem, and not looking for Ari because, honestly, I feel bad.
That lasts until the early evening, at which point I decide I'm being ridiculous and need to speak to him properly.
I know where he’ll be.
So I go to the corridor where his office is, get halfway down, and turn back. I chicken out, rush back to the mess hall, and have a drink. Then I go back to the corridor and talk myself out of going to his office at least three times.
At this point, I'm irritated with myself.
I wait long enough that it won’t look like I’ve been circling him all evening, then head directly for his office and knock once before stepping inside without waiting for an answer.
He looks up from his desk straight away. “Caiden,” he says, voice neutral.
I close the door behind me and lean back against it, arms folded, because I still don’t quite trust my hands. “I owe you an apology.”
One of his brows lifts very slightly. “You don’t.”
“I do.” He watches me for a second. That’s always been the thing with Ari.
He doesn’t fill the silence. He lets it sit there until you either say what you mean or give up on trying.
So, I say what I came to say. “I’m sorry for shutting you out,” I tell him.
“For acting like you were the enemy because I didn’t know where else to put what I was feeling, and for making you carry more because I was angry and didn’t fancy looking too closely at what I was actually angry about.
” I’m rambling, I know I am, but he doesn’t say anything yet, which is fair.
“I knew you were right,” I go on. “That was half the problem. Well... maybe more than half. If you’d just been being a dick for the sake of it, I could’ve had an argument with you and been done.
But you were right, and I knew you were right, and I still wanted to fight you over it because understanding doesn’t make it hurt less. ”
Ari sets his pen down carefully. “You had a good reason to be angry,” he says at last.
“But that doesn’t make how I acted fair.” I push off the door and take a couple of steps into the room. “You weren’t trying to control me. You were trying to keep things from getting worse. You were protecting Niko. The baby. Me. All of it. And I made you stand there and take my temper anyway.”
“I can take your temper, detka,” he grins.
“I know you can,” I say. “That isn’t the point.”
For a second, he looks at me, probably waiting for me to finish. Then he says, very evenly, “I don’t need you to agree with every decision I make.”
I nod once. “I know, I—”
“What I do need,” he says, cutting me off gently, “is for you not to disappear on me when you don’t like one of them.”
There it is, the disappointment in his tone.
I look down for a second; it stings, but I make myself look back at him.
“I know. When I disappear like that, I’m not protecting anything.
I’m just making you deal with it alone while I sulk somewhere else.
” Ari’s mouth twitches at ‘sulk.’ Good. If I can make him nearly smile, then he can’t be too mad at me.
“I won’t do that to you again,” I say. “I’m not promising I’ll like every call you make, because I won’t, and you’d know I’d be lying if I said otherwise.
But I won’t vanish on you because I’m angry. ”
Ari leans back in his chair slightly, eyes never leaving mine. “Do you mean that?”
“I do.”
He nods, then stands, moving around the desk and sitting on the edge opposite me. “Come here.” I take the last few steps between us, stepping between his spread legs. Then I lean down and kiss him. He kisses me back, his hand automatically coming up to tangle in my hair.
I let my forehead rest against his when we part, because, for all my good intentions, I’m still more tired than I’d care to admit. “We’re all right,” he says.
“I know, but you shouldn’t have had to drag that out of me.”
“No,” Ari says. “But I would rather drag it out of you than see you like that.”
“Christ, you’re romantic.” I laugh quietly.
His mouth lifts very slightly. “Shut up.”
“Make me,” I say automatically, making his hand tighten once at the back of my neck in warning, which is an excellent way of ensuring I grin instead of behaving. When he kisses me again, it’s brief and soft enough to melt my insides.
“Go to sleep,” he says, pulling back. “Tomorrow will be worse if you don’t.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “You always say that.”
“And I’m always right.”
I give him a final peck, then move toward the door, stopping with my hand on it and glancing back. “Thank you,” I say. Not for forgiving me exactly, but more for not letting me be a prick unchecked and putting up with me until I’ve got my head screwed back on properly.
Ari reads all of that in about half a second. “Anytime, detka.” he says.
I leave with my head clearer than it’s been in days, the pressure finally shifting into something I can work with instead of something that’s been working me over from the inside.
For the first time since Mason, since Cassie, since any of it, I feel properly aligned with the one person who matters most.
It doesn’t fix the world.
But it does mean I don’t have to fight it alone.