Six
Arseny
There are many deeply stupid things in this world — war, bureaucracy, British boiled food. But the stupidest thing currently happening is the way Lance Corporal Caiden Varrik keeps orienting himself around my brother.
I’m supposed to be doing something useful this morning. Equipment checks, inventory, and pretending to care if the supply logs match reality.
The usual theatre.
Instead, I’m standing on the edge of the training field with a clipboard I haven’t written on once, staring across the snow like a feral raccoon watching a picnic.
Because something is wrong.
Not ‘there’s a sniper’ wrong. Worse. Soft wrong.
Feelings wrong. Niko is out on the field running drills with the British liaison team.
Standard stuff. Normal behaviour. Zero threat.
He’s moving through them as if he were born in command.
His sharp voice, that easy grin, and that annoying ‘you’re safe when I’m here’ aura that makes men follow him into hell.
But Varrik won’t stop looking at him.
It’s not ‘I’m assessing my superior officer’ looking. Not ‘respectful, professional admiration’ looking. No. It’s the soft, warm, ‘oh fuck I like him’ kind of looking. He’s trying to hide it; I’ll give him that. His eyes are mostly forward, with the whole good soldier act.
But attraction bleeds.
The way he goes too still when Niko laughs and how his gaze snaps over every time my brother moves is really starting to get under my skin. What. The fuck. Are you doing?
Niko is shouting encouragement and insults in the same breath. And Varrik — the idiot — is orbiting him like a planet.
They finish a set of sprints, then switch to hand-to-hand. Niko corrects his footwork with barely a touch, and I watch the British idiot’s whole spine snap up a little straighter, and a visible hitch runs through him like he’s been struck by a bad idea.
Oh, fucking great.
I was sure I saw it yesterday, then I thought maybe it was my imagination, which, frankly, is dangerous enough that it deserves its own cage.
But no. Here it is again. Lingering.
I’ve lived on bases long enough. I’ve seen men stare at women like that, and sometimes at each other when they think no one’s watching. The difference is that most of them have the basic survival instinct to look away.
This one? He’s terrible at it.
They break, and Niko calls something out, then laughs when one of the Brits nearly falls on his ass in the snow. Then he drops down onto the concrete ledge at the edge of the field, unscrews his water bottle and takes a long drink.
Beside him, Varrik is already breathing hard. Niko offers him the bottle without thinking, and their fingers brush. I see Varrik’s whole body jolt at the touch, and his hand tightens around the bottle like it’s a live grenade.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Absolutely not.
This is the straightest environment imaginable, after Siberian lumberjack bars and Orthodox funerals.
Men don’t get cute little crushes on their foreign liaison officers here.
Not where anyone can see. If anyone even suspects he’s looking at my brother like that, the brass won’t give him a disciplinary hearing.
They’ll give him an ‘accident.’ So, when I see this earnest, green-eyed British idiot failing to conceal himself, it doesn’t register as cute to me. It registers as lethal.
I don’t hesitate. I shove away from the crate and start walking towards them. Niko’s voice carries on the cold air. It’s warm and animated with that stupid beaming smile he gets when he talks about something he loves. I slow down as I get closer, just enough to hear.
“...she’s strong,” he’s saying. “Stronger than me.” He taps his temple, grinning. “Keeps my head straight.”
I stop just out of their eyeline and lean against a pole, clipboard tucked lazily under my arm, and eyes on some random spot on the horizon. “She minds everything about it,” Niko goes on fondly. He looks down at the thin silver band looped on his chain, and his thumb is rubs over it slowly.
Varrik’s voice comes quieter. “You must be excited, sir. New chapter and all that.”
“Da,” Niko says softly. “New life.” I feel the love and certainty, even from here. He’s talking about Cassie and the baby. That whole messy, bright life he’s building with her, and the British idiot is sitting there, looking at him like someone shot him full of joy and grief at the same time.
Oh, I see. He’s not just crushing on him. He likes him. In the stupid, helpless, and heart-clenching way.
Thank God, Niko is straight, engaged, and stupidly in love with the woman carrying his child, which keeps at least one of them safe from this particular brand of catastrophe, in theory.
“Congratulations, sir,” he says. Good boy, that’s it. Push it down, hide it, end it there. Crush terminated, reality installed, move on.
As they stand, Niko offers his hand, and when Varrik takes it, stillness breaks through him like the ground just shifted on its axis.
That’s it. Enough.
“Zakirov!” someone calls my brother’s name behind me across the field, just as I stomp the last few metres toward them.
Niko turns. “Ari, you’re supposed to be counting grenades, not spying.” He says in Russian.
“I did count grenades,” I say. “You left your radio on the wrong channel again, you walking radio-trash. CO tried to call you twice, got the motor pool instead,” I lie through my teeth.
Niko groans and scrubs a gloved hand over his face. “I’ll fix it later.” He mutters.
“Now,” I say sweetly. “Before they patch you into a tractor and drive you into the sea.” He rolls his eyes, but he’s already checking his belt, adjusting the dial.
We bicker in Russian for a few seconds — a familiar, sharp-edged dance.
It’s not for show. This is really what we’re like. But I’m aware of an extra audience now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can feel Varrik watching us the way people watch a family argument they know they shouldn’t be witnessing. After a moment, I turn my head.
He’s closer than I thought. Flushed from training, hair damp at the temples, and breath still coming fast. He’s standing very straight — as if that will protect him from anything.
His eyes meet mine, and I give him the flattest, coldest look in my arsenal.
I don’t say a word. I let everything I’m thinking live in that look.
‘I see you. I know exactly what that is in your face. Don’t get my brother killed.
If you do, I will bury you so deep in this permafrost that no one will find your pretty bones until the next ice age. ’
His throat works as he swallows whatever he was about to say.
Good. Fear is a survival tool.
I pivot away, “Don’t forget we’re escorting the British dogs to the range this afternoon,” I say in Russian.
“‘Guests,’” Niko corrects. “Not ‘dogs.’”
“Same thing. One just sheds more.”
He snorts. “Go do your job, Ari.”
“Somebody has to,” I mutter, and stalk off before I say something stupid in English.
Behind me, I hear Niko call the squad back into position, his voice carrying across the field.
I make it behind a stack of half-frozen crates before the tension in my shoulders finally snaps, and I slam the clipboard down, then begin to pace like a caged animal.
“Blyat’,” Fuck. I hiss under my breath. “Idiots. Vse dolboyoby.” All idiots. Niko, with his open heart and soft spots. The British lance corporal, with his sad eyes and complete lack of self-preservation.
Why does this bother me so much?
Protective little brother, sure. That’s the obvious explanation. I’ve earned that paranoia by watching too many men end up in pine boxes because someone made one stupid choice.
But there’s something else, too. Something about Varrik specifically that has my hackles up.
He’s not loud or a show-off type. If anything, he’s understated. The good soldier prototype. The kind the top brass writes about in pamphlets. He’s got that quiet, relentless kind of competence. Combine that with a bleeding heart and suppressed attraction in the Russian army? Catastrophe.
I dig my fingers into my hair and tug, growling under my breath. The worst part is he’s not even aware of half the ways he’s putting himself in danger. I watched his face just now when Niko talked about his fiancée and the baby.
I saw that tiny flicker of pain. Emotions can leak. People will gossip. If some bored conscript sees the way he lights up when Niko walks into the room and decides to mention it in the wrong ear? That’s all it takes.
I lean back against the crate and tip my head up to the low, colourless sky. The wind knifes across the yard, flinging ice crystals into my face like the world is agreeing with me aggressively. I step sideways so I can see them again through a gap between containers.
Niko’s all business now, barking drills and counting off reps. But there’s still warmth in his face when he corrects Varrik’s stance, with a hand firm on his shoulder. And Varrik — of course — goes stock-still at the touch, then moves exactly how he’s asked, as if obedience is his primary language.
Whatever this feeling is about Varrik, it’s tangled. Protective fury wrapped around something more intrusive. Almost as if I can’t stop prodding at him to see where he’ll push back, excellent, new variable, let’s see what happens if we squeeze.
I’m going to get myself in trouble at this rate.
He’s the one who needs to be careful, and here I am considering how hard I can poke before he snaps. “Eto ne igra,” This isn’t a game. I tell myself firmly. Except everything in my blood says it is. A dangerous one, yes. But the only kind that holds my attention anymore.
Out in the field, Niko blows his whistle and dismisses the squad.
Varrik begins to walk away, and I hate that part of me wants to walk over, grab his stupid face and say, “Stop looking at my brother like that. You’re on the wrong continent for this.
” I hate that another, smaller, more deranged part of me wonders what it would look like if he ever looked at me that way on purpose.
I slam the heel of my hand against the crate. “Nyet,” I snap at myself. One of the younger soldiers loading ammo nearby jumps, glances over, and I level him with a look strong enough to peel paint. He goes back to his work very quickly.
I push off the crate, roll my shoulders, and make a decision.
I can’t stop Niko from being friendly, that’s who he is.
I can’t control where some British idiot points his eyes, but I can control how close Niko gets to the blast radius.
I’ll keep an eye on him from afar, make sure he doesn’t do anything catastrophically stupid, and if he steps too far, I’ll correct him. Hard.
Otherwise? I have better things to burn my brain cells on than two men fumbling their way through an impossible dynamic.
Satisfied enough to move, I turn on my heel and stalk away, my boots hitting the frozen ground a little harder than necessary, and each step knocks out curse after curse.
By the time I hit the edge of the training ground, I’ve talked myself into a full feral spiral, muttering under my breath in a mix of Russian and English that would probably get me sent to a psychologist if anyone listened closely.
“He'd better stop staring at him like that. He'd better stop staring at anyone like that. He’d better stop breathing so... so seriously, k chertu, what is wrong with him...” I jab my hands into my pockets so I don’t punch a wall, and I don’t dare look back.
If I do, I’ll snap, and then do something I can’t easily explain in a report. So, I walk off the field, past the barracks, and past the motor pool where some poor bastard is arguing with an engine.
I walk until the shouting on the training ground is just noise, and my breath is the loudest thing I can hear.
I seriously hate him.
I stalk across the base like a small, furious weather system, swearing at the snow, the wind, the bureaucracy, the British army, and myself in equal measure. I’m going to stay away from him and watch from afar.
...right after the next joint sparring session.