Returning to Quarters by Moonlight....

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika left mess intending to return to his quarters.

It was nice out, for winter, however, and he lingered on his walk, crossing through the tank yard, occasionally gazing up at the night sky.

A blanket of stars, a dark bright blue, illumed from behind by unseen, uncast light.

He assumed Rakitin was right behind him, but he had yet to see Polya disembark the mess hall, or hear his companionable shout.

Perhaps Polya had business to attend to, like the nights he'd been privy to what Liadov had not.

Rakitin was ostensibly GRU now, and no longer objective and uncompromised, as far as Nika was concerned.

If in fact he ever had been. It seemed Rakitin's wandering eye for unguarded cock caused him to lapse in common sense. He'd said himself he could take or leave the KGB, in no uncertain terms that left Liadov fairly stunned at their utterance. Once, men were sent to the Gulagi for years for telling a single joke about the government- and here was Ippolit, boldly declaring dissatisfaction with his agency.

And then, this blase admission that he intended to jump ship for Volgin's outfit- well, Rakitin was either supremely brave and confident, or hopelessly naïve to think his kit and bags weren't bugged. Or his teeth, for that matter. Maybe he was more of a renegade than Nika had surmised.

It didn't change his feelings for the man, but it did mean he had one less uncontaminated soul to rely on in this corrupt outpost, if it came down to an issue of justice that conflicted with GRU wishes or politics.

He sighed.

Best not to think about that. Not until it came to it- if it did.

The stars were never-shifting, everlasting.

Nika smiled at them and shook his head.

"Men are fucking imbeciles," he whispered to them, confidentially. "And I foremost among them."

Comments

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Nika's movement was sudden and shocking as a gunshot, his words moreso.

They made sense. Perfect, beautiful, transcendent sense.

Even as they were given to the murderer, they fit into Polya's mind like a key into a copy of the same lock.

You couldn't face the uncertainty.

you can be certain of rejection. And in turn, you feel vindicated...

Polya had touched with intimacy the joints and facets of a life that moved only to the will of fear.

He, the murderer, was nothing. His fear was nothing. Better; a cumbersome, shabby object of no shame or value, fit to be set down at the roadside when it was needed no more.

Watching, awestruck, Polya comprehended that Nika, the magnificent bastard, was doing something gloriously cruel.

Polya wanted to embrace him in graitude and laugh with joy.

Nika had given Polya the incomparable gift of the ability to pity the murderer before he killed him.

[krasnogorje.livejournal.com]

His hand moved of its own accord to grip Nika’s wrist and pull the wandering hand away. Gradually, the murderer’s sick smile had faded into a scowl, and he trembled as he clutched the Operativnik’s arm.

Dmitry’s head swam with shock, questions and conflicting emotions numerous as moths gathered around the sodium lights. His malice was defused as Liadov kneeled before him, peppered him with harsh words, condemned him once again in a way that was far worse than Magadan.

He was aware that his other hand had come up to stroke Nika’s hair and he watched his fingers move mechanically to toy with the ringlets of silken flax. His stomach flipped over, but he was powerless to stop.

“No…”

Deimos shook his head and wisps of black fell across his brow.

“I want… I want to break one bone in your body for every day I suffered at Magadan. I would start here…” He squeezed Liadov’s wrist, consciously digging his fingernails into the soft skin of the underside. “and end with your neck.”

His words were scarcely above a whisper, carried away on the cold wind into the dark night. Harsh as they were, they carried no real promise of a threat.

Dmitry drew in a sharp breath of the frigid air with the horrible realization that torturing Liadov wouldn’t satisfy him either. It would end too soon, and he would be left with another broken cadaver and blood on his hands.

“Maybe..." he breathed, "there is no hope for me.”

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Liadov was silent for a moment.

It was certainly an odd tableau. One that would certainly look beyond depraved to any passersby. Some wry, backstage part of him couldn't help being amused at the idea.

"I don't think I have that many bones," he said, at last.

Dmitry had been happily ensconced in the Zone for longer than 206 days, after all. Although he had heard of cases where some individual's skeletons had slightly more or less. It still wouldn't be enough.

"You'd have to break some of them twice."

It seemed wrong, that the sensation of a sociopath touching one's hair felt no different than a mother's or a lover's.

That should be fixed, thought Nika, vaguely.

He'd just have a word with the godless sky. Sometime after
all his paperwork was done.

The man's nails bit bluntly into his wrist, but he kept his eyes inexorably locked.

"I didn't put you in Magadan, Dima. You put yourself there."

Liadov rose slowly to his full height, like a dance partner at the end of a dramatic denouement. The man's hand slipped from his head like water, but the one on his wrist remained.

"You created your own Zone, your own Siberia, wire by wire, when you chose to be a butcher, and you pushed humanity away. Did you never realize, Dima, that when you killed those girls, you were killing yourself?"

He shook his head.

It didn't matter.

Nika leveled his gaze.

"You deserved to be in Magadan. You don't deserve a second chance. But you've been given one, through circumstances beyond my influence. Much as it displeases me, I have no recourse."

He was aware of Polya somewhere behind him, that he'd made a small noise of dismay some time ago, probably wanting to clarify exactly how many bones were in the human body, and that babies were born with around three hundred, but then some of them fuse, and it varies from person to person...

"...you could go on to live a full and pleasant life in spite of your crimes. But you must let go of the idea that anyone but Dmitry is responsible for his own fate and self-loathing."

Obliquely, Nika wondered if he was ever going to get laid again after such a weird display.

[eyes-adrift.livejournal.com]

A silence fell.

The situation was painful in its intensity, awkward and uncomfortable. Raw emotion played across the murderer's face, set the angle of his shoulders taut. The MVD officer - Nika - was more stoic, but grimly focused, his stance just as tense.

Aryol frowned as he watched the tableau, and felt compelled to move forward.

The man, the MVD major, this Nika - had asked him to stay back, but there were times when a man needed the support of a comrade, even when he didn't know it.

Aryol's steps were careful, one at a time, deliberate in their slowness, calculated to be non-threatening.

He did not look at the man - Dmitry, the murderer - but instead kept his gaze averted, advancing only to the operativnik, stopping.

Reaching out, Aryol brushed a hand against the back of Nika's arm.

"We should go," he murmured.

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika turned, quickly.

"Da," he said, almost on top of the other man's words. "I'm through here."

He smacked the stranger on the back, firmly, with his palm, then seized his shoulder.

The little feathery finger trace on his arm confused him.

Was that how you dealt with a child, or a mental patient? Did the soldier think he was irrational, in need of soothing?

Nika leaned in briefly as he passed, catching low, harsh words in the Specialist's dark hair.

"Take me to your quarters. I want to fuck you."

[eyes-adrift.livejournal.com]

A shiver lanced through Aryol, hit him where he lived.

He nodded once, recalling now their mutual, breathless passion up against the tank.

He wanted it, and he wanted it high and hard, from this man in particular.

Wanted the MVD officer to take him and uncoil his tension inside him.

Aryol said nothing, put acknowledged the man's words with the briefest of touches against his hip.

Even here, it felt achingly intimate, like electricity between them.

He strode down the corridor between tanks, strides lengthening as he walked, leaving the murderer behind.

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Liadov pulled his cap down and struck his boot into the dirt.

He looked up at Rakitin.

"Hey, Polya. Walk back to quarters with us. I'd feel better seeing you home myself."

He paused.

"There are some bad elements about. And, in case you hadn't looked in a mirror lately...you're blond too."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

The intimacy of Liadov's movement toward the young Black Ops man, as if to murmur something in his ear, was a vivid reminder of what had been transpiring. Well, begun to transpire, before Polya and the murderer had charged in, like figures at opposite ends of an ill-lit hall of cracked, crazed mirrors.

That inadvertant stolen glimpse, two figures pressed together in shameless urgency, blazing in a private universe of riotous life.

Beside that, the murderer was a small, petty thing indeed.

They looked good together, Polya thought. The dark soldier and the frost-tipped policeman. He remembered them sitting across from one another, less than an hour ago, smiling, one cool and the other bright, both tinged by the corona of a shared joke.

Maybe this Aryol could blunt the razor pain that had shown its edge that night.

For a moment it looked as though Polya had been forgotten, but Nika caught his eye before he could slip away.

Ah, well. It wasn't a long walk, though it would no doubt be an awkward one. Anyway, Polya suspected, inwardly smiling, the two of them would soon have better things occupying their attention.

"Yeah," he acknowleged, smiling ruefully as he fell in beside the pair at a respectful distance, "but I'm not the one getting ambushed."

Polya looked back over his shoulder to where the stricken murderer stood.

"You're incredible, Nikasha," he said, shaking his head in awe.

Sheepish, Polya glanced away at the cold stars.

"Just-- do me a favor, hey? Try not to get hauled into alleyways by shadowy figures, no matter how dark and handsome they turn out to be? There's better places to meet, and I'm too young for a heart attack."

He watched his boots crunch across the ground and added, in an undertone, "I'd rather have to listen to you scream than find you under a sheet."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika laughed, wearily.

He let the Black Ops man lead, striding unconcernedly before them at a very slight distance, and Liadov fell back in beside Polya.

"Who says they're mutually exclusive?" he quipped, wanly.

But after a moment he tapped Polya's side with his elbow, and a slight, buried grin.

"Thanks, comrade. For coming after me."

He paused.

"Even if it was just me and some guy having it off like a couple of stupid opesdol. It means something, Lieutenant, that you're watching my back."

Nika turned, eyelashes flicking as he brushed a wayward snowflake away from where it had lit.

"I can trust you with my life. We were comrades before. Now we're really friends."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Ah, well," Polya said, touched, "if I don't save you from a spontaneous meeting with your lover, who will?"

He ran a hand through his hair.

"That is, besides the violent sociopath."

Wherever he had come from.

Polya grinned lopsidedly.

"It looks like you've got a lot of strange guardian angels."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Liadov frowned.

"Yeah..." he said, trailing off, uncertain.

He shook his head after a moment.

"I really don't know what to make of that. I only know that it wasn't motivated by any altruism."

Liadov shrugged.

"He's a dangerous man. I'm surprised he isn't killing secretaries. But I suppose the Fury has him on a short leash- and they've almost certainly given him something akin to a mild chemical castration, to 'take the edge off'."

A pause.

"I don't see another way they could use him, frankly, unless he was pilled up."

Nika made a face.

"Pleasant conversation," he said, snorting softly.

"Don't...mention this, if you don't mind, Polya. About me and...that guy."

He indictated the Black Ops soldier with a vague nod and raise of his eyebrows.

"It's not...well, the truth is, it only happened last night, and it was a completely spontaneous thing. I don't even know his name. I know nothing about what he does, and I like it that way."

Liadov smiled crookedly.

"It's not something I want to advertise, if you understand. I don't know what his situation is, but he alluded to a...significant other of some kind, with the unit he's with."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Information. Good to know. Chemicals...

"Of course." Polya raised his hands, palms out. "I didn't see a thing."

Odd. They seemed so familiar and comfortable with one another, to not even know his name. Well. Not everyone did things in the standard order.

Apparently Nika had been telling the truth. Not that it was any of Polya's business.

A smile dented the corner of his mouth.

"Walked right by, head in the clouds."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

"I'm going to be useless tonight," muttered Liadov wryly. "That was a real drain."

He sighed and brushed the fawn strands from his eyes absently.

"All I want is a nice warm conjack. That's all."

He studied the soldier's spartan and shapely posterior as the man paused by the door of the visitor's wing, and cast a sloe-eyed glance over his broad young shoulder.

"Maybe I'll drink it out of his navel."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Polya snorted a laugh.

Eagle-eyed he may not be, but he didn't need that or the smoldering glances the two of them kept tossing each other to tell him it was past time to get the hell out of the way.

It was the kind of night that called for something like that. Fond obscenity, and the warmth of a comrade sleeping by your side.

The warmer air of the hall wasn't quite the same.

[eyes-adrift.livejournal.com]

They walked down to their rooms at the end of the hall.

It seemed that they were all clustered together - the pathologist in the corner, Aryol next to him, then the MVD major across the hallway, as he'd discovered last night.

Aryol went to his door and unlocked it, then held it open for the operativnik to go in.

He looked toward his neighbor's door.

His gaze met the pathologist's, and he smiled warmly. Openly, without a trace of embarrassment, or apology.

"Good night," he told Lieutenant Rakitin.

After his MVD lover slipped inside the room, he followed, and closed the door behind them.