GRU Barracks, Part 2

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

(Continued from previous thread.)

Borishnakov burst from the dog pen, leaving dozens of barking puppies in his wake, though with a pair of boots clutched tightly to his chest.

First test passed, then. Kassian nodded. He had the feeling this particular Ocelot would earn his spots, as Isaev had phrased it, without any trouble. He certainly seemed ardent enough, barely pausing long enough to stamp on his boots before he began to slog through the snow toward the tanks Isaev had pointed out. Each was marked with a flash of red or black, though getting to the items in question without freezing body parts to the metal would be tricky. Trickier while drunk, he was certain, but Borishnakov seemed game.

As they watched from the landing, Kassian and Isaev started to talk...

Comments

[andrei-isaev.livejournal.com]

"I was here too, comrade," Andrei said, tilting his head to better see Irinarhov's eyes, which had lowered. "I began it. You should blame me, as well as the drink."

He was displeased by the abrupt disintegration of Kassian's interest. The Captain's eyes were stony and unfathomable. Unmoved.

Hot and cold, Andrei thought, with a moment of uncharateristic bitterness. How wonderful.

Andrei could feel that the evening's souvenir was going to linger unseasonably; his own unresolved lust, pulsing omninously in reserve.

Impulsively, he reached out, gloved hands adjusting the disparity in their height by raising the Captain's face roughly, the hard-set jaw solid in his palms, narrowing his eyes.

"That was all it took to cool your ardor, was it?" he said quietly, stroking a finger idly along the stoic cheek, feeling the stubble catch on the red kid leather of his glove. "You turn off like a tap, comrade."

Andrei forced a smile, pushing aside his chilly reaction.

"You have a weathered heart, Irinarhov. I should expect nothing more from you. It's not mine to claim, like a city, just because I've managed to disarm you."

He paused, letting his eyes drift downward, lingering and slowly heated.

"Neither is your body. Or your mouth. And just because I could..." he shuddered. "You know that I could, Kasya." He closed his eyes, drawing a breath. "But I won't."

Not like this. Not with liquor tainting the deed, so that Irinarhov had any reason to question it later.

"Chalk these ten seconds of ill-advised tenderness up to another funny, laughable occurence of a drunken Ocelot night, along with Borishnakov's naked jumping."

Andrei almost released him, then, but thought better of it.

On impulse, he leaned in swiftly, pressing a vengeful and bruising kiss to Irinarhov's indifferent mouth.

"Forget that," he challenged, breathless, eyes defiant.

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

Kassian shuddered.

The last of his reserves crumbled, and he knew he was done.

There was no turning back, or forgetting. No pretending it had never happened, or merely wishing it hadn't.

Through sheer force of will, Isaev had carved out a small corner of his heart and marked it as his own. Claimed it.

Damn you, Kassian thought.

The desire that had cooled re-lit, but he held it in check, though his body was trembling, and he could not control it.

His lips felt bruised, hot.

He met Isaev's insolent gaze with his own, his eyes hard, narrowed. Like a raptor sighting its prey, as Isaev had described it.

"I told you," he said in a voice that was low and rough, but thankfully steady. "I remember everything, Andrusha."

He reached up to catch a hand at the back of Isaev's neck, leaning up to kiss him, though his lips only brushed.

The touch of his mouth was feather-light, tender, as gentle and easy as his hand on the trigger. His tongue teased at Isaev's mouth, coaxing it to open, so he could kiss him more deeply, more thoroughly, to learn his responses.

It was the kiss of a lover, not comrades who fucked. His own form of vengeance, on this man who had relentlessly pursued him until he had split open.

[andrei-isaev.livejournal.com]

He was transfixed, as the Captain drew near, feeling the descent of his mouth, and the first caresses of his lips as a series of riffles that shook his ocean with merciless precision.

Thunderstruck, in the moment he could only yield, and defer to biology's demand, as physiology overrode cerebral resolve.

Andrei fell back against the locker with a short, sharp clank, dazed, and now that he was reclining they were the same height, weren't they, he vaguely realized. Irinarhov, never one to miss a fine point, took advantage of the situation to move closer, to cage him and press in close.

The Captain's vengeance was soft, but insistent as he sought to part Andrei's lips with a gentle tongue, and in his feverish state, he could only acquiesce, his mouth easing open, only to be entered and explored.

The sensation stunned him blind and his hands flattened against the lockers behind him, pushing and clutching.

Andrei could feel the hardness of Irinarhov's holster against his thigh, and the pulse of his own heart in his throat.

It wasn't what he'd expected, when he blitzed Irinarhov with his brazen kiss, that thoughtless, careless gesture, tossed off in a blink to gratify his need to break that stone facade.

No, he thought, his wits returning slowly, blooming open once more, as a slight moan broke from his lips.

He shook against the warm, wall of Isaev's chest, cold metal at his back, struggling to gather his will.

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

Kassian wanted to let the kiss linger, to taste, to explore, to assay Isaev's responses. The need hummed within him to learn Isaev and how he reacted.

After long moments of exploring Isaev's pliant mouth, Kassian had to admit it: his need was selfish, this desire to make some indelible mark on Isaev in reciprocity, unkind.

It was no so much of a response as it was a surrender.

Isaev shook like a man overwhelmed, swallowed by sensation, every nerve aflame. The lieutenant's muscles strained against him, and pushed hard and taut.

Kassian broke it off then, pulling back, drawing in breath in long, shuddering gasps.

Maybe it was just too cruel.

Or maybe, he thought, chasing his fear, maybe Isaev just deserved better.

Kassian trembled, eyes still closed, but he pressed his forehead against Isaev's and held on to him, wanting, needing to be close.

[andrei-isaev.livejournal.com]

Trying to regather his thoughts was like putting the ephemeral fluff back on a dandelion.

Andrei felt the Captain's hands clutch into his sleeves and the flesh beneath, felt the sniper's brow, warm and solid against his own, the heavily bossed ridge of bone above his eyes bespeaking his maturity, like a second year dog.

And Irinarhov's body was actually shaking; shaking- after all that impassivity, when all day he'd been making Andrei wonder how a stone statue could actually walk.

Excuse me, Captain, but how does a man of granite fire a Mosin-Nagant, anyway?

Andrei was aware of how inauspicious it would look, should anyone enter the room- himself, collapsed back against the lockers with his smartly uniformed legs braced apart, and the sullen, suspicious new Captain, holding him as tenderly as a woman, for the sake of fucking-your-mother.

All right, he allowed, not like a woman.

No, there was nothing remotely feminine about Irinarhov's gentle grasp, which hinted constantly at the strength behind it, nor his heavy, low breath against Andrei's throat, nor the scent of him, fresh sweat and cordite, with a slight musky cigar-sweetness.

"I don't understand," Andrei said, lifting his head away from Irinarhov's, looking him artlessly in the eyes.

He touched two fingers to his mouth, which was well-kissed and flushed, but not bruised or swollen. The hallmarks of passion, to him, were obvious. They were brands of need and urgency, written on skin by the instruments of ardor.

When you were soft with a comrade, it was because you were lazy, or feeling particularly affectionate, like half-grown cubs in a wolfpack, nibbling at ears, forgoing the mischievous teeth of rougher play.

"I don't get kissed like that very often," he remarked, vaguely.

It was the last thing he would have anticipated from a man like Irinarhov.

Someone so damaged, where did he come by this approach, which smacked of...romance and devotion?

Andrei smiled, confusedly, a crooked twist of his full mouth that was meant to be disarming and open.

"You're a contradiction in every way, Captain Irinarhov. I trace your lines again and again, and I can't make sense of them. And I'm no shoddy student of man."

He hesitated, letting his hand find the Captain's hair, his arm wrapping around him loosely.

"Where do you squirrel away that naivety, comrade?" he asked, frowning. "How is it it's still intact?"

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

Isaev's voice soothed him, and quieted his tremors. It was just good, he thought, that one of them could still think clearly.

Kassian opened his eyes to meet Isaev's, and saw only good-natured bemusement there, and no accusation.

He didn't know what he'd expected exactly. He hadn't been sure. But again, Isaev seemed to make things easy, and Kassian just gave a nod.

"Vitya said something to me once," he said. It hurt less to speak of him now, and he felt less regret. "He was always reading, about the news, about politics. Things he shouldn't have been, I'm sure, though I never paid attention."

He shifted, to ease back some of his weight, so that he wasn't crushing the lieutenant back into the lockers as much.

"He'd been reading about the war, and found something that said that of all the men that were born in my year, the ones that went away to the war, out of a hundred, three men came back, and the other ninety-seven were killed."

The companionable arm around him soothed him further, and his gaze turned more thoughtful, more sage. "He said, 'Kasya, you're damn lucky,' and I was...startled. I'd always thought it had been bad luck, to live through such times, to see such suffering. To lose my friends, my family."

He shrugged. "I had never thought of it that way before. That instead of dying with the others, I lived, and that was what you called luck."

Kassian reached up to run his fingers through a lock of Isaev's thick, soft hair. "I don't know if it's true. If Tennyson was right. But I don't like having good things, because I just end up losing them. But if they're inflicted on me, and there's nothing I can do..." He trailed off, and shook his head slowly. "I might as well enjoy what I have while I have it."

"And be grateful," he added, after moment.

He cocked his head slightly and took in a deep breath. "I don't know if that answers your question, comrade, but that's the way I see it."

[andrei-isaev.livejournal.com]

"Inflicted," laughed Andrei, abruptly. "Oh, eto bolshoi khorosho. Yeb tvoyu mat, svoloch!"

Did it answer his question?

"I don't think it does," he replied, idly. "But I'm content to tolerate my own uncertainty, as they advise in Socratic Method."

Irinarhov didn't get it. Perhaps because he was older, perhaps because he'd long since left expressions of youthful lust.

The difference, to Andrei, was profound. It wasn't that he'd never experienced sensuality or gentle moments of pleasure and benovolence. He'd touched and been touched in sweetness and adulation. Comrade love was complicated, unspoken and undeclared. There were no rules, per se, only what each man was willing to accept.

But Irinarhov's gesture had contained a different dynamic. One that went beyond the erotic and sensual, toward the reverential.

Andrei smirked good naturedly, arching his brow.

"Are you making love to me, Captain Irinarhov?" he drawled.

He didn't mind the Captain touching his hair. Ilya touched his hair, sometimes, when they were drunk and sprawled on a bunk, calling him Andrusha, murmuring utter nonsense into his cheek instead of his ear, amusing and endearing.

Irinarhov looked thoughtful, or maybe just dazed. His dark eyes were solemn and shining.

Vitya again, this Vitya. The obvious question that it begged was whether he'd kissed his sniper comrade like that.