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The room was quiet, apart from the breaths of the two men cramped together into the too small bed. A small solace, hidden between the walls and the rough texture of the uniform. A ragged breath, held desperate as he buried his face into the ranger’s neck. The arms around him tightened ever so slightly and he felt like he was suffocating.
A feeling, foreign and possibly dangerous, had a grip on his ribcage, crushing his bones and threatening to rupture his heart. A feeling unknown but not unwelcome, a feeling that is akin to standing at the edge of a cliff and jumping down, not minding the jagged rocks beneath as the body aimed for the sea.
Equal parts of liberating and chaining, he didn’t know what to make of it. He pressed his body closer, like there was any space between the two of them, and closed his eyes. He felt the other man shift, moving his body into a more uncomfortable position so he could hold him better. Why, he wanted to question. Why would someone do such a thing for someone else? For him, of all people.
His body wasn’t made to be held. Becoming a soldier and serving for his faction was drilled into him. Every decision, every step, every cell in his body was created for the singular purpose of being a good enough tool to bring glory. And this thing between them was foreign in all the worst ways. He knew how to hold weapons, his hands moulded with guns. Gentleness wasn’t a part of his creation, he didn’t know how to hold someone without hurting, how to grab someone else without hearing the crack of bones. And somehow, right in this moment, in this station and in this cramped bed, he held the other man with a gentleness that didn’t belong to him.
He lifted his face just enough to press his lips against the pulse point of the younger man. A steady rhythm beneath his lips, a sense of normalcy granted upon him.
A relaxed sigh, and he felt the ranger tilt his head. Was he not aware of danger? That he was sharing the bed with someone who could easily kill him?
Cold hands slipped inside his shirt and sent a shiver up his spine. They rested against his back, then he felt the movement of the fingertips, tracing his spine with ghostlike touches. His body relaxed and he pulled away from the ranger’s neck to press his forehead against his collarbone.
They stayed like that for a while, with his head tucked safely and the younger man tracing shapes against his back. It was peaceful, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in decades. And it scared him, in a way. A fear that this would be ripped away from him, like all the good things he had experienced before.
What would he do, then? This weird feeling in his chest, their position, the closeness he couldn’t label, what would he do if he lost them? He had experienced it before, when he was couple years younger than the other man and his blood pumped in his veins with distant and forgotten hope.
What would he do then, if he was once again, with no regards and no room to refuse, ordered to destroy? Did the death of the general that gave him the order once meant that it wouldn’t happen again? What would he do, if he was sentenced to trap the ranger in eternal twenty-five? Could he find the strength to wrap these hands of a monster around another innocent neck, lock eyes with wide and wet ones, trying to plead for mercy with a voice gone? With his smaller hands, uncalloused and still soft and smelled like a mother’s love, wrapped around his wrists until his strength was gone, weaker lungs that couldn’t get any oxygen stopping the attempts to breathe as he could only accept his demise and his life-
He got pulled back from his thoughts and his past when he felt the ranger’s head bumping against his. A silent communication, always reminded him the cats he had seen in his childhood before the war, the way he got annoyed when his attention got diverted. He pressed a chaste kiss against his collarbone over the uniform. The action caused the ranger’s hand to still against his spine for a moment, then he continued his inkless doodles.
Silence. Unbearable yet somehow comfortable. As time ticked, the steady thumps of the younger man’s became a gentle rhythm that kept his thoughts at bay. He felt him shift again, trying to find a comfortable position without letting go. When he couldn’t find any, he nudged him to lay properly.
Despite being half asleep and uncoordinated, the ranger managed to pull him on top, his head pressed against his chest, and a piece that he always discarded clicked in place inside him. Like he belonged there, like the reason for his existence wasn’t to be a tool for the greater good but to lay down like this, with him. To feel him, exist with him in this fragile tranquility before he was forced to go back to his faction. To learn how to be more than a soldier before he had to stand in front of a gun and take the last bullet.
And, as the younger slept just like the rest of the station, he stayed wide awake. A side locked away and long forgotten surfaced back, vulnerable, fragile and more alive than he could ever imagine he could ever be.
Feelings. He never made sense of them. Between the remnants of a distant childhood in the surface, Korbut’s teachings and the bloodshed caused by his own hands, no one taught him what was a feeling and how was he supposed to differentiate them from one another. Everything he was taught by Korbut was to manipulate. For someone who was part of such a complex species, he was closer to a robot than homo sapiens. Everything was calculated, his supposed anger, his change in tones, even the pace of his breathing. A great act to get every scrap of intel that can carry his faction one step further.
But this? This wasn’t calculated or planned. It was unknown in all the worst ways, an act that was more suicide than anything, a blind trust that there would be someone to catch him if he were to jump down.
The ranger? No. He wasn’t the one, even though that now free part of him yearned him to be. He was falling, from the rational thoughts, from his brain to his heart, which was somehow still beating to feel instead of pumping blood. He knew that he was coaxed easily by the younger man, and he knew that he would willingly jump off from that cliff and aim for the blue waters each time he looked at him.
And, as his body crashed against the jagged rocks and the blue waters, he suddenly realised the meaning of the feeling. He was in love, and he was drowning in the sea that was his ideals and teachings.
And this sea of ideals wasn’t a sea he could fight against. Conditioned to obey, he was always prone to drowning. So how could he stay above this sea, when he was taught that feelings like these were an illness? Was that all he was, a sick man, a cancerous cell to his faction?
Sickness was meant to be cut off to clean the body. And if the body wasn’t cleaned, then it would die. Red Line was the body, and he was nothing but the sickness that had to be cleaned.
He couldn’t breathe; he had to get out. the ranger let out a half-asleep sound when he ripped himself from his embrace. He leaned to press a small kiss against the ranger’s chapped lips. “I’m going for a walk.” he said. The response he got was a half-lidded look for him to come back quickly before the younger man curled and pressed his face against the pillow.
Despite the heaviness and incoordination of his limbs, he managed to open the door and push himself out of the room. He closed the door and managed to walk away for a couple meters before he folded over and dry heaved.
Somewhere inside his head, everything he was told, everything he was taught was making its way back to his brain. He could almost hear the condescending tone of Korbut. Blunt nails clawed vainly against his ears, as if he could dig inside his skull and pull the voice out.
When his body finally stopped the reflex, he wiped the wetness that clung to his lashes and straightened. A walk wouldn’t help, but it would help him to compose himself and look normal in front of the ranger.
Too busy with picking the skin around his nails and wearing down his bottom lip as he tried to come up with a rational solution, he didn’t realise that he had arrived to the platform. He dropped down to the rails and stopped for a moment to check his surroundings in the pitch-black darkness. Walking only worsened his thoughts, and once again he was starting to believe that he had to clean his faction of sickness.
Not only his faction, but also the ranger. He was younger, naïve, he didn’t the danger of causing him to feel this way. He was clueless, he would only see the thing that looked human and not the monster that was hiding beneath. He would hold out his hand unknowingly to the mouth with jagged teeth, expecting someone like him to know the meaning of loving another person, when he couldn’t even fathom having any love for himself.
With no rational thoughts seemed to be left, his only goal was walking. The goal of walking, walking until he came across a mutant that would maul him. The patrollers were a fleeting worry; he could easily make past them without effort.
He remembered a nest that wasn’t too far away. He had stumbled on it accidentally, when he was coming to visit the ranger. He moved on the worn-out rails, towards the direction of the mutant nest.
His heartbeats were the only sound in his ears as he walked. It would be the better choice if not the best. A single-minded focus towards his chance of redemption. If he could redeem himself, between the jaws of a mutant and the sharp teeth piercing his flesh, then maybe he would something more than a stain that would destroy Red Line and the ranger.
He didn’t hear the footsteps behind, and nearly fell when another body collided with his. Arms wrapped around him, effectively mobilising him, and he let himself get guided down to the floor.
Green eyes, still had remnants of sleep but now filled with worry, stared down as the ranger crouched in front of him. He carefully wiped the tears he hadn’t realise that trailed down his face, and a simple and gentle like that caused him to choke on his breath.
A sob was muffled against the Spartan uniform as his face found its place back in ranger’s chest and the younger’s back hit the rails. His arms were around him once again, holding him tight as he wept for everything he was never given a chance to grieve for.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, but when his body wasted all the tears that were kept locked for years and a deep exhaustion settled on his bones, he managed to lift his head.
Green eyes stared back, not with judgement or disgust, but with… patience? Maybe understanding? All of them were foreign concepts for him, he couldn’t separate one from another.
When the ranger, no, Artyom, reached to wipe his tears again, he rested his cheek against his palm. He felt tired, like all those nights he kept wide awake due to nightmares had finally caught up to him.
He didn’t react when he was lifted. He only gave a small hum when he was carried. He felt so small, bare and defenceless, but when he was held like this for the first time in his life, he couldn’t find it in to feel disgusted with himself.
They were back in Artyom’s room, with his partner’s body pressed against his back and his face buried into his shoulder. It felt… right.
As he managed to surface from the blue waters and stared at the sky above, he had come to terms with what he was escaping from; no matter what, there would always Artyom to catch him, to hold him tight. Even when he was trying to run away from something he was refusing to accept, convincing himself that it was better that way.
“Artyom.” He called out quietly. His partner shifted, his chin pressed against his shoulder. He kept his gaze on the wall; wet his lips to confess something he never thought he would. It was a whisper, like it would ruin everything and cause Artyom’s demise if it was muttered any louder. “I love you.”
He felt his lover’s finger against the skin of his wrist, spelling the words back to him. He felt the pressure of his lips against his cheek. For tonight, he felt like he could, just this once, accept the truth. The reality that there was someone who could feel the things he had believed in. For tonight, he could pretend that the next time he would these arms around his body would be caused by self-inflicted destruction. For tonight, he felt like he could indulge in being a human.
And for tonight, that seemed to enough.