TVP: Chapter 47

[imre_nico]

Sorry to say this is un-proofread, except by me. I've been learning Sulla'more de rose and Tosca's second duet inbetween writing intermittently, so we'll hope there's no linguistic crossover creeping in.

Nothing destroys the third wall faster than a Russian soldier speaking Italian.



My hands did not shake,
I’m a very good aim
And I know I missed you
Again and again
(Michael Penn)

Chapter 47.

“Nothing better than a Russian winter meal,” declared Raikov, who ate less like a peacock than a marauding bear, polishing off his stew in record time.

Ocelot had to admit, it was an excellent rassolnik, hot and savory with tomatoes and meat, heavy on pickled cucumbers and garnished with a healthy dollop of sour cream.

“Not bad.”

Around them the clink of silverware and clatter of trays reverberated as the officers cleared their places, laughing and bullshitting idly as they bundled back up to return to snow duty. They were more subdued as they passed the Senior Officers’ table, tipping respectful nods as they looped their AKs over their heads and set their caps and ushanki.

Ocelot ignored them, except to nod to his Ocelots as they passed and tell them they had the rest of the day off duty. They had already surmised as much, as there was little more they could do beyond the usual perimeter patrol, which they had managed that morning despite the hazards and obstacles of the blizzard aftermath.

Lieutenants Isaev and Imanov ended off the black and crimson flock, their strides militant but unhurried, looking well matched and immaculate, except for the shadow of Isaev’s shameless quarter-smile.

He saluted as they skirted the orbit of the Majors’ table.

“How did you sleep last night, Major, sir? Like a little child, I hope.”

Ocelot smirked mildly.

“Better than your mother did, with my balls in her mouth.”

“That wasn’t my mother, sir,” Isaev deadpanned, glancing covertly at Major Raikov. “But I can see how you’d make that mistake in the dark.”

Adam felt his lips flush, and go taut as wire.

“Get out of here before I pin your cock to the wall with a bullet, Isaev, and ruin Imanov’s birthday,” he intoned, ominously.

The good-natured banter cut a little close to the mark, although Ocelot knew that reacting with anything more vehement than his garden-variety superior’s annoyance would give them cause to realize they’d blundered into something.

Knowing at once that they’d pushed the envelope, both Lieutenants complied quickly and made themselves scarce, but Ocelot had no doubt the jokes would continue at his expense in private.

The brotherly jibes were part of the rough love of soldiers, and his men accepted that in him as well. He could count on the genuine devotion of every man on the squad, when it came down to brass tacks. He didn’t begrudge them a little risqué needling now and again when they were at ease.

“Fucking pricks in berets,” he muttered, reaching for his tea with his eyes averted.

Raikov, who’d said nothing during this exchange, watched them leave with an expression of faint assessment.

“The fact that they joke so openly suggests they don’t believe it,” he remarked in a low voice.

“Do I look worried?” said Ocelot, finishing his stew and pushing aside the empty bowl.

Raikov frowned.

“No,” he said, “and come to think of it your response was nowhere near as violent as I might have expected. I can tell you what mine would have been at such a show of brass. I don’t tolerate that in subordinates.”

“You, Ivan, or GRU Major Raikov?”

Raikov laughed.

“Good point,” he said with a wry tilt of his lips. “I don’t know anymore, to be honest.”

Ocelot smiled grimly.

Raikov spoke a truism of all agent work. No matter how well you defined the edges at the outset, becoming someone else left its own indelible stain.

“More to the point, Major,” said Ocelot coolly, “would your men take a bullet for you?”

Ivan considered, making a small, drawn out noise of skepticism.

“If they had to,” he said, at last. “If they were under scrutiny. Otherwise, no, I think they’d rather give one to me,” he added, lightly.

Adam’s sullen mouth cracked an unwilling smile. Raikov seemed so careless about the whole thing.

“My men would,” he said, simply. “No hesitation.”

Ivan nodded slowly, as an answering smile touched the corners of his mouth.

“You have a way with men, it’s true.”

Ocelot snorted, lips twisting in consternation and fell silent, glaring at the table.

They’d said little since they sat down, keeping only the most benign conversational exchanges. They’d eaten in relative quiet, surrounded by the din of soldiers. Their manner was companionable, but tense with want of speaking. Now the last straggling officers had cleared the mess, snatching their caps and running into the hall with shouts of raucous ebullience and cheerful insults to their comrades.

“Alone at last,” drawled Raikov dryly. “Tell me sweet things, Major Ocelot.”

Ocelot was still staring at the surface veneer, brow furrowed and working.

“…Why didn’t you fuck me?”

The words came out of Adamska’s mouth abruptly, but not roughly.

Raikov blinked, and recovered as swiftly, chasing it with an obscure smile of amusement.

“You make charming dinner conversation, Adamska.”

“Fortunately, this is lunch,” resumed Ocelot, undaunted. “Why didn’t you fuck me, Raikov, when I offered you the chance, free and clear?”

“An offering,” said Raikov, mildly, “Is by definition a sacrifice. Not a gift.”

“Are we going to argue the semantics of fucking here? Seriously?”

Ivan raised his eyebrows and leaned back, crossing his arms over the chest of his strapping coat.

“So it’s twenty questions today. Do I get to retaliate?”

“Short answers, no games. Answer mine, and I’ll answer yours.”

“Fair enough.”

Raikov paused, as if waiting for him to repeat the question. Ocelot motioned for him to answer with an offhand wave of his gun.

“I didn’t fuck you, comrade Adam, because you would not have been able to enjoy it,” Raikov recited evenly, his expression unruffled, in the stenographic manner of a status report. “Although I will not deny that I happily would have, it’s definitely an acquired taste for the receptor, and requires some foresight at the outset. I was striving to please us both as much as possible last night. Did I succeed?”

“Is that one of your questions?” muttered Ocelot.

Raikov’s lip curled into a slow smile.

“It is now.”

Ocelot glared.

“Short answer: yes. My turn.”

“Shoot, Major,” said Raikov, carelessly, though the gratification of the admission lingered in his eyes.

Ocelot’s lips thinned imperceptibly.

“Where did you sleep last night?”

“Is this a trick question?”

Ocelot narrowed his eyes.

“No games, remember?”

“Of course I remember. You said it only two minutes ago.”

“I saw the cot, Raikov. The blankets were disturbed.”

Ivan’s mouth parted.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“That you had to distance yourself from the unstable bastard you just spent the whole night fucking?”

“You’re so beautiful when you’re paranoid.”

Ocelot scowled silently.

Ivan leaned forward, as if he would touch him, but stopped short of doing so.

“I did it this morning, Adam. Unmade the bed, roughed it up, so that the men would see that it had been slept in. Standard window dressing, comrade.”

There was a pause, and Ocelot was taciturn, absorbing his words.

Raikov sat back, taking a sip of his tea and eyeing Ocelot coolly with his pale grey gaze.

“You see, I do know you.”

Ocelot’s brows knit inward.

“Tradecraft,” he said.

A slight laugh, as he rubbed his eyes.

The Major looked solemn now, his face composed and beatific.

“I wouldn’t have let you sleep alone,” said Raikov quietly, “not after what happened last night.”

Adam felt his jaw tighten.

“I don’t need a post-coital chaperone, Raikov. I don’t care where you sleep,” he sneered, narrowing his eyes and averting them. “It was purely a tactical concern of co-agent logistics. Our efficacy as a partnership depends on knowing each other’s whereabouts at all times. If I know your position when I go to sleep, and you change your position without notifying me, I’m working under the wrong assumption. I didn’t realize you’d just done some scene setting, all right? I was concerned about compromising our interpersonal HUMINT through a communications lapse.”

“Staggering as it was,” drawled Raikov, “I’m not talking about our lateral fraternization, but what happened some time after that. When I found you awake, keeping time by slamming the table with shots from the bottle.”

He paused significantly, his eyes seeking Ocelot’s.

“You had a rough night.”

Ocelot scowled.

“It was just a dream.”

“This is about more than dreams, Adamska. I didn’t get into Spetsnaz by being naïve.”

Ocelot snorted.

“That’s stating the obvious.”

Ivan eyed him carefully.

“You’re stalling.”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Obey the rules.”

Ocelot smirked.

“You haven’t asked a question, Raikov.”

“I want you to tell me what I saw last night. I leveled with you. How about some reciprocity, comrade.”

“Reciprocity.”

It wasn’t a subject he surpassed in.

Although he’d surpassed his own expectations last night.

Ocelot exhaled, quiet and violent.

Raikov leaned forward. His eyes were artless, a mask of careful neutrality.

“Paslushne, Adam. We scratched a little itch, that needed it badly.” He shrugged, eyes adrift. “We both fall asleep without incident. Then I wake up in the middle of the night to find you running relay races to the bottom of a glass.”

Little itch, thought Ocelot, contemptuous.

So the Major was exercising his poetic license in understatement today.

Otherwise it was direct, unambiguously worded. Ocelot knew he couldn’t very well explain the behavior away by insisting he’d had anything as banal as a nightmare. Spetsnaz men didn’t have nightmares, they made them.

And Major Raikov was no skull-fucked village boy.

He felt his lips draw into a moue of resistance, and his brows shifting, slanting downward. Ocelot knew he was reverting to his tried and true ultimate tactic of obstinate refusal, but somehow it felt mal-indicated here in the moted midday light of the officers’ commons, sitting across from the Major with an unlit cigarette and a cup of hot black chai.

No, he thought, narrowing his eyes. That’s sentimental Great War bullshit. That isn’t how it works. Comrades keep secrets, unless they’re cleared to speak freely. Hold fast, stand firm.

Raikov smirked.

“Come on, Major. It isn’t as if I haven’t seen you during orgasm.”

Caught in his own thoughts, Ocelot nearly choked on his tea.

He glared, when he recovered enough, eyes wide and demanding.

“What does that have to do with anything? I had my mouth all over your junk, but I didn’t ask for your mother’s maiden name.”

“It was Donayeva.”

“I didn’t ask, Raikov, was my point.”

Raikov nodded coolly, as if contemplative.

“So you’re essentially saying to me that when it comes to your mouth, it’s easier for cock to go in than words to come out?”

Ocelot stared, appalled.

He drew his gun before he had even finished registering the slight.

“Take that back,” he accused, leveling it at the Major’s face.

It only looked easy.

Ivan seemed unseasonably calm with a Makarov between his eyes, merely reaching up and shoving it aside with a flat palm, continuing the dialogue as if nothing had happened.

“I just find it ironic that you gamely used your mouth to pleasure my cock, but you won’t use it to answer a fucking question,” remarked Raikov, archly, shrugging.

Ocelot fumed. His fingers seized around the gun’s stock.

“Your cock is hardly a secret.”

That seemed to strike Ivan funny, and he leaned back, mouth open in a silent laugh.

“Ha,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you know, I’m inclined to let it go, just for that.”

“No you won’t,” muttered Ocelot, with certainty.

He dropped the gun at last, with an air of resigned finality. It clattered on the marred veneer of the table, an odd sound, flat and inorganic.

His face betrayed no sign of relenting, but he knew the inner stronghold was on shaky ground. Whereas the same petulant expression would normally have signaled the start of a long cold winter and a hundred years of silence, this time it was a death rattle.

“I’ll tell you.”

Adam was tenacious, but above all, he was a pragmatist.

He realized that while he could have easily held out on his co-agent EVA, holding out on Ivan Raikov was going to cost him in currency that had only just crossed his palm.

Ocelot looked up, as if reinforcing his intentions.

“…On the assumption that because we’re sharing accommodations for now, this counts as a need-to-know basis.”

Raikov urged him to go on with a lift of his jaw, as he reached for his tea, raising it to his mouth.

The gesture was minimal, but captivating. Ocelot watched him drink with rising resentment at his own response.

“Last night I had breakfast with a dead man,” he began, haltingly. “A dead man who was reading the Red Star.”

Raikov frowned mildly.

“The newspaper?”

He seemed more quizzical at that than at the mention of a deceased breakfast companion.

“Without the pentazamin, I was just setting myself up for it. I shouldn’t have-”

Ocelot broke off, his features pinched, brow furrowed.

“…I was wrapped up in other things,” he finished, cryptic.

Raikov was silent, giving him space to orient himself, simply watching him with eyes of pale slate that neither condemned nor assumed.

Ocelot scowled, rubbing his knuckles on the table as he paused for thought.

“I can block them out when I’m conscious. I’ve learned, out of necessity. I don’t hear anything I don’t want to hear. I don’t see anything I don’t want to see. Occasionally I still feel things, but I can dismiss those easily enough. If you let them, they crash in and out, meander through, rear up in dark corners and light patches alike. Speak to you in pictures and code, or invade your inner monologue and replace it with their own, so that you’re hearing the thoughts of someone else, in your own mental voice.”

“I don’t quite understand, Adam.”

Ocelot smirked humorlessly.

“You want a metaphor, Raikov? For illustrative purposes?”

Ivan opened his mouth, but Ocelot cut him off before a syllable could vault the threshold of his lips.

“Don’t worry- I’ve got one for you, Major.”

He steeled himself for a moment, then pushed ahead. He wasn’t given to figurative constructs, but in this case, he was unsure of any other way to impart what Raikov wanted to know.

“When I was younger, my mind was a bone china Pamplona,” he muttered. “And every day was July Seventh.”

Raikov was quiet for a moment, considering his words.

Ocelot ignored him, having fallen into his own thoughts, his brow clouded.

“Visions would spring up in my mind’s eye of their own accord. Pictures that didn’t seem original to me, but marked for my attention. As if they were plants made by someone else. Almost like nano technology, but that was before the CODEC injections.” He shrugged. “And even then, CODEC would only account for sound, not images. And not the sound of your own internal voice speaking someone else’s thoughts.”

Ivan nodded slightly, but kept his silence. His gaze was neutral and engaged.

Adam frowned.

“And then I began notice figures, intruding on reality. Animate images of unliving things, side by side with corporeal organisms. Traveling in and amongst them, without any trouble.”

“…Things?”

“People,” he muttered. “Not always people. Sometimes animals. I saw a horse once,” he added, unnecessarily.

“When you were younger? How much younger?”

Ocelot glowered.

“Seventeen,” he bit out, almost as if the word were loath to leave the warmth of his mouth. He paused, rubbing his head. “It came on suddenly, like a sickness.”

Raikov nodded, wordlessly, slow.

“It’s been not so very long then.”

“Long enough,” said Adam, with disdain. “Three whole blissful years of no dead night voices fucking prying at the flashing of my attic, trying to get inside.”

Ivan’s eyes raised at that. He paused to regard Ocelot, curiosity tinting his features.

“Eto psikhicheskyj.”

Ocelot forced a wry smile.

“Inache eto shizofreniyja.”

Raikov’s brow lifted, a gesture of effortless elegance, very much at odds with their utilitarian backdrop.

“There’s a difference between arguing with fenceposts and having genuine insight.”

“Either one can land you in a straitjacket. Among other things.”

Ocelot felt his fingers twitch, suddenly itching for a glass, or a sedative.

“Do you know, it doesn’t surprise me,” Raikov remarked, studying him.

“Really?” muttered Ocelot. “It surprises me.”

Raikov tilted his head.

“It seems like it’s always concrete personalities and vehement skeptics who get shouldered with these abilities. That, or unremarkable people, utterly bereft of imagination.”

“I’m going to assume you’re assigning me the former category,” snapped Adam, feeling peevish.

“Of course,” murmured Ivan, distractedly.

Ocelot’s eyes flinched, but withheld his need to reach for his guns. Instead he gutted out a laugh.

“Know a lot of clairvoyants, Major?” He smirked, spreading his arms wide. “Let me guess…next to competitive goat-stroking, that’s the predominant trade of the Belarusian people.”

Raikov ignored his baiting.

“I’ve known clairvoyants.” He paused, frowning. Glancing down to adjust his immaculate gloves. “My mother is clairvoyant. So was my great-grandmother. It always skips a generation.”

Ocelot stared.

“You’re a fucking sideshow, do you know that? Like the beautiful girl they only show from the neck up, who turns out to have fucking lobster claws and a tail.”

“…Or a cock?” drawled Raikov.

Adam scowled.

“Or that.”

“You’re kind to tolerate my enormous deformity.”

“No problem,” muttered Ocelot.

A moment passed, and Raikov grinned slightly, shaking his head and pushing back the wayward silken strands of his hair.

Ocelot observed him as he did, sobering.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, should I, Raikov.”

Raikov raised his eyes pleasantly.

“Shto? Surprised how, comrade?”

A slight lift of Ocelot’s lip, a small sniff of self-deprecating laughter.

“That you take it all in stride.”

Ivan tilted his head, bemused.

“Believe me when I tell you, Adam- this is the least incredulous thing I’ve learned about you.”

Ocelot snorted.

But he didn’t doubt it.

When he raised his eyes again, after a moment, he found Raikov studying him with a desultory gaze, his eyes artless and light.

“What’s it like?” asked Ivan, leaning in, touching his brow clinically with a gloved hand. His voice was curious, solicitous. The touch was soft but not caressing, and Ocelot felt no comfort in it.

He scowled and snatched the Major’s wrist, pulling it slowly down.

“It’s like scratching your back and suddenly discovering a third arm waving at people without your consent.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ivan, his features softening at once. “I didn’t mean to be cavalier.”

He rotated his wrist freely in Ocelot’s unstudied grasp, as his hand closed over Ocelot’s firmly, glove over glove, boldly declaring its license to trespass.

Its right went quietly unchallenged.

Raikov drew in slightly, dropping his voice to a lower tone, the confessional level of intimate friends.

“I’m not dismissing the gravity of the matter. I’ve just always wanted what you have. I’m fascinated by it, comrade, to be completely honest.”

Ocelot closed his eyes and felt the easy friction of leather over leather.

The sleek, hard shine of Ivan’s black officer gloves against the supple red marksmans’ kid of his own.

“It’s not what I want,” he muttered. “Any of it.”

The Major inclined his head, almost whispering now.

“But think of the gift you’ve been given. What a treasure for a spy.”

“Gift,” muttered Ocelot, with a cynical smile, abruptly reclaiming his hand from beneath Raikov’s. “Or a curse.”

“So many things come with that particular caveat,” stated Ivan, keeping his gaze fixed and deliberate. “Don’t you agree?”

The curve of Ocelot’s mouth modified, and he felt it carve deeper into the bedrock of his face, finding a strike of bitterness beneath.

“Or maybe they come completely unqualified, and we curse them with our assumptions.”

Raikov nodded slowly.

“Maybe.”

It was a rare moment of disarming monosyllabism from the Major, and he seemed to be genuinely thoughtful over the matter. Entirely ignorant that his mouth was enticing, poised on the edge of contemplation, lush-lipped and full.

Ocelot seized Raikov’s cup of tea, and raised it to his own lips.

“Mine’s gone cold,” he muttered. So had Raikov’s, of course.

Ivan nodded distractedly.

Setting it down again with a slight clunk, Ocelot scowled.

“Don’t get all moody on me, EVA.”

Raikov laughed out loud.

“And lo, ADAM defined irony. I must have missed that chapter of the Bible.”

Adam’s mouth twisted in spite of itself.

“I think you missed the whole thing, except maybe one particular tale of two cities.”

Ivan cocked his head.

“You always surprise me,” he said, pursing his lips slightly, and charging Ocelot with a gently wagging finger. “Just when I’m sure you’ve hit your plateau, you reveal another elevation or dimension. Sometimes lateral, sometimes vertical. But you never stagnate. You’re infinite, Adam.”

He paused.

“…A man like that could inherit the world.”

Ocelot felt a little shiver somewhere at the base of his spine, unexpected, but forced himself to smile disaffectedly.

“And here I always thought the meek were the beneficiaries of the will.”

Ivan raised his eyebrows.

“The meek shall inherit the earth, so they say.” He glanced at Ocelot with a cryptic smile. “But do you know…somehow I always interpreted that as a cemeterial metaphor.”

“You would.”

“I would,” agreed Raikov.

“You very well could be right.”

“It’s all semantics.”

“And yet…”

Ocelot paused, effectively, index finger suspended mid-motion.

“What?”

A smirk split Ocelot’s face and his eyes narrowed, as he reached for his beret.

“Check any thesaurus. You’re dead wrong about an offering not being a gift.”

The Major shook his head slowly, pulling on his cap.

“Not in this context,” he said, with an enigmatic smile.

Ocelot made a face as they rose and walked toward the door at a leisurely pace.

“Definitions don’t change with context. They’re definite, hence the fucking word.”

“Context changes everything,” confided Raikov, with ancient surety. “Context is the alpha and the omega.”

“Vah,” said Ocelot, dismissively. “I like your tongue-flapping better with my prick in your mouth.”

Clearly there had been enough philosophy for one morning.

Once in the hall, Ocelot lifted his jaw, and indicated the stairs to the second floor.

“I thought I’d go check in on that drunk Granin. Make sure he didn’t pass out, piss himself and freeze to his chair behind that fucking desk.”

He was insolent and animated, Raikov noted, and behaving much like he always had.

After their rapid-fire debriefing, he seemed satisfied, and perhaps some of the novelty of their congress had worn off.

Either that or the mood elevating benefits had finally settled in.

Ocelot had found his guns once more, and was trading them slowly, hand over hand.

“Are you coming with me?”

Of course Ivan would have, because the perpetuity of the engineer’s inebriate state all but ensured hilarity would ensue at any encounter. However, he realized he had something else to attend to. Something that had only just occurred to him.

“No,” he said, slowly. “I need to get the roster of our scientists. Check something.”

Ocelot looked briefly disappointed, like a boy deprived early of a prized playmate, but shrugged.

“Suit yourself,” he declared. “I guess I’ll see you at banya, then.”

“If not before,” said Raikov, nodding once, perfunctory. He saluted, the gesture automatic and ingrained.

Ocelot smirked and followed suit with the gun in place of his hand.

They went their separate ways down the halls, but after a moment Ivan heard his name, barked in a clipped, efficient tone.

“Raikov. All that shit I told you.” Ocelot called, as an afterthought. “It’s disinformation. Forget it.”

Ivan gave an inconclusive lift of his chin, but no more.

“Izvinit, chuvak. Slovo ne vorobei,” he murmured, under his breath.

Notes:

* "A word is not a sparrow" (once it flies out, you can't catch it again) Russian idiom