Hinterlands
Feb. 16th, 2009 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taras_olekseiTaras Oleksei was a long way from home.
He knew it with a certainty that lived quietly under his tattooed chest, as if he could feel how far he was from Leningrad.
It was nights like this - lying in bed, alone, bare skin freshly showered, warm under clean sheets - that he felt it more keenly than he did during the day.
Where you are isn't as important as who you're with, Lasha had said, and he was right, but when Taras was alone, the where grew longer, like a shadow under a low, harsh sun that never set, and just as hard to escape.
He held the phone against his ear, waiting, eyes closed to the darkness.
There was a pause, then a click.
"Connecting you now, sir," the operator told him.
The phone began to ring, and it sounded close.
He knew it with a certainty that lived quietly under his tattooed chest, as if he could feel how far he was from Leningrad.
It was nights like this - lying in bed, alone, bare skin freshly showered, warm under clean sheets - that he felt it more keenly than he did during the day.
Where you are isn't as important as who you're with, Lasha had said, and he was right, but when Taras was alone, the where grew longer, like a shadow under a low, harsh sun that never set, and just as hard to escape.
He held the phone against his ear, waiting, eyes closed to the darkness.
There was a pause, then a click.
"Connecting you now, sir," the operator told him.
The phone began to ring, and it sounded close.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 02:57 am (UTC)He was silent for a moment.
"Spasiba."
The silence resumed, oddly effortless, and not uncomfortable.
"So how are you doing? There, in that place."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 06:26 am (UTC)"I don't know."
He took another sip, just enough to wet his throat.
"Maybe I'm going a little crazy. I don't know. This place is so isolated. Just barbed wire and concrete surrounded by mountains. Guard patrolling with their dogs. Sometimes I fall asleep and I dream, and when I wake up, I think I'm...somewhere else."
He shook himself. The taste of vodka lingered on his lips, cold like ice.
"...thanks for asking."
Taras paused, frowning.
"What do you dream about?" he whispered, abruptly.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 06:23 am (UTC)Pulling it straight out and watching it idly with his eyes as if gauging its outgrowth.
"I used to have a lot of nightmares."
His eyes traveled to the window and the cascading sheets of rain that bolted down the glass.
"Disjointed, unsettling. Not always outright terrifying, but constant. That was when I was younger. I would wake up in some state hotel in a cold sweat, rigid as marble. Some party wife pressed up against me like a flaming octopus, with light and feminine snores. Got to the point where I shook it off like water and went right back to sleep."
Barshai shrugged, switch the phone to his other shoulder.
"It was about two years after I met Major Isaev that he sent me to a specialist. A psychiatrist who sometimes works cases with the Ministry, I think. Apparently he didn't find my nightmares as pedantic as I did. The next day he sent me a piece of paper with a time on it. An appointment. He didn't tell me what I was going to, never addressed it with a single word. He just told me the car would pick me up once a week."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 07:15 am (UTC)Taras said the word with particular care, slowly, as if sounding it out, though he knew what it meant, just fine.
It was like silverware, he supposed. Among other things. Fancy pricks had something specific for everything. A fork just for seafood. A spoon just for melon. They had doctors who only looked at people's feet. He supposed a specialist for nightmares fit right in.
He trapped the bottle against his chest, arm tucked around it. Holding it close, because it was something to hold. Even warmed by his body, the smooth glass still felt chill against his skin.
"I don't know anyone else who has nightmares," he added, more quietly.
Taras paused, lips compressing briefly.
"Had nightmares, you said. So did this...specialist...fix it?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 07:31 am (UTC)He paused, frowning again, a slight crease between his smooth brows.
"Anyone else, you said. Do you have nightmares, Captain?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 06:54 pm (UTC)Taras made a soft noise, almost a growl.
"Things I don't want to be dreaming about. They make me wake up when I should be sleeping. They make it hard to go back to sleep, afterward."
Thinking about it made his groin twinge. Taras grimaced, rubbing his thigh.
"So what are you saying, exactly? You can dream...anything? Any person, any place? Just by deciding to do it?"
Taras' brow drew low and heavy.
"What did you dream last night?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 11:12 pm (UTC)"I don't remember if I dreamt last night- of anything or at all."
He cocked his head.
"When I do dream- well, it isn't as if I set my course for any particular thing. I can't just program it from the outset. But what I can do- what he trained me to do, is realize I'm dreaming, and then I can steer and shift the dream to focus or visit, initiate or influence any scenario or situation."
Barshai smiled.
"It's very liberating, comrade. Not to be powerless in mind. It's something beyond material strength."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 07:08 am (UTC)"Yeah, I know it's like that. Strength isn't anything without...if you don't..."
He paused, frowning, searching for the words to express what he wanted to say. Barshai had a way with words. He made them sound easy.
Taras' eyes, mismatched and narrowed, flicked back and forth in the darkness.
"If you don't have the will to back it up," he said, finally. "If you don't know what you want, and go after it. If you're not willing to do what it takes to get it."
He fell silent for a moment.
"You and me, we're the same that way, da? We had nothing, and now we have what we want."
Taras set the bottle aside. He could hear Barshai's breathing on the other end of the line, soft and even.
"How old are you, comrade?" he asked suddenly, curious.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 09:31 pm (UTC)Merkurii's lips turned up faintly in the darkness.
"Twenty-nine. And I expect to be 29 for several years more, by Kirov standards."
He paused.
"In actuality, I'm thirty-five."
Barshai laughed, after a moment.
"Did you guess?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 11:16 pm (UTC)"I thought you were older than me. You look young, but you talk old."
He tucked his free hand behind his head, considering.
"And I knew...because of Isaev's mother, you couldn't be as young as you look. I remember when she died. It was after the Siege. I was fifteen, sixteen, something like that. Long time ago now."
He snorted, lip twisting.
"They sound like pricks at the Kirov, comrade. Telling you to dance on a fractured leg. Telling you how old to be."
Taras' eyes narrowed.
"...you're not really free, are you? Being a State treasure."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 11:34 pm (UTC)"No, of course I'm not free."
He paused, rubbing his shoulder absently.
"None of us are."
He frowned, shifting, stretching it out.
"There are different kinds of captivity. Everyone belongs to someone. even the ones who belong to themselves are beholden to what their own convictions and burdens hold them to. Or their own preconceptions, habits, infinite loops of pattern and circumstance. Trapped from the cradle, or at least somewhere along our path, we become that way."
Merkurii paused again, rueful, considering the disjointed mouthful.
"Well. Not to be all...you know, Russian about it. What I ask myself every day is, am I freer than an ironworker, a miner, a member of the urban proletariat. And I am, in the ways that matter. As an artist, an object, a treasure, they overlook words and deeds and thoughts. As a pet of the State, I'm indulged. Tolerated."
He shrugged.
"And I'm left to do what I love."
Merkurii flicked his eyes to the window once more. Water continued to sheet down the glass, undissuaded.
"Why?" he asked, obliquely. "Do you think you're free?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 12:21 am (UTC)He trailed off, his thoughts skirting around memory, thinking about it without letting himself dwell on the particulars.
The dancer was silent, patient, content to simply wait for Taras to elaborate, as if knowing he would.
"Things happened there and nobody cared. Murder and muzhelostvo, none of it mattered. But that wasn't freedom."
He tugged at the blankets, bringing them up closer around his broad shoulders.
Taras closed his eyes.
"If I think about that...not being able to shower, sometimes not being able to eat...this life, I have now, because of Isaev, this is being free. The things I do in exchange are very small, compared to what it was like there."
He rubbed his chest, fingers seeking the tiger's ink lines, tracing them lightly.
"You love what you do," he repeated, not quite a question. "You love it."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 05:49 am (UTC)He considered Oleksei's criminal past. His was a life wrought in blood and cruelty. It was hardly surprising he would see his current circumstance as the elysian fields by comparison.
"It sounds as barbaric as they always say. Casual brutality. It wouldn't even be a stranger there, would it."
Merkurii paused, and his tone shifted slightly.
"What small things, Captain, do you do in exchange?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 08:13 am (UTC)Taras rubbed the curved span of his pectoral with the palm of his hand. The nipple was tight and hard and scraped against his wrist.
He exhaled, quietly.
"Even the things he doesn't know he needs me to to do. Some of it isn't real pretty, like what I had to do you. Other things, too. Worse things. Uncivilized."
Taras' lip twisted.
"That's just the way it is. I do what needs to be done, doesn't matter what I think about it."
He snorted.
"I guess we're not that different after all, da? I have some leeway too. That comes when you're the one enforcing the rules."
Taras stretched under the covers, muscles taut, back arching. He could feel the cotton sheets brush against his bare skin and the coarse hair at his groin.
"You naked, comrade?" he murmured.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 09:41 am (UTC)"Da, pretty much."
He pulled aside the bath towel that had been draped over his thighs during his haphazard sprawl on Isaev's bed.
"There. Now I am."
A slight smile crept onto his lips.
"If I didn't know better, Captain Oleksei, I would think that question had an unwholesome intent behind it."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 05:41 pm (UTC)"But you do know better?"
He let his hand drift lower, settling over the hard ridges of his stomach.
"I was just...thinking about you. I wanted to talk to you. Things are confusing here. I've been thinking some strange things. I just wanted to have a normal conversation, with a friend."
Taras paused.
"I think you're a friend to me now, Barshai."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 08:29 pm (UTC)There was a hint of a soothing note in the words.
"We're almost colleagues, aren't we. There's a fraternity to that. Serving at the pleasure of the same man," he uttered, wryly.
"Not in the same way, of course."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 09:05 pm (UTC)He fell silent for a few moments.
"Not in the same way."
But in a way, it was, Taras thought, though he was at a loss to understand exactly how. There were differences, obviously, in their status. But in the end, Barshai was right. They still served. He knew that what he and Barshai were to Isaev was different than what Liadov was to Isaev, and thinking about that made an now-familiar ache twinge in his jaw.
"Barshai...you remember before, when I said I didn't understand what's between Isaev and Liadov? I feel like I'm starting to, now, only it doesn't make it better."
He let out a short breath.
"It makes it worse," he whispered.
Taras shifted in bed, rolling to his side, the mattress giving slightly under his muscular bulk.
"He's coming back. Liadov, I mean. He's coming back to Leningrad. I thought you should know that."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 10:00 pm (UTC)"Is he," he said, with a studied lack of inflection.
He frowned.
"I don't know much about him. I've only seen him a handful of times. I know he's aware of me, but not the extent of my service to Major Isaev. The Major keeps me neatly confined to my own slice of his life."
Merkurii frowned.
"But it was always obvious to me that this was more than a colleague. The physical closeness of their bearing, if I happened to see them walk across the street together. The expression on his face as he or the other detective would lean in close to converse. Easy. Unselfconscious."
Barshai paused.
"Why does it bother you?" he asked, curiously. "Because it's queer?"
"...It's over now, you know," he added, evenly.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 10:59 pm (UTC)Barshai spoke with quiet conviction, but in this case, Taras knew he was wrong. Not from any particular assumption or miscalculation. Barshai was too smart for that. Just from lack of information.
It occurred to Taras that Isaev had always been like that, keeping people who were close to him confined to different parts of his life. That was how Taras had never known about Liadov, and why he had only met Andrusha once, and even that was not official. Somehow Lasha managed to balance it all without any effort. He was something different to all of his familiars, yet he was always still Lasha.
Taras grunted, in the negative.
"...it's not the kind of thing that can be over. They're still angry, da. You should have seen them in the mess hall this morning. It looked like they were going to hit each other. Fight."
Or fuck, Taras thought, scowling, but even as he thought it, his own response was immediate and visceral, centered in his loins.
He could feel his cock hardening, in response to his emotion. He reached down to touch it.
"But Liadov's going back to him, eventually. There's no question. And both of them know it."
Taras inhaled, his breath a little harsher, rougher and more aggressive.
"Does that bother you?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 11:26 pm (UTC)He paused, uncertain.
"Oh, god," he murmured, running his hand back through his hair, shaking his head. "No. No, I can never feel anything about his...his associations."
Barshai exhaled, softly.
"I killed his mother. I have no place to feel anything but...fortunate."
The slightly leaden feeling his chest was easy to disperse.
"Even if it did bother me," he said, voice gaining an anchor in pragmatism, "I know it won't impact my circumstance. I existed in the Captain's life before his partner left, and I exist in the Major's now that he's gone."
A fringe of drying chestnut hair brushed his lips as he lowered his head.
"That won't change."
A small pause, and Barshai frowned, suddenly.
"How about you?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 12:57 am (UTC)"It'll change. For me, it'll change."
His chest ached vaguely, as did his cock, which still felt sensitive from rubbing off with Liadov. He stroked it nonetheless, knowing there was a point when the pain would be overwritten by pleasure.
He gritted his teeth.
"I'll be in his life, I'll take care of things for him, but...I don't think it'll be the same. I don't see how it can be."
Slow strokes now, but still firm enough to hurt. He exhaled with soft rasps, light and rhythmic.
"All the things we do together now...he'll probably be doing them with Liadov. Tea before work. A drink after. Going to the opera. Shit like that."
Taras jerked himself a little harder, prolonging the burn.
"I just...I don't know. But I don't hate Liadov anymore, either. That's what makes it worse."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 01:12 am (UTC)He exhaled softly, rubbing his chest with an absent hand.
"Why would this Liadov even come back, if they're still at each others' throats...and...how can it not be over?"
Barshai felt a distinct sense of solitude, suddenly. There was no sound from the living room beyond the door. He surmised that Khartov had mellowed out with his vodka, switched off the television and fallen asleep on the plush rug without his shirt.
The large bed was empty without the bulk of another. Empty of breath and presence.
"You've talked to him? Beyond the parameters of the investigation?"
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 06:37 am (UTC)Taras flipped over onto his back, letting his hand still.
He bit out low words, quiet and vehement.
"I had to. I needed to know...who he was. What he was like. What he was thinking."
His jaw tightened.
"If he was going to be a problem. Something I would have to take care of. But...he's not."
It was strange, Taras thought. It usually seemed like Barshai had all the answers, but now he sounded almost as confused as Taras.
He frowned, falling silent for a few moments, listening to Barshai's breathing.
"Isaev's father called Liadov back to Leningrad," he said, more softly now. "Liadov doesn't have much of a choice. He has to go. And with him that close, one day he and Isaev will..."
He fell silent for a moment, and let out a breath.
"They'll be comrades again," he finished.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 07:33 am (UTC)He let the thought proceed unfinished. There wasn't really a word for what Isaev was. Unless it was.....
"...complicated."
Merkurii paused.
"You say Liadov isn't a problem. Then...what...is he like?" he asked, hesitantly.
He had struck Barshai as vainglorious. High-minded. But that had only been an impression by sight, with nothing more to support it.