Pondering a cold war AU with an irresistible young soviet army officer Nikto stationed in 1960s East Berlin.
You're the daughter of a high-ranking soviet general who is stationed in the heart of the cold war in East Berlin. Sheltered and spoiled you're your father's greatest treasure. Representative duties are part of his deployment here as well, so regularly dinner parties with diplomats, politicians and other esteemed guests are held at the beautiful house you had been given when your family followed your father here from Russia.
The silverware is polished and your mother wears her best dress and a whole can of hairspray in her updo when a dinner is hosted for honoured officers of the division your father is responsible for. Soldiers in sharp full dress uniforms far from home and sent here to defend the iron curtain, their boots polished to a shine and their spines straight when they snap a salute to your father upon arrival.
You're used to those men in their olive green attire with those shiny gold buttons and the red rimmed caps. But one of them sticks out tonight.
A promising young officer your father informs when you're introduced, who joined his division just a few months ago after a glorious review from his previous deployment, ordered to defend the Motherland where his skills are most needed.
You shake his hand and he inclines his head politely, but the pair of sharp and glacial blue eyes is fixed on you, his hand enveloping yours just a second longer than would be appropriate before your father cheerfully calls for the first round of vodka of the night.
It doesn't need more for you to fall head over heels for him right there.
Your mother notices your stolen glances throughout the dinner and remarks with a tiny knowing smirk what a handsome young man this particular soldier is and how pleased your father would certainly be with a son-in-law like this. He's proven to be so helpful to the General since his arrival, an honourable comrade through and through. There will surely be more occasions to get to know him a bit more.
After the dinner though, the young officer doesn't immediately return to the barracks outside of the city with the others. His duty isn't fulfilled yet for today.
Changed into civilian clothing he meets up with another man in a small pub in the nearby small town. The locals are tipsy enough at this hour to pay no mind to the two strangers settling on a table in the corner with a beer.
He has visited the Generals house tonight, as it was arranged, met the wife and the daughter. Infiltrating the family further shouldn't be a problem as well as gaining the Generals full trust.
The other man nods thoughtfully and scribbles something into his notepad.
His new order is clear now:
Become an important asset to the General and gain the daughter's favour. Find a way to search the house for intel and gather compromising information from the daughter and the wife.
And if you find prove of the suspected ties to the western agressor, namely the Americans, or any treasonous activities by the General ā act accordingly.
The safety of the Motherland and all its brother states relies on you, comrade. Uncover the traitor.
---
@xoxunhinged that's your fault so please would you write this research-heavy fic for me thank you
You never think about them much afterwards. Your clients. Once their grubby cash is pressed tightly inside your purse, all thoughts of each liaison leave your mind like ripples fading on a still lake. Itās never personal. Always business.
Except for him.
Youāve heard it all. Had hardened soldiers sobbing into your lap for hundreds of dollars, paid by the hour for hearing their sins in some kind of perverse confessional. Even the most outlandish sexual requests have become slightly mundane. Thatās the natural course of your work, it doesnāt faze you. You enjoy it, the sex and the money.
But he wasā¦ different. Those stern, frigid eyes following you around his apartment. Almost stalking, akin to a hunter across some deserted wasteland where there is nowhere to hide. He camouflaged it well, his desire. The sharp edge of it balanced on a point, unbalanced yet somehow held in place by a gravity of his own making.
And the way he held you. As if you were precious, like it meant something. Itās been a very long time since someone held you like that. Palms cupped full of meaning, heart thudding steadily beneath your body. You hadnāt meant to fall asleep, honestly. But in spite of his general strangeness, heād made you feel safe. Perched in his broad lap, nested there as fragile, porcelain eggs might be guarded from predators.
Yet still, he didnāt call. Itās been three weeks and not a single word. But youāre very good at playing games. In this line of work ā you have to be. Sure, Krueger gave you his phone number, but youāve never chased work in your life. Actually, you thought you were better at not getting attached, though Nikto, the masked man who collects spent shell casings, lingers on in your thoughts.
Without any more interesting distractions, your purge of the memories of that night is unsuccessful, so youāre left in a peculiar sort of limbo that means your mind drifts back to thoughts of him long after you sink into bed to sleep.
Finally, on the day before a full month has passed, you get a text. The chime of your phone rings slightly on the kitchen counter, buzzing against the dull, grey-painted surface. The landlord special, complete with a chip from when you accidentally dropped a pan on it.
One eyebrow rises, then the other follows. Oh, he will see you! Will he! A strangely formal way to text a call girl surely, especially one who lulled him to sleep in her arms. Having thought that, he is a strange guy overall. Your curiosity is piqued enough that you cancel on one of your regulars, claiming a headache as the excuse, then drop him a breezy message stating youāll be over at 9:00 pm.
The response comes almost immediately.
You blink at your screen, part annoyed, part amused. The juice box you were pouring from remains suspended over the glass, the sunny orange liquid inside teetering near the rim of the carton. Heās blunt, but you wonāt pretend you donāt enjoy that at least a little bit.
Satisfied, you take a slug of juice and wait for a reply, lips curled into a small smirk. Thereās a low hum of electric excitement stirring in your chest, crackling its way into avidly watching him typing.
That, you suppose, will have to be some form of guarantee.
Inside his apartment, Nikto paces. Back and forth with no real destination, into his kitchen, back through the corridor and through the living room like a tiger walking the perimeter of an exhibit at the zoo. Back and forth. His rubber boots creak a little on the floorboards, hands leaving his pockets only to return there again with each second stride. Ruminating on whether this was a mistake, if he is weak in wanting to see you again, knowing that bitter possessiveness so recently awakened in him by Krueger's admission will not be easily tolerated.
Nikto grapples with it, has wrestled with it since he saw the wry smile curling Krueger's lips in the canteen. Like manna from heaven. Usually he wouldnāt resent Krueger at least; the man is as fucked as Nikto is in the morality stakes. But he does feel a certain kind of jealousy that rises purely from the spark of whatever it is you hold in him.
Some delicious lust you have provoked. Nikto was never able to quit smoking as a younger man, and now he is resigned to it. Perhaps he should resign himself to this also. An addiction of a kind, but one to flesh and blood as opposed to nicotine.
He daydreams frequently, stupid lucid fantasies that make the rancid and unfettered splinters of his personality drool. You, fat and round with children, playing housewife in a home he has built for you. You wear aprons and bake for him. Nikto regularly tears your skirts up in such dreamscapes to fill you with his seed, your soft thighs against his calloused palms; he leaves fingerprint bruises in the flesh.
Insatiable, like an animal. This greed has been awoken now and cannot be tamed. It burns to ashes in his mind each time; he exhausts it, only to start replaying the vision when his concentration slackens again. He saw a man tortured once by the deprivation of rest, eyes taped wide open in a bright room. This is how Nikto feels, his perfectly ordered routine cracked ajar, where he can no longer shut you out of his thoughts.
More than once, he has been tempted to kidnap you. Goaded by a particularly primal part of his brain that reasons you should be his to take. Nikto has earned you, in the way all outcasts feel they have pleasant company after a long time of solitude. He has suffered for his own sins and maybe some of yours also. You could learn to like it, and he has more than enough greasy assets to hide you off-grid somewhere. He could retire, see out his days between your legs instead of it finally being over on some dark back street on an op gone awry.
But caged birds do not sing, he knows this also. God, does he want you to sing for him, to say his name, whisper it like a confessional disclosure while the taste of your pussy clings to the roughness of his twisted mouth. Nikto wants you to whine, beg, make sweet cloying sounds in your throat coaxed there by him. He will never reach heaven, but there may yet be a glimpse of it here on earth.
Nikto closes his eyes, feels a pulse of adrenaline beat across the lids as he does so. Control is usually exercised so rigidly within his life that he feels almost drunk from the impulsiveness of inviting you. Briefly, in a flash of hazy energy, Nikto remembers the first taste of beer across his tongue.
A young, teenage boy sits on a battered red sofa, knocking the rim of the bottle on his own teeth with accidental nerves. Is that him? Or someone else he recalls? It is difficult to tell. So much of what happened before is buried within aliases and shapes he inhabited for only months at a time.
A muscle in his cheek pops as his teeth gnash. Frustration builds quickly in the gaps left where nothing further can be understood about that memory. The scar tissue covering him fused itself within his mind too, abysses where only blank emptiness resides between scattered recollections. Small incidents can trigger it, a smell or a noise; he is lurched back into the past without a map to navigate it, until he realises the present requires more immediate attention.
Nikto is a wanderer in his own thoughts. Uncertain of their origin, who they belong to. Whether it is him or another in each shard. His feet move endlessly forward from the point of his injuries, because the road behind him was impassable.
Unconsciously he has made you a touchstone, a thing to watch as a traveller roaming the desert might track the rays of the sun across sands. Life since he met you, since you consumed most of his waking and dreaming thoughts. It gives him a strange focus, when before only missions and the splinter of bone under his knuckles could do such a thing.
Nikto plans. He does not charge into any situation, knows somehow that he has never done this. The shadows are a more trustworthy companion than bravery; no one is ever what you believe them to be. Things must be carefully observed, details collected in a methodical manner, until you have as much of the picture as possible. After that you have little else to rely on but your own judgment. His has been wrong before. Terribly wrong.
He rubs a finger along his jawline, the part where the stubble of his beard will no longer grow evenly because the follicles have been scorched out, broken flesh reforming into something that covers the bone. It is never truly healed though; much of Nikto remains like that.
Maimed.
The sound hisses out of him before he can stop it, and Nikto twitches slightly from the tone. Itās true, he is damaged beyond repair, and he isnāt foolish enough to believe you would see past that. You would need a fat cheque even to tolerate him rolling up the edges of his mask; exposing the ravines of ravaged flesh on his jawline would likely frighten the wits out of you, and that isnāt the worst of it.
He could write you a big cheque in his less than perfect scrawl, but more than that, itās the look in your eyes he would hate to see. A small, vulnerable chime strikes his soul dead centre in a perfect bullseye at the vision of you recoiling in disgust ā and how could you not? That pretty mouth opening in horror, your nose wrinkling like something decaying has been unveiled before you.
He is decay personified into the shadow of what was once a man. A thing tortured and bruised, unrecognisable in many ways though still so gut-wrenchingly human all the same. It was enough to turn the stomach of several of the nurses that cared for him at the hospital ā a vivid reminder, the experience of laying heavily tranquillised while listening to them gag as they changed his bandages.
āEnough!ā The words are snarled from him, draining poison from a wound most poked and prodded at. āFor one night can we not be free of this!ā
Thereās a soft knock on the door and Niktoās gaze is suddenly focused by the noise. He checks his watch ā 20:00. For a second he debates not answering, maybe sliding your cash under the threshold and the worn floor, then retreating back to the bedroom alone.
What the fuck is wrong with him! Heās stormed buildings full of enemies, walked into pure chaos manifested with the air of someone browsing for groceries, looking for particular targets. But thisā¦ this is very different.
Slightly confused, standing in the hallway, you knock again. There arenāt any lights on inside that you can see; other than the faint glow of a fire escape light gleaming green overhead, itās completely dark.
Then, the door opens by a crack, and one imperious blue eye is revealed beside the peeling paintwork on the frame.
āHello you.ā
A purr is attempted through your words, but it slightly misses seductive and becomes squeaky around the edges. He doesnāt look pleased to see you, as if youāve inconvenienced him by coming here at the arranged time. A knot lodges inside your throat, and it becomes a little harder to inhale around it. Nikto just stares for what feels like a full five minutes while you try to keep your cool. They say you should stand up to a bear if it runs at you, make yourself appear bigger. And there is no bigger bear than the Russian currently filling the small space in front of you.
You wonder if heās going to let you in at all, then he relaxes slightly, stepping backwards so you can duck under one muscled arm. Heās wearing tight compression gear tonight, that same black, soft balaclava with loose threads. Fitted utility trousers that show off tree-trunk thighs. Faintly, you wonder if he ever relaxes. Throws on a T-shirt and jeans when left to his own devices. Probably not; he doesnāt look like the kind of man who takes time off.
Warily, he closes the door behind you and keeps his distance. Again youāre forcefully reminded of a wild creature, perhaps a panther ensnared in a small space when it was used to roaming the jungle. He looks uncomfortable even in his own home, in his skin itself. Like he longs to be set loose.
So you take the lead. Walking into the living room, which hasnāt changed at all since your last visit except this time there is no vodka bottle on the floor. You throw a few coquettish looks over your shoulder, which Nikto regards with frosty indifference.
Sinking onto the sofa again, you pat the seat next to you.
āSame again, lover?! Iāll try not to fall asleep!ā Still he stands, blue eyes narrowed as though heās irritated by something. āOrā¦ are you going to fuck me tonight?!ā
You lean forward, exposing your cleavage in a well-practised move that usually loosens things up with tightly strung clients.
āWe have all night, after all. Tell me your fantasies and Iāll tell you mine??ā
His mask shifts, like heās raising a brow.
āYou are always trying this hard?ā
āOh, I bet I can make you hardā¦ā You grin. āIāll try very, very hardā¦.ā
āEnough,ā he snaps suddenly, so you blink, taken aback. āEnough of this shit.ā
āWhat shit?ā
āYou. Your shit.ā Nikto is glaring now. āThis porno chat may work with others ā but it will not work on me.ā
He takes a step closer and all the air is knocked out of you in a single heartbeat from his sheer breadth encircling your field of vision.
āYou think I am so desperate for you to pretend?ā Nikto leans nearer still. āPretend with the others. But not in here. Not to us.ā
His voice is so low, pitched like itās being dragged through gravel twice over. It rumbles as thunder does, and close to your ear itās deeper still. You genuinely had thought youād seen it all at this point; clients usually do you the courtesy of slipping into your role in their lives. Honesty wasnāt on the table for Nikto to take, yet he demands it easily, effortlessly, until you feel rather more fragile than you usually do in these situations.
āExcuse me. But you do realise how I earn my living?ā
Niktoās scowl becomes violently apparent even through the mask.
āDa. You do as your customer says. And now your customer says drop the act. So you will do it.ā
Heās certain; it truly is just like staring into the face of something untameable. You feel off-balance, out of kilter and without your usual reins of control.
You consider leaving. Getting the hell out of there. Though no small amount of intrigue has been stirred up by that laser-focused attack on your bedside manner.
āWhat the fuck do you want then, hm?ā Showing no fear is crucial when caught in the territory of the beast. āTo cuddle me all fucking night long again? Or take out all that pent up anger by behaving like a cock, instead of using it?ā
It comes out far more snidely than you had intended, but Nikto barks out a laugh. Unnerving, a sound you hear in the dead of night that you pretend not to, one that makes you draw the covers higher over your head.
āBetter. That is the truth now, isnāt it.ā He sinks onto the couch beside you in a fluid motion, while you watch him with faint surprise. āThat is the real you, the one with guts.ā
āSo what? You want to talk? Is that what it is?ā
āI did not say that.ā
āWell, what then!ā
āThere is no agenda.ā He rolls his head wearily back into the headrest, while his hands rest upon his thighs. "Talk. Do not talk."
āAnd if I want to fuck!ā
āThen I will fuck you,ā Nikto replies simply.
No one has ever called your bluff quite so successfully.
Heyyy, so this is SO random but I just read your bioā¦ are you German? Iām this prob sounds so so dumb but as a German myself I was just shocked hahahaā¦ you donāt have to answer if youāre not comfortable, donāt feel pressured.
Anyways, I love your Nikto stuff and Iām so happy I get to read about him since thereās like NO posts about himš¤
(Switching to English so no one feels left out of the conversation in this public ask)
Yes I'm German! Hallo dear fellow citizen! š
And thank you so very much for your words and the lovely comments you left behind under my posts, it's truly the best to know that people actually enjoy what I put on here. I cherish each comment, reblog or like and it's wonderful to hear peoples thoughts and feelings about the story!
And I agree, there is never enough Nikto here (or anywhere)! Especially where he's just... A guy? I really enjoy it when a story explores his humanity beyond the persona he has created for himself.
He snapped a man's neck today with his bare hands and he felt no remorse. His assault rifle caused even more havoc through his hands and he didnāt think twice about it. He enjoys it in fact and people usually donāt like to hear that truth. Even among his comrades there are those who justify their actions with some grand morale, some sainted mission to use violence to do good, something he had sworn to do once too but he quickly learned that you don't become a good soldier by playing knight in shining armor. They are all liars, not man enough to admit how good a fight feels.
He is trained to be a professional at violence and he isnāt supposed to enjoy it? He spent his life perfecting his aim, sharpening his senses to threats and learning the proper tactics to meet them without feeling satisfaction when his bullet hits his target? Is a boxer being condemned when he says he enjoys his fights? If he would dread every pull of a trigger he would never get anything done during missions and never receive the sweet adrenaline rush that the certainty of a successful kill gives him.
Itās an uncomfortable truth, but humans love violence and so does he.
He always loved it. Fistfights in schoolyards or on a night out when he was young, brawls with other conscripts in the army when they got a bit too cocky for his liking. Nothing beats the feeling of having won a fight. As he aged, his opponents evolved from lanky teenage boys to seasoned assholes with guns and knives and he answers their attempts to kill him in equal measure.
Could someone like him exist in your light? He will return tomorrow and you asked him to tell you once heās back after that evening in your kitchen. You allowed him to kiss your cheek before he left.
Surely you could find a much better man than him. One who is civil and presentable and home every night. Someone who could entertain you with stories of travels or interesting hobbies and not tales about near death experiences or the organised chaos of a battlefield. But for some reason you seem to like him, even now that you experienced him in the flesh.
Who is he to question this?
He could try and domesticate himself a bit more for your sake, play house with you a little when heās not on deployment. Never did he imagine that this long suppressed wish for a home could become true, but then you suddenly fell into his lap. He should seize this opportunity, it might be the only one heāll ever get.
And arenāt you just absolutely perfect? No need to hide his profession, you know very well what he is and what he does. You saw his mangled face and didnāt bolt. You let him kiss your cheek even. Would you let him kiss other parts of you as well? Itās been a long time since he was with someone he didnāt pay for the company, but he would do his absolute best for you. Heās bred to excel in things, to effect performance is deeply ingrained in him as a soldier and like he perfects his aim he would study and practise until heās the perfect tool for your pleasure.
He could be useful in your home too, he thinks. Fix whatever needs fixing, carry heavy grocery bags for you, make sure no one around causes you trouble.
He should man up and offer you that. No, better show you that he deserves your company and allowing him to linger would be beneficial for you.
Had you not been so adorably persistent that day in the park, he would've ended it and never looked back. But you ordered him to walk around the lake with that beautifully certain set of your brows and because he's a good soldier he obeyed. And if he hadn't, he wouldn't have spent that soul-caressing domestic evening in your kitchen a week later.
Providing for you felt natural that night, watching you eat what he brought satisfying like a job well done, coaxing out some primal instinct that makes him want to purr contently.
So who is he to question you?
Apparently you know better what he needs than he does himself. God has left him, but maybe he could build a new doctrine to guide him around you instead.
You said you wanted to know when he's back from deployment. He will make sure you do.
ā
Your kettle makes a clicking sound and the boiling water in it bubbles merrily. You pour the hot water into your cup, the dried tea leaves soaking it up instantly and the now familiar scent of those smoky leaves caresses your senses, your evening ritual for the past weeks. Itās the last cup you got out of your pack of Russian caravan tea and before you toss the empty packaging into the trash you hesitate for a second but then it joins the yoghurt cups and banana peel in there.
Youāve been thinking about him nonstop since he left that night. And youāve never been so torn about anything.
You canāt deny that you have a fat crush on this odd man, youāve come to terms with this by now. This evening in your kitchen had been the last straw for your poor little heart. When he so gently dressed your small cut for you with his brutish hands, you felt like a princess succumbing to the rogue charm of a robber knight. Every guy you wouldāve deemed cute before now just seems like a boy in comparison to Andreās masculine certainty and enticing mystique. When he kissed your cheek on your doorstep you were ready to risk it all right there and then but now that you had three weeks to think you feel a strange uncertainty that makes your stomach churn uncomfortably.
When you force yourself to take off your rose-coloured-glasses and look at it logically, Andre might not be the right man for you. The mystery that surrounds him suddenly feels dangerous rather than intriguing, you still know so little about him and you're not sure if this will ever change. You remember the times he lost his temper on the phone and the thought of witnessing that in person makes you scared now that you know how strong and capable he is.
One night even, your thoughts spiraled and suddenly you sat on your laptop looking up divorce rates with military spouses and then even crime statistics regarding army personnel before you shut every tab youāve opened in a hurry again and made yourself a cup of Russian caravan to calm down again.
He isnāt a bad person, youāre sure of that. He is just a different breed than you, he walks a world that you donāt inhabit and that you will never be able to understand entirely. You are different. Too different?
On top of it all it feels like youāre trying to squeeze him into a shape that he will never fit in. It was you who asked him to meet in person and then insisted on the walk through the park when he was clearly uncomfortable with it. Your crush turned you selfish and made you frantically cling to every bit of him you could get a hold of. You are a fool.
How could you ever think you're the right woman for a man like him? Andre doesn't need some clingy little office mouse who romanticises him as some mysterious action hero and would endlessly pace her apartment whenever he's gone on deployment.
This man belongs in the wild and you've been attempting to coax him into your trap and turn him into a lap dog.
It would be better for the both of you if you let him free.
You inhale deeply, savouring the wonderful scent of the tea that will forever be connected to him now. Herbs and smoke, warm masculinity, capable strong hands and that boyish mischief in those impossibly clear blue eyes.
You will miss him terribly.
A light drizzle patters on your living room window and you settle deeper into your sofa, the tea warming your hands and the light from a news report on the TV makes shadows flicker on the walls.Ā
When you checked Andreās file at work yesterday, it said his deployment was still ongoing. You will ask him to meet up with you once he is back and tell him that you will leave him be from now on, that you are too different and that you will cherish the time you spent with him forever.
There are some sorrowful tears threatening to gather on your lash line when the ring of your doorbell startles you. For a second you want to ignore it, you're not expecting anyone at this late hour. But then the bell rings again and you sit up straight, your pulse starting to flutter on the base of your throat.
On tip toes you sneak through your hallways as silent as you can, not wanting the visitor to know you're behind the door. Like Andre had told you, you always double checked that your door was closed properly after you came home in the evening. Another shrill ring and you look through the spyhole where you see a broad chest in a dark jacket in the dimly lit hallway outside.
You consider calling the police for a split second, but then the person leans down and one crystal clear blue eye comes into view.
āIt is just me, dushenka. You can open.ā
His deep gravelly voice is muffled through the closed door but the second you hear it your hands fly up to unlock it.
He looks tired and his dark hair is slightly longer than it was when he left three weeks ago, stubble on his face where hair can still grow between the scars.
āAndreā¦ you're back!ā You gasp, gripping the edge of the door and the corners of his mouth twitch.
His answer is a small nod and a slightly crumpled bouquet of carnations wrapped in clear foil that he pulls from behind his back, the ones you find in sad buckets at gas stations.
They look a bit battered, the petals of the blush pink flowers slightly dried and brown on the edges already, one of them snapped and hanging by a thread on its stem.
āThat was all they had left at this hour.ā He says with an apologetic shrug and you swallow down the lump that has formed in your throat.
āThey're perfect.ā You croak and instead of doing the sensible thing and letting him go, you throw your arms around his neck and press your lips against his.
