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“You got this from here?” Lester asks.
“Yeah, I’ll just walk him back to his office,” Yan replied.
Dmitry wasn’t exceptionally drunk. He had consumed enough alcohol to bring out the aspects of himself he normally kept hidden in dark corners and beneath shadows. It became noticeable once he started conversing with Cain without rolling his eyes. It became crystal clear when he’d spill innocent truths and information about himself. The funny thing was, it was only crystal clear to Yan. As someone who had high alcohol tolerance, Dmitry wasn’t one to lose his sense of self while drinking. To everyone else he was a relaxed version of himself, to Yan his guards were evidently down.
“Fancy some company?” he asked, attempting to disguise his anxious stance with nonchalant words.
Dmitry scanned his face. He wasn’t questioning or analyzing his offer, he was just observing him. “Always. Walk me to my room?”
Yan ignored the lie behind the first word and walked beside Dmitry, joining him.
The silence rang loudly in Yan’s ears, his hand fidgeting around the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He gave in and pulled it out alongside his lighter.
“Thought you got rid of them.” Dmitry watched as he lit a cigarette up and brought it to his lips.
Yan exhaled. “Am I tempting you?”
“More than you think.”
The rest of the smoke came out of Yan’s mouth with a chuckle. “Did your parents not warn you about bad influences or were you not listening?”
“Unfortunately for me, they never included you in the list of things I should be wary of.”
“For a general, I’d think you’d have better judgement,” Yan cocked an eyebrow.
Dmitry’s hands brushed over Yan’s, fingers untangling his cigarette and freeing it from his hold. Yan let it happen, unexpectedly in awe of the action.
“For a hunter, you’re squirming like prey.”
He briefly glanced at Yan’s hands. Yan’s own gaze followed and only then noticed the subtle tremble of his hands. When he averted his gaze back to Dmitry’s eyes, they were already on his, his lips wrapping around the cigarette and turning into a smirk.
Yan focused his attention back on their path as they neared Dmitry’s door. They walked in silence, interrupting only by Dmitry taking a final drag before returning the cigarette to Yan.
“Keep it,” Yan declined. Dmitry did not dare to think twice of it.
As they reached their destination, Dmitry started going over his pockets. His keys were missing. Yan stopped him before he could double check.
“Here.” The sound of metal on metal echoed in the hallway, Yan dropped the keys into the general’s hands. He didn’t get a response but a look of furrowed brows. “Snatched them earlier when you emptied your pockets. I figured you wouldn’t trust the keys of the base around them.”
Dmitry clutched the keys in his left hand, body leaning against the wall. His right hand reached for the cigarette between his lips and placed it in Yan’s gaping mouth. “Want to come inside?”
Yan could already see the danger hidden underneath his sentence. “Thanks, but I need to wash myself before bed. It’s been a long day.”
“In cold water?”
“Relaxes the muscles.”
“My room is the only one with hot water.”
“Nice, I gotta head back—“
“Use it,” Dmitry interrupted.
Yan’s eyes widened before he got hold of himself. “Pardon me?”
“Shower here. How long has it been since you had a hot shower?”
“That’s beside the point.”
They were already so close it was hard to tell Dmitry inched closer. “Use it. I insist. You walked me this far, you might as well get something out of it. Come in.” The keys twisted in the lock. “Who are you more scared of? Me or you?”
Yan’s eyes kept looking between the general and the open door. “I think you’re scared enough for the both of us.”
Dmitry locked eyes with him before stepping inside. “Close the door behind you.”
Yan followed him.
After providing him with towels, Dmitry left him alone to clean himself.
Yan’s face poked out the door. “Hey, do you mind getting out some clean bandages? If you have any, that is.”
Dmitry froze before registering his request. “Of course.”
By the time he was done, Dmitry was halfway through a glass of neat whiskey. Yan was wearing clean clothes, the kind the base provides them with. They were a bit tight on him, considering their small height difference but you couldn’t tell unless you were paying attention.
“They’re on the table,” Dmitry announced, sitting laid back on the couch, toying with the glass in his hands.
Yan took notice of it before making his way to where the bandages laid. “Didn’t you loosen up enough for the night?”
“I’m not in danger in here, am I?” Dmitry was quick to respond. “I doubt there’s more for you to know.”
Yan’s scars were exposed and Dmitry allowed himself to linger on them. He already knew Yan was hurt, if the bandages weren’t proof enough, then the scar on his face was. Witnessing the raw reality of it, however, was different.
“Do they hurt?” he asked.
The reply didn’t come immediately. Yan stayed silent as he wrapped his left arm, from his bicep all the way down to his fingers. “You get used to it.” He moved onto his right arm.
“You shouldn’t have to.” Dmitry’s focus stilled on him. “And that’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t exactly have another option,” said Yan. “If I kept weeping in pain, I doubt I’d get anything important done. If it doesn’t kill you—“
“It makes you stronger?”
“No. You endure it. No strength came from being put through this. Only pain and determination.”
“There aren’t many people who find it in themselves to be resilient like this.”
“Is this what you think it is? Resilience? Have I disguised my anger that well?” Yan questioned, his head tilted to the side.
“I doubt most people would believe that’s what guides the Demon Hunter.”
“And you’re most people?” Yan stepped closer once he was finished. “They title anyone ‘general’ these days.”
“There once was a time when I could confidently say I knew you. Now I mostly try to figure you out.”
“Time changes people. It changed you, too.”
“I lost two of my closest friends at the same mission. It’s hard to stay the same after that.”
Silence takes over.
“Friends,” Yan repeats, “Is that what we were?”
“Your return was one of the hardest things I had to digest.”
“I never left.”
It was a short time after his ‘death’, that the Demon Hunter made his first appearance. Dmitry never let himself suspect. The Demon Hunter moved like Yan, but he didn’t trust himself to recognize the signs.
“The Demon Hunter didn’t. You did.”
“Not to point fingers, Dmitry, but—“
The general almost shuddered upon hearing his name on Yan’s lips after so long. “When you were gone it was easier to forget. To pretend,” he confessed. “Sometimes I think I hate you because you’re a reminder of what I’ve done.”
“Would you rather I go away?” Yan was sitting on the coffee table opposite Dmitry, elbows resting on his knees and leaning closer towards his former general.
“I’d rather you had never left.” A confession heavier than simple words can bear. Yan opened his mouth to respond, to protest, to repeat he was in fact always around. “I’d rather you never left. Now it’s hard to tell when you take the mask off.” His position mirrored Yan’s, both men sitting the same way.
“Out of all people, I would think you would be the one to know when I’m plain and bare. In more ways than the others can imagine.” His tone was threatening. “You claimed I shift into prey. It’s because I once was. I was yours.”
“You would have done the same. If the responsibility weighed down your shoulders, you would have gone through with it, too.”
Yan chuckles, exasperated. “Perhaps you didn’t know me after all.” Sentence by sentence they were closing the gap. “My loyalties always lied with my people. Not the military, not the base. You prioritized them over us. That’s why you’re knee deep in guilt.”
“I learned from that, my rank is no longer higher than my team.”
“Good,” Yan spat out. “I hope this lesson was worth the cost of a person’s life.”
“Stop,” Dmitry spoke, fury laced all over him. “Too far. You’re taking it too far, hunter. I know I am at fault and, you might not believe it but, I have paid for my actions. I lived in constant torment and turmoil. You can blame me and have a place to store your anger, but I don’t have that luxury. This emotional torture will forever be tied to my own self and when I die it will be these regrets accompanying me to the afterlife. Nobody can escape themselves.” Word by word, Dmitry felt himself sobering up but he couldn’t find the power to stop. “I can still feel the weigh of that gun, even when my hands are free. Its ghost lays in my palm and haunts me along with the memory of killing you. I killed you both. And then I killed myself. I don’t think you realize that all three of us died that day.”
Blue eyes staring into brown, Yan held his gaze, not daring to look elsewhere. He wanted to escape this topic as much as he wanted to escape the memory. “What holds you back from saying my name?”
“What held you back from uttering mine?”
Too intimate, Yan thinks. This moment is too intimate. His name is too intimate. All they were ever scared of was this. Intimacy. And what it meant. What it would mean. And how different would everything be if they had breached that barrier.
“Yan.”
They were so close they could feel each other breathe. They were so close he physically felt Dmitry whisper his name. They remained still, too scared of what’s to come and too scared to disrupt it. Impossibly close and impossibly far. The perfect and the worst distance. Too much and not enough. And a gut feeling that this was the closest they would ever get.
Dmitry was the one to make a move.
Yan almost let him.
He turned his head to the side, just in time to avoid the collision. They pretended they didn’t almost close the distance between them. At least for the first few seconds.
Dmitry’s eyes asked all the questions his mouth didn’t. The most obvious one being ‘Why?’.
“I kissed you once before. Look where that got me.” He moved his mouth in such way that the metal clinked against his teeth and grabbed Dmitry’s attention. “All this time only to stand right back where we once stood.”
Radio sounds filled the room, coming from Dmitry’s pants. He reached for his pockets as Yan stood up. He searched for his coat as Dmitry mumbled ‘Over’ in the background.
“Yan—“
“Let’s not. First names are not for us. Familiarity doesn’t seem to suit us.”
“We still need to address each other.”
Yan disagreed, “We’ve been doing fine.”
Steps follow Yan as he makes his way to the door. “I’m heading to Donovan. Want me to walk you?”
“I’ll be fine. I wasn’t the one needing to be escorted.”
Dmitry gives him a slight shake of his head, a simple nod before they part ways. Everything they said and everything they almost did staying locked up in Dmitry’s room along with their past and the people they once were.