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"John, I want to have sex with you."
Nik watched John choke on his slug of beer, an eyebrow raised. By the time John had finished coughing, his eyes were rimmed red and his face was flush. "Fockin' 'ell, Nik. Jus' like that, eh?"
A line appeared between Nik's eyebrows as he squinted suspiciously. He had always believed himself to be quite smooth, with a respectable number of notches to his belt, but while John seemed to reciprocate sometimes, it never came to anything. Just homoerotic banter. "I have been flirting, making passes, but none of it seems to be getting through. I thought I would try a different method."
John wiped the beer from his mouth with the back of his wrist and scrutinised the half-empty bottle. His fingertips tapped the glass rhythmically, and for a foolhardy second, Nik thought he might be considering the offer seriously. "Naw, Nik, ya don't want that."
"I do," Nik replied. "I would like... more, too. A date."
John shook his head. "Ya don't understand, there ain't nothin' below the belt that'd interest ya." He shifted in his stool, his face collapsed in a scowl. "Truth is I weren't born right. Deformed."
Nik's mouth opened and closed like the guppy in John's kitchen fish tank at home. He had thought about how good it would be to fuck John on the counter next to it more times than he could count.
"Ya know, I take medication for it, but a gay fella like you needs it all there, right? A real man. So it's a non-starter."
"John, there are many ways we could..."
"Answer's final, Nik. S'not somethin' I'd put anyone through. Least'uv all a decent bloke."
Nik deflated against the bar. "Of course."
They sat in silence for a while, Nik staring at the tumbler between his hands while John watched the frothy bubbles pop on the inside of his bottle.
Nik bit the inside of his cheek and glanced up. "So, you have never..."
"Once. I was a teenager. Hated every minute."
"I am sorry to hear that."
John shrugged. "Maybe in another life 'll get t' see what all the fuss is about." He tapped his fingers against the bottle again, and then lifted it to knock the rest back. When he stood, he didn't meet Nik's eye. "Listen, got reports to finish. Morning briefing's at 0700."
Nik wanted to call him back. Apologise properly. But John was already leaving the bar, his shoulders slouched forward, hands deep in his pockets. It was so out of character that it bothered Nik enough to ring up Laswell half an hour later.
"Nik, it's late..."
"Sorry, I... It is about John."
"Is he okay?"
"I am not sure."
Kate closed whatever she had been working on in the background and gave Nik her full attention. "Shoot."
"I... propositioned him. And he turned me down."
"I'm sorry, Nik. He might need some time to think about it. You know what he's like with this type of thing. And he's always been a bit... shy." It sounded strange to hear Laswell use the word 'shy' for John Price, expert in the field, thrice decorated for valour.
"I am not sure he will. He said he was... born wrong."
Laswell's face hardened. "Mhm."
"He used the word deformed. I tried to assure him that I didn't mind, but I think I... I think he was upset."
"He used the word deformed?"
"Da."
"Said nothing else?"
"No. Just that he was on medication for it but a gay man needs a real man, and--"
"That fucking asshole."
Nik blinked at the screen. This wasn't going like he thought it would either. "Shto?"
"Leave it with me. Give me until the end of the week, I know he's got a lot on. You deserve a proper--" she rotated her hand in front of the screen, searching for the right words, "--you deserve the full story. But it needs to come from him. He... He likes you a lot, Nik. He just hates himself more. Which is a truly breath-taking amount."
Nik frowned. John was hard on himself, of course; he had high standards. But he was pragmatic and self-loathing served no operational or personal purpose. "I feel like I have missed something important..."
"Not missed. You haven't been shown. But... yeah, ok, give me time. I'll... talk to him."
"Will he be okay?"
Laswell smiled gently. "Of course, Nik. He's just a grumpy, stubborn git."
Nik returned her grin fondly. "But our grumpy, stubborn git, no?"
"Yeah," she tapped at the keys, "get some rest. Let me play the wingman for once."
Nik nodded and the screen went black. Part of him wanted to go snooping; ask the lieutenant, perhaps Gaz. But he knew that John would almost certainly find out and that would risk any possibility of getting him on a date. Nik closed the laptop lid and sighed. Well, John was worth the wait.
Nik knew he shouldn’t be listening.
He had always seen fit to remove himself from sensitive conversations that involved intel he should not be privy to. It was an issue of respect. Laswell and John always told him what he needed to know, and John often went beyond even that, such was their bond.
But this time, he had lingered by the door. Perhaps it was something in their tone, or the way his last private conversation with each of them had ended in a riddle he simply couldn’t untangle. Either way, he leaned in close to the door now, swallowed the guilty tug in his chest, and listened.
“Deformed. That’s the word we’re going with, is it?” Laswell.
“S’true. No one’s ever pushed beyond that last few times people’ve been interested.” John.
“Those people weren’t Nik. He’s worried about you. He thinks you have some horrific physical issue that has left you, I don’t know, damaged for life…”
“Don’t I? Sounds accurate.”
“For fuck’s sake, I thought we were past this pity party crap.”
“Ain’t a pity party. It’s reality. Now, if yer done messin’ around in my private life, I’ve got reports to do fer your guv’nor, Kate.”
“The concept of the world and everyone in it that you’ve built in your head isn’t reality, John. It’s fiction written by a wounded heart to protect itself.”
“Get that one from the missus?”
“She thinks you’re an asshole too.”
“Not a lot’s changed there then…” John sounded tired.
“You need to tell him the truth.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I can’t think of a single reason to shut Nik out on this.”
“‘ve done it all before. I tell people, an’ suddenly every’fin’ changes. The way they look at me, searchin’ for some kinda specific fuckin’ tell, which is suddenly so fuckin’ obvious and why didn’t they realise before. The way they don’t trust my judgement ‘nymore, the way they bloody talk to me and it becomes hard to remember how t’ refer t’ me, I lose ‘em as a friend “ John’s voice grew increasingly angrier as he continued, until he was seething at her through gritted teeth. “You fuckin’ know all this. Ya watched it fuckin’ well happen.”
Nik’s heart hammered in his chest. He couldn’t think of a single thing John could do to make him see him any different; his respect, his love, ran too deep. Like veins of precious minerals embedded deep in a mountainside.
“So, you’re going to go through life pushing people away. Not letting them get too close because they might turn out to be assholes like some others back when you were young and stupid, but let them get just close enough that they serve their purpose.” Laswell sounded more irritated than she had at the beginning.
“Yeah.”
“Even the ones that have proven their devotion to you in blood.”
“Blood means fuck all when it comes to shit like this. You know that. No love, no respect, no bloody devotion, is unconditional. An’ this is one condition people can’t overcome.”
“You’re a coward.”
“S’got me this far,” John said, his anger faded back to tired resignation. “An’ don’t Nik deserve more ‘an that? Real man, not some broken freak.”
“He deserves the truth, and the chance to make up his own mind. You’re insulting his character by believing he will turn on you. You know him better than that. And I’ve seen the way you look at him, John. I’m not fucking blind, and neither is he.”
There was a long pause. Nik rested his palm gently against the door, followed by his forehead. There was no sound, but the longing that threatened to pull him right into the room tugged hard around his heart.
“I can’t lose ‘im, Kate,” John croaked. If Nik hadn’t been close, he would have missed it. He had never heard John sound so defeated. “Not Nik.”
“I know,” Laswell replied. “But you will if you don’t trust him. You need to tell him. You need to let him decide.”
“An’ what if he turns?”
“He won’t.”
“But–”
“John. We both know that’s not what you’re worried about.” Nik heard her footsteps, the rustle of some papers. “Some things can’t stay as daydreams or they turn to bitterness. Take the risk.”
“Right.”
Nik left the office door and walked silently down the hallway. The conversation had raised more questions than it had answered, but one thing was for sure; John didn’t want to lose him. John wanted him but was denying them both for some reason. A reason he saw as significant, that had hurt him in the past.
It had sounded like Laswell had talked him round, but only time would tell. Nik stared at the ceiling of his small room until dawn. You will not lose me, John.
Sprawled on his back beneath his helo’s belly, Nik patted the floor blindly in search of the wire schematics he was working from. Even though he could do most of the mechanical maintenance himself, he had never been the most confident electrician. One too many shocks as a boy when he had been experimenting with his father’s radios.
It was as he squinted at the circuit diagram above his face, the wires dangling out of the Black Hawk’s underbelly like the entrails of a wounded animal, that two familiar Salomon boots appeared in his peripheral vision, the laces lashed around the back of the heel with a double bow at the front.
“Nik, y'under there?”
“Da, captain,” Nik replied, dropping the diagram to his chest. In the next breath, two tumblers in a worn hand appeared in front of the boots, glass rattling as John shook them.
“Nightcap?”
Nik smiled and began the inelegant back shuffle out into the open as the boots walked away to give him space. When he stood, he was met with what was now a comforting and familiar sight; John Price, de-boonied and shemagh-less, the top buttons of his shirt open and a smouldering cigar between his teeth. Off duty and ready to while away the evening hours together as they had done many a time.
Sometimes they didn’t talk. They might play cards or smoke in companionable silence, watching the night crawl in over whatever base or hellish landscape they found themselves in, harsh liquor burning their throats and stomachs, numbing their minds enough for a restful sleep. But as Nik wiped off his hands on a nearby rag and joined John on the flatbed of his Black Hawk, their boots braced against her skis, he got the sense tonight would be a talking one.
John passed his cigar over and poured two full glasses of the whiskey he’d brought. Nik held the smoke in his mouth, allowing it to roll over his tongue and teeth so he could savour the flavours, before releasing it in a slow exhale. “Mmm, Padron?”
“Got it in one,” John said, and Nik tried not to stare at his smile. He liked it when John was relaxed enough to show his teeth. It meant he was comfortable. This smile was closed, cheeks perking up to make room for it, but John’s gaze lingered, like he was savouring the sight of Nik smoking just as Nik had savoured the cigar. Nik didn’t like the sadness sitting in the shadows of his eyes. “S'the espresso, right?”
“And the nutmeg.” Nik handed it back in exchange for his whiskey glass, and they drank the first sips together. The cigar was nice, the whiskey less so, but Nik would drink literal paint thinner if it meant spending time at John’s side. He waited for John to speak, gazing off into the fading evening beyond the hanger doors.
John took another draw from his cigar and his words came out in puffs of silvery grey. “At the bar the other week, I… uh, I owe you an apology.”
“You do not need to apologise for declining my offer,” Nik said, pausing over the rim of his glass to snatch a glance to his right. John was staring at his lap, cigar slanted through his fingers, both hands cupped around his tumbler.
“Naw, it’s not that. It’s… I didn’ tell ya the whole truth, Nik. An’ a mutual friend pointed out that I was bein’ a bit of a…”
“Muppet?”
“Fuckin’ arsehole was her actual phrasin’.”
Nik recalled the conversation he’d overheard from outside John’s office, and smiled ruefully. It was then that he heard it. The barest shuddering breath as John steadied himself. It was a noise completely alien to the man next to him; John was stalwart, decisive. He was impossible to shake. “John?”
“Nik, when I said I were deformed, it… uh, s'a bit more ‘an that. It… uh…”
There was that tremor again. So very faint. A coil of tension had wound through John’s shoulders, and he was looking off into the evening. Nik followed his gaze, giving him some space to gather his confidence.
“I weren’t… born like this. Like I am now. The… uh, medication I take, it makes me like this, an’ if I were t’ stop, then… uh, I’d… not look like this.”
“I… don’t understand,” Nik murmured.
“Fuck, this never gets any fuckin’ easier,” John rasped, scrubbing his hands over his face. He drew in another of those shaky breaths and Nik realised John wasn’t just anxious, he was terrified. “Nik, I weren’t born a man, alrigh’? I had to make myself one. I… don’t… I don’t have a prick like yours, or a set of bollocks, I… Nik, I were born female, an’… I, uh… I ain’t got what yer need. That’s… that’s why I said no.”
Nik blinked at John in disbelief. He narrowed his eyes at the bearded face cast in shadow as the daylight failed, and turned the information over in his head. Born female. Made himself into a man. Nik looked back into the evening and took another sip of whiskey before he replied. “You are transexual.”
John swallowed, squared his shoulders. He was expecting a fight and that made Nik’s heart ache. “Yeah… ’m one'uv those.”
Nik let the revelation sit between them. He drew in a deep, steady breaths and kept his posture neutral, allowing John to take a breath too as his body coiled up defensively. Like allowing a beaten shelter dog to realise the hand held towards it wasn’t curled into a fist. Eventually, John drew on his cigar instead, and Nik continued tentatively.
“Why did you say 'deformed’?”
“'Cause that’s the truth of it. Lookin’ in the mirror an’ seein’ ev'ryfin’ that god got wrong. On the outside, clothes on, I feel like me, but the moment I take off me keks, I… ’m still… that part ain’t, uh… it ain’t right.”
“Are you healthy?”
“Wot?”
“Are you healthy? Does it cause you… physical pain?”
“Naw, uh…” John’s cheeks reddened, “…s'all sound. Last I checked.”
Nik nodded. He took another sip of whiskey. “I have never been with a transsexual man before. I would need you to show me how to please you.”
John had been taking a drink at the time and choked on it. This was becoming a habit, Nik feared. He watched John put the glass to one side, hiding behind the slant of his forearm as he wiped his mouth. “S'not funny, Nikolai… Don’ be bloody cruel…” John looked down at his cigar as he said it, the hurt tight and raw in his tone.
“I did not make a joke.”
John stared at him, his blue eyes glistening in the dark. He wouldn’t cry. Nik had worked out by now that whatever wounds that had scarred over in John’s head made that difficult. But he was struggling. Really struggling. Nik took a chance. He reached out slowly to slide his hand over the top of John’s. There was a flinch, like John’s body had been ready for violence and couldn’t quite adjust fast enough for affection.
“You see yourself as… something deformed, but even with your own logic, I could not turn away. If you had been born as you wished to have been, and an operation had wounded you in a similar way, I would still want you, John.”
“But I… Nik, ’m not… ’ve never even shagged someone wiv all me kit off.” He was desperately clutching at straws, unable to comprehend the offer being laid out in front of him.
“That one time, you said…”
“I dropped me jeans and let 'im go at it, 'an I bloody well blubbered after, didn’t I? 'Cause it was… before.”
“Did he…?”
John yanked his hand away, irritated. “It weren’t rape. Don’t start.”
“John…”
“It weren’t, Nik. I was tryin’ t’ prove some'fin’ to meself an’ jus’ did the opposite.”
Nik nodded slowly. They sat in silence as minutes ticked by. When Nik looked up again, he saw John gazing longingly at the hand he had shrugged off, trying to be covert but failing. Nik turned it over, offering his palm, and John’s eyes flicked up, a little panicked in his vulnerability. “You haven’t had a partner since your sex change.”
“Fuckin’ 'ell, if the kids 'eard you talkin’ yer’d be bloody mobbed.” John sounded amused but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t fink yer allowed to call it that any more.”
Nik shrugged. “I am old man, with old words. Teach me new ones.”
“Yer askin’ the wrong transsexual.” John placed his hand into Nik’s, and Nik tightened his fingers around John’s calloused ones, savouring the strength and warmth in his skin. John’s shoulders eased as he spoke. ’“I get it wrong 'alf the time. ’m jus’… me, I can’t… My own 'ead is tough enough. Don’t bloody well belong anywhere, not wiv the rainbow crew, an’ not wiv everyone else.”
“You believed I would reject you.”
“I lost ev'ryone I ever cared about when I changed, Nik. Me entire family. An’ even now, people claim t’ support people like you 'til that support actually has t’ be some'fin’ beyond wavin’ a bloody flag.”
“You are, what is it, preaching to the choir.”
“Yeah, I… sorry. I know ya had yer own shit, an’…”
Nik didn’t know what possessed him.
Perhaps it was the fact that John looked so raw, broken open and trying to gather the pieces into an order that made sense to someone else outside his head. Perhaps it was the warmth of their hands wound together, John’s thumb was occasionally sweeping across the hairs on his wrist. Perhaps it was the shared experience, a moment of connection over such a specific and intimate loss.
He leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to John’s bearded cheek. John startled and turned to look at him, blue eyes impossibly wide, studying Nik’s like he was searching for the punchline.
“Are you okay?” Nik asked, worrying perhaps he’d overstepped too quickly.
“Yeah, uh… that were me first kiss, like.”
John’s accent had thickened. A combination of alcohol and being pushed so off kilter he had forgot himself.
“He did not even kiss you?”
John shook his head. The embarrassment written deep in the lines of his face. “It weren’t me finest hour, Nik.”
“Then that was not a first kiss.”
“Well, ’ve never…”
“Can I do it properly?”
“Properly?”
“Da. Properly.”
John scratched at the bristles on his jaw, and studied Nik’s lips. He wanted it. Nik could see it in the tilt of his eyebrows and the way he chewed on the inside of his lower lip. But it wasn’t just a kiss, was it? Nik remembered what Laswell had said in John’s office. How people had failed him before, perhaps at his most vulnerable. Young and stupid.
“Nik, I…”
“I don’t have the answers. And it will not be perfect. But I want to try to be better where others have failed you,” Nik said, trying to choose his words carefully. When he leaned in, he felt John’s stuttering breath against his lips and bumped their noses together. “Vot moyo serdtse, solnyshko. Ono polno lyubvi.”
It was John that closed those final millimetres, mouth closing on Nik’s with held breath, like a man about to submerge in cold water. His chapped lips were soft, a little dry, tinted with whiskey and expensive cigar smoke. It was so timid. A sharp juxtaposition to the peerless captain that commanded the field without fear.
This was an area of John’s life he kept buried deep because it felt so far beyond his control, so vulnerable. He had been failed so many times, probably by people he believed would have his back; the knife twisting deep, breaking off parts of him each time.
But he had decided to trust Nik with those frail, broken pieces of himself, laying them out in a timid kiss, broad shoulders collapsing down into Nik’s arms as Nik pulled the rest of him across his lap. He wanted to hold John close, to wrap him up so the world couldn’t reach him. It didn’t deserve him.
John’s booted heels squeaked against the floor of the Black Hawk, and his hands fisted the front of Nik’s shirt, a shake running the length of his torso. When Nik finally drew away, leaving a final kiss on his lower lip, John’s eyes were a little red. “You broken?” Nik asked.
“Oi, tha’s my bloody line,” John croaked. Nik raised an eyebrow and John swallowed, eyes flickering away, before he slowly nodded. There was a long pause as Nik drank in the gravity of the admission, and then John spoke quietly again. “You… uh, still want me?”
“Da, ot vsego serdtsa,” Nik leaned down to nuzzle his face into John’s hair and offer the whispered translation. “With all my heart.”
“Right… uh, then, I 'spose we could give it a go.”
Nik smiled, smoothing a hand through John’s hair as he sat up, admiring the glimmer of red as it caught the dim hanger lights. “I would like that.”