Archive of Our Own ^beta

She’d been stood by the door not 15 seconds before she heard Ivan call out to her.

“You’re not gonna come in?”

She could hear the lilt of a smile in his voice even with his back turned to her, shoulders hunched over several complex mechanisms and weapons that had been pulled apart and scattered haphazardly across the table he stood at.

Anya started. She thought she might’ve been able to observe in silence a little longer before he noticed, although on reflection that was probably a bit too optimistic. Ivan had exceptionally good senses, and it was very difficult to do much without him knowing exactly what it was that you were doing. It was frustrating and unnerving at times.

“I don’t want to distract you,” she answered, hesitating, “I can come back later-“

“Nah, you’re fine,” he cut over the top as she heard the thump of tools hitting wood.

Anya took a tentative step inside. She had never really been in this area of the base, only once when Luka was giving her a tour and that had been a quick walk up and down the hall with a short explanation for every room he pointed to. It was where the soldiers would prepare for battle, he’d informed her. With both their armoury, training room and mechanics room within the same space, it made for the necessary easy access to their supplies since there was never very much time for pause - or so she’d been told. They’d moved quickly away from this area, and it was clear that it was something that Luka wasn’t all too comfortable with. Admittedly Anya wasn’t very comfortable at the thought either. She couldn’t picture him fighting, it seemed too violent for someone as kind as Luka.

She’d stayed away mostly because she had no reason to be there, but there was also a part of her that felt nauseous at the thought of seeing rows and rows of weapons stacked atop each other like items in a supermarket. She knew that both Ivan and Alexei (alongside a few others she wasn’t as familiar with) spent time in the mechanics room. She’d seen them both on separate occasions, disappear around the corner of the hall, only to reemerge a few hours later, the former often sporting a face coved in oil smudges. She'd been surprised at Alexei when she’d first noticed - he’d never been particular technologically skilled. Perhaps he was reviewing rather than creating. Anya didn’t want to ask, his presence was always much colder than it used to be, as if she were disturbing him rather than conversing.

Despite her aversion to this particular area of the base, today, when her boredom started verging on the edge of cruelty, seemed to be the exception. She’d been back and fourth in her head about it for a good fifteen minutes, shifting her weight between each leg at the entrance of the hall, peering down at the long stretch of earthy walls and sharp corners. Morbid curiosity had soon gotten the better of her, and it wasn’t long before she’d found herself padding across the concrete floor, wringing her hands together with every room she peered into. Several turns and twists had led her past a door that she’d realised wasn’t entirely closed. The door in question had caught her attention when Anya had heard the sound of a radio from within. It had been playing an old song that she’d thought she recognised - something with a lot of guitar. It filtered through the crack between the door and the frame, and Anya’s chest had fluttered pleasurably at the sound; it had been so long since she’d heard music. Anya had then toed her way closer, curiosity encouraging her to sneak a look inside as she gently pressed against the wood to widen the gap. Her attention peaked all the more when she’d caught a flash of red hair further in.

Ivan turned to face her, leaning against the table with his hands braced either side.

“You take a wrong turn, freckles?” He asked lightly.

“Not quite,” she said, letting the door half close behind her.

The mechanics room was clearly one of the larger rooms. Similar in size to the infirmary, it stretched and turned, obviously built into every spare inch of space around the other surrounding rooms. Rather than being lined with beds and medical equipment however, this one was lined with tables stacked with metal parts and numerous boxes labeled messily in black ink, long wires pulling behind surfaces and into plug sockets. The light bulb above, like the others in the rest in the base, was suspended by a chord of wire, and illuminated the room in a warm yellow that cast flickering shadows against the walls like soot from a fire. The floor beneath them was cleaner than she expected, aside from the odd screw or stray instrument. It was much more pleasant than the other areas she’d looked into.

He brushed a curl out of his face, “Were you looking for me?”

There was an brief silence where Anya was distracted by the way Ivan’s face was doing something weird, as if holding back a grin.

“No…”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Everly said I have the day off today and I thought I’d look around instead,” she elaborated, her eyes landing on a tin full of something she didn’t recognise the name of as her eyes wondered her surroundings. “I’ve never really been to this part of the base.”

He nodded, “You wouldn’t have, most of its weaponry.”

“I noticed,” she replied, “for lack of resources you sure have a lot of ammunition.”

He shrugged indifferently, “Alexei likes to make sure we’re stocked.”

She frowned, fingers picking at her sleeve in thought. Ivan seemed to notice her shift in mood, and added shortly afterwards: “It’s not exactly nice but it’s a necessary evil I suppose, its just how it works.”

The radio filled the following silence. Talk of war never felt natural between them, there was always an uncomfortable undercurrent of words and thoughts left unspoken, a reminder of their last conversation about that particular matter. She took a step into the room, unconsciously tucking her hair behind her ear and shifting the subject with a little less finesse than she would’ve liked.

“Have… have you eaten yet?”

Ivan, who seemed grateful for the change in topic, shook his head, “Not yet.”

She frowned again, “I can get you something if you’re too busy.”

There was another pause as he looked at her, one that allowed for the tension in the room to dissipate into relaxed camaraderie, “I’ll get something later, Alexei asked me to update a few pieces for him.”

“Is that what you’re doing right now?” Anya asked, leaning to the side to peak around his back.

He twisted to glance briefly at his work, “Of a sorts, I got a little distracted though.”

“Can I see?”

His lips twitched a little as he crossed his arms over his chest, sinking his weight further onto the table.

“Why? You want a go?”

Anya’s eyes met his, “Could I?”

Apparently this wasn’t the expected answer, because the shadows on his face had stuttered just so, and she could tell the features below had faltered. She tried not to fidget as Ivan considered her - there was always a fierceness to his gaze, as if he were scrutinising you, that made it difficult not to want to move out of it. It was another few short seconds before he dropped his arms and ran a hand through his hair, fingers obviously anxious to fiddle with something. And the just as suddenly, he stood up straight and inclined his head towards her.

“Alright,” he said, stepping to the side to make space for her.

Anya settled herself in front of the table, and began cautiously eyeing up the various pieces of metal.

He’d been working on what looked like an old fire alarm, but with an incredibly complex tangle of wires and boards inside, the former of which spilling out over the edges and trailing down to the floor. She assumed it was a security system. She wanted to spend longer inspecting it and maybe prod it around a bit, but Anya could feel Ivan watching her, and not one to back down, she resolutely picked up the soldering iron that he’d be using and began fishing her way through the mechanism.

There were several loose unconnected wires seemingly grouped together on the table, which she took as a sign that they should stay that way. She looked at the placement of the other components, making note of various connections and circuits until she thought she had some sort of idea as to where the ones she now held in her palm would go. There was only one notable gap within the main board, and so Anya started there, methodically working her way through each wire, replicating what she already knew about electrical systems (which was in hindsight, frustratingly very little). The more she did so, the more it started to look like some semblance of what she recognised as a working circuit, giving her the confidence boost she very much needed. In fact, Anya had actually started to feel very pleased with herself, now hunched close to the mechanism in her determination, hands operating diligently.

Until she felt Ivan shaking silently next to her and realised he was laughing.

“What?” She asked, a little affronted.

He didn’t reply, and instead placed a hand over his mouth in a half-hearted attempt at stifling her laughter.

“What?” Anya asked again, placing the soldering iron down.

“What the hell are you doing?” He said, moving closer to inspect her work.

“What do you mean? I’m fixing your security system.”

“Massacring it, more like.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, I’m a master at changing light bulbs.”

Grinning, Ivan shouldered her gently to the side so that he could take a better look, “That skill isn’t transferable.”

“I disagree.”

“You shouldn’t, I’m always right,” he said, now poking at the half soldered wires with a screw driver.

Anya raised her eyebrows, “Modest too.”

He shot her a wry look, and then picked up the body of the once smoke alarm, long trails of wires leaving the table and dangling down to the floor like tentacles. Ivan then picked up a small pair of clippers and handed them to her, before placing two more tools that Anya didn’t recognise into her other palm.

“C’mere,” he said, meeting her in the middle. “You have to connect it here, not there, and these wires aren’t meant to be put together.”

“But you grouped them together,” Anya protested, pointing the clippers at him as if to emphasise her argument.

“I didn’t, its not my fault you started making assumptions-”

“Logical assumptions.”

“-without any further rational thought.”

“There was plenty of rational thought, on my part at the very least,” she countered.

“Freckles, you’re about to take my eye out with that thing. I thought nurses swore an oath not to harm others,” Ivan said, and she could've sworn there was a smirk.

“Right,” Anya quickly lowered the clippers, but was intercepted when Ivan gripped her gently by the wrist and guided it towards the mess of wires and circuits.

“Here,” he said, procuring a small torch from seemingly nowhere to illuminate the device, “let me show you.”

They spent longer than Anya expected them to going through the basics. He seemed determined to teach her the names and purpose of each component, showing her how to correctly use every tool and what each change would do to the function of the security system. It was less complex than she’d expected it to be, but still a lot of information to digest nonetheless, and Ivan noticing this, had poked her in the forehead and teased her about how he thought she’d know this considering her lightbulb changing skills. Anya has swatted him away, blowing a strand of hair out her eyes as she shoved the contraption back into his hands, wordlessly instructing him to keep going. He’d then, much to Anya’s initial confusion, started taking out random parts and asking her to put that back in again, an exercise that later proved to be unexpectedly beneficial.

When Anya seemed to finally have gotten a handle on it, the system was immediately abandoned in his exuberance and she was ushered over to every other piece of equipment he’d been working on, which was, unsurprisingly, quite a lot.

He’d handed her things that were beyond her recognition, explaining it to her like he did the security system, mouth curving in amusement every time Anya was able to correctly end his sentences with recently learnt knowledge of her own. Ivan seemed to have a knack for creating something from nothing, a skill he openly demonstrated with every item they came across: a piece of piping that had been turned into a water filter, intricate locks made from old kitchen appliances, a pulley system constructed from seat belts and tyres. Everything here was either recycled, or upgraded, and Anya could only imagine how long it had taken for them to acquire these sorts of resources. In her minds eye she imagined Ivan alongside a small team, scouring the city under the cover of a blizzard, stripping frozen vehicles and decaying homes of the luxuries that hadn’t been spared more than a single glance in their previous lives.

He’d soon steered her to an array of weapons that lay on another table, the most notable of which a small hand gun that looked very similar to the larger one that Ivan used above ground. He’d picked it up when he noticed her eyes linger on it in recognition a moment more than the others, and began pointing out each part that he’d had issues with and was aiming to correct. Anya hadn’t had very much experience with guns, and the very little that she did have was not something she wanted to think on, so it was difficult to keep displeasure from seeping through into her thoughts. If Ivan noticed this, and it was likely that he had, he didn’t comment on it, and instead put down the weapon and guided her back to the table he’d been stood at when she first found him.

A few moments later and she was stripping wires and handing him tools in short intervals, apparently now his temporary apprentice. It was surprising how easy it was to create a rhythm with little to no prompting, and it was a nice change from the static, rigid energy of the rest of the settlement. Working with her hands was something that Anya could confidently do, she’d been trained to do it, had pulled sleepless shifts and long nights doing so. She supposed that in some ways this wasn’t all that different from her job as nurse, only the things she was poking and prodding didn’t have heartbeats or souls.

There was something oddly domestic about working side by side with him like this, enjoying the others company without the underlying pressure to fill the gaps with verbal communication. The comfortable silence was soft and warm, like presence alone was enough to reassure the other. It was a curious feeling. Growing up, Anya had never been particularly fortunate with friends, it was always very difficult to keep ahold of them for one reason or another, and connections dissolved like sand with very little resistance from either end. The older she became, the more common the occurrence, and soon friendships were generally fleeting and short lived interludes of gentle association.

She mainly attributed this phenomena to mental fatigue. Ties within her family had grown strained over the years, estrangement and loss wearing at the bands as though they were made of rubber, and any other kind of non-familial relationship became draining and suffocating. Isolation had chipped away at her like ice, seeping through her bones and crawling ip her veins in shades of inky black, and so in her desperation, Anya had sought companionship within her patients. In the brief moments of consolation that she provided to others, there was a guilty but nonetheless selfishly welcome swell in her chest at the notion of being needed. At times she felt dirty, there was nothing benevolent or altruistic about her actions, they were tainted with her own gratification and joy; it wasn’t right. But in others she couldn’t help the flutter within her when she spoke with them, it was like a reflex, something beyond her control. Her thoughts drifted to one boy in particular who sat sniffling in his chair, a soft beanie covering his head and a shaky smile spreading across his face under Anya’s influence.

Memories from her past life felt so distant, it was like rewatching a film you thought you’d forgotten. They ached low in the pit of her stomach, and her body grew taut with sudden exhaustion. She understood this feeling, knew it like the back of her hand and yet, with every wave that washed over her the more it felt like her lungs were filling with water. Her muscles seized unpleasantly and she was struggling to maintain her focus when her thoughts were drowning with fatigue, but it was nice not to have to feel it alone. A clatter next to her drew her attention and she blinked at the interruption. She could see several curls trying to poke Ivan in her eye, which he determinedly ignored with such stubborn pointedness that Anya felt the unexpected inclination to push it away for him.

She didn’t mind when the quiet between them was interrupted, shifting the atmosphere into something much gentler, much warmer.

“Are you still having trouble sleeping?” Ivan asked, elbow knocking her own as he went to pick something up.

She stared at the limp wires in her hand, wondering if he’d sensed her mood.

“A little,” she said, hesitating for perhaps just a fraction of a second longer than she should've.

He made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, and it was only when the silence afterwards caught her attention, did she realise he’d stopped working.

She turned her head to meet his eye, and once again found him staring at her as though he was trying to pick her apart inside his head, watching every line, every shadow of her face to see if one would betray her. She had the odd sensation that they’d been in this position before, perhaps just a few months ago, only then she’d turned away under his scrutiny. Anya was surprised to realise that this time she didn’t.

Her neck began to prickle the longer they looked at one another, and distantly the radio played something soft that she didn’t recognise, the light tones and lingering notes nestling thickly between them.

“If you don’t…” Ivan started, and she noticed his hand just brushing hers, only a hairs breadth apart. There was a short beat, as though the sentence he’d been about to say had turned cold in his mouth and he’d thought better of voicing it.

“I don’t sleep easily either…” He retried, before pausing once again. It was very uncharacteristic of him, Anya noted, a stark difference to how self assured and assertive he usually was.

“A distraction always helps. Keeps my mind off everything,” he then said, catching her off guard when his hand slipped into her own, “I have a few vices but I don’t think you’d approve of some.”

For the shortest of seconds, Anya was focused on the way the words seemed to roll off his tongue with an arcane purpose, the heat and surprising familiarity of his palm, fitting so neatly against her own - it felt significant, like the gesture was something she was being told to remember. It was only when they were stood together in the centre of the room did she realise he was leading her away from the table at all.

“I don’t,” Anya replied, because she’d recognised the light smell of smoke on him a few times before. Never overwhelmingly so however, and Anya wasn’t about to admit to him that the scent was pleasantly sweeter than normal, like a cigar dipped in honey rather than a cigarette.

A light smile tugged at his lips, “I know.”

The hand that wasn’t holding her own guided her other hand to his shoulder and let it rest there a moment, before trailing down to touch the small of her back. He seemed hesitant.

“And your other vices?” Anya asked, realising that this unacknowledged weight, something unidentifiable, was just as unfamiliar to him as it was to her.

“As long as my hands are busy I don’t care,” and there was a different inflection in his voice at those words, richer and lower, that she hadn’t heard before.

She glanced up at him, not expecting to be met with an expression that was so difficult to decipher. Eyes lidded, enough so that his eyelashes cast shadows across the bridge of his nose, she noticed a spindle of of amber light that had caught itself within his iris and started spinning a web of gold across the surface. Ivan’s hand had finally settled, but it was still light, the pressure barely a whisper on her back.

The moment of stillness settled between the two of them heavily, one in which Anya searched his face for any giveaway’s, any semblance of a look she would be able to recognise rather than the one he was giving her now. But the longer she held his gaze, the more clueless she felt, she couldn’t figure out what had changed.

Then they were moving. Slowly, and in a way that made it apparent that Anya was not the only one who had never done this before - but it didn’t feel bad.

It was a gentle sway, the shifting of weight between two feet in tandem with one another. There was a tentativeness to it that made the moment all the more sincere, like he was deliberately testing the waters, and as his hand adjusted slightly in her own, her mouth twitched at this sudden display of solidarity.

There was no awkwardness to it, but the action itself felt foreign as they started moving in circles, steps now more assured. Anya had seen her parents dance like this before in their kitchen, and it had always looked so graceful and intimate, like something from a film, nothing compared to how this was. It was clumsy and uneven, although it was apparent that the both of them had simultaneously embraced that for what is was and continued anyway because despite this, it didn’t feel wrong.

They brushed against one another as Ivan’s sways drew deeper and faster, and she felt his chest rumble in silent laughter the closer they became, in sync but never smooth. It must’ve looked ridiculous to any outsider who could’ve stumbled across them, because they kept bumping into things and stepping on each other’s toes, laughter muffled by apologies.

The music directed their rhythm, and Anya found herself leading the dance just as much Ivan, turning blindly and nearly kicking him in the shin when she moved a little too unexpectedly, to which he’d retaliated by lightly flicking her forehead, hands still joined.

It felt liberating to move like this. It was so absurdly uncoordinated and unabashedly so, that she felt too ridiculous to think of anything else, to entertain the thoughts that poisoned her mind - there wasn’t any room for it. She danced purely from instinct and the minute shifts in Ivan’s body, letting the feel of him against her encourage her own direction. It was like there was gold beneath her skin.

A laugh escaped his mouth as he twisted her under his arm and she got caught half way. And she was smiling too, and she felt safe and full in a way that was both new and familiar, something from a life time ago.

She turned fully, chest swelling as she caught a glimpse of his grin. He pulled her back to him, an action that felt so natural in its fluidity that she barely acknowledged that they were dancing anymore. Until they weren’t.

Anya felt his breath fanning her face first. Hot and heavy, she heard it like she did the thump of her heart, and she realised he’d pulled her just a little too hard. She felt his hand pressed firmly against her back, the other joined with her own in between their bodies, barely obstructing the distance. He was holding her close, his skin which was always so warm, burning her own like a brand, leaving a mark that she could neither see nor physically touch. Her eyes glanced up to his own, and they’d taken on a quality she’d never seen before, like glazed amber. His gaze was neither soft, nor sharp, laced with an intensity that that she felt burning low in her stomach and saw in the glint of light that illuminated the ridges of his face. She’d never been this close to him before, and the reality of it was becoming all the more inescapable the more she noticed the light pink flush on his cheeks and lips. The smell of him was heavy in her nose, and it curled around her like smoke, both stilling and revitalising her senses in perfect opposition. The air was thick and heavy, like the hazy twilight’s in the summer months she’s remembered from years ago, heady and blurred like she was still being spun.

She watched his mouth part and his throat bob, hair framing his face in thick tendrils and casting feathery shadows against his skin. Ivan’s eyes had shifted their focus lower. Anya took in an unstable breath, feeling like she might sink into the floor if she didn’t find a way to tether herself. She was sure that if she tilted her head just so their noses would brush, barely a whisper but one that she knew she’d feel through the hairs on the back of her neck nonetheless. She could barely think, and so her body acted for her to let her do so.

Inch by inch, the distance between them began to widen. Just a single step back, and it felt like she could breathe again. The intimacy fractured. What followed afterwards felt like it lasted forever, like someone had taken the string of time and stretched and pulled until they nearly snapped. It was painfully silent, and she thought that maybe her hearing may have stopped working because she was sure music was still playing. She was still close, almost unbearably so, but the single step had made a difference, and she knew that both of them could feel it. Without bridging the space, his hands slipped slowly from their hold on her, just tracing the edges of her clothes before they fell to his sides, and she was taken aback at how the absence of his touch was not just felt physically. She wanted to say something, maybe to apologise although she wasn’t sure what for. His expression was gentle, but something about it made her gut twinge in guilt and her fingers twitch.

“You should finish for food soon,” is what she finally mustered, her throat dry.

Ivan nodded mutely, his eyes flitting across her face. When he replied, the word was soft and hung in the air longer than it should’ve, a tone that forcefully ingrained itself into her chest.

“Okay.”

She wanted to say more but she had no idea what. They stood motionless, looking at the other as though trying to figure out exactly what was going through their head. She swallowed, a task that was much more difficult than she initially thought it to be, and then searched his eyes.

Anya looked away when his eyebrows furrowed infinitesimally, letting the responding thrum of her pulse batter her ribcage like a lullaby. The radio had long forgotten them, crooning something that kept cutting out into static - it sounded so much quieter than it had before.

It was still.

He didn’t stop her when she slipped from the room just as silently as she’d entered.