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dadsbongos · 9 months ago

Text

The Lovers

word count - 4.8 k

warnings - ENEMIES to lovers..., non-graphic deaths and violence, i humanize and objectify pav in the same breath, fem reader (referred to by "girl" bc he's the worst)

first time capitalizing a fic title in months

DAY 2. NOON.

Blood splotches decorate the cobblestone floor, already drying into maroon against the wood planks of the train cars. The droplets lighten in shade the deeper into the train you go, and eventually, you find crimson. Pure cherry ink on dark wood. Cherry rots into a blackened smudge once again on the wheel of Olivia’s wheelchair. One hand settled over the thin black rim on her right, and the other twisting a roll of bandages around her fingers. She blinks up at you, bottom lip tucked so tight between her teeth that the rosy flesh is blistering white.

“I’m really sorry,” she sighs, abandoning the spool of cloth in her lap to push up her wiry glasses, “Terribly, I am, but I don’t- “ she pauses, “I’m worried that the others would be… biased in their care…”

Your gaze flits up from Olivia’s pensive face to the blonde man spread across the train’s cushy two-seater. His midsection is wrapped with reddish blooms vining all down the white crossings, arm bound in a sling over his chest. His eyes are scrunched up, brows furrowed towards the middle of his forehead; a fitful, delirious limbo overtaking him. Occasionally, he jerks himself awake in a wide-eyed panic before the pain knocks his brain topside again.

The Bremen lieutenant would hardly be a challenge to put down in his current state. You are one of few from the contestants that Olivia feels can be trusted not to undo her hard work of keeping the soldier alive. Combine your level-headedness with your lackadaisical attitude in searching Prehevil, and you make the perfect candidate to watch over Olivia’s patient.

Unfortunately.

“If he annoys me, can I press on his wounds?”

A wild grimace overtakes Olivia’s face, “No! No, please, please do not do that.”

“Fine,” you waltz past Olivia and study the blonde’s pinched face, “Go, go. I’ll watch the traitor.”

“Thank you!” she sighs in relief before exiting the train car, calling back hurriedly, “I’ll try to come with more bandages before sundown!”

When the lieutenant is not trapped under the rolling, ruthless waves of agony, you could almost mistake him for any other man. Maybe even a handsome one: with a strong nose and symmetrical bone structure. His lips are faintly the color of roses, too. Pale and pink. Dry, though. Not nearly as luscious as pretty petals.

Golden tresses, which you are mature enough to admit are alluring. His hat was off and his hair ruffled and fanning out over the magenta seat. Skin frail and pale - you could crush his ribs if you tried. Charming in a way you’ve only known real men to be.

Certainly, though, as soon as the pig squeals - the illusion of perky flowers and honey will melt away. Scorched by the moon as the villagers outside.

Foolishly, you agree to sit around waiting for the swine to be well enough to squeal. A smarter woman would’ve put it down (especially when it's previously shown a taste for blood), but you like Olivia and her tender heart so you do no such thing.

DAY 2. NIGHT.

As thanks for not murdering Pavel as soon as she’d turned her back, Olivia brought you fresh water and dried meats from scavenged homes alongside the fresh bandages. She left again soon after swapping the bloodied cloth for fresh ones.

“Do tell me when he wakes up,” she grins up at you. As if apologetic for having you carry out a duty you’d already agreed to, “I’m sure this isn’t an easy ask. I’m sorry.”

“If I wanted to make you feel bad for asking, I wouldn’t have said yes,” you wave off the concern, “Don’t die out there, Olivia. I’d miss you too much to do my job,” you gesture vaguely towards the immobile lieutenant.

She chuckles quietly before nodding, “I’ll do my best.”

Pavel’s groans are increasing both in frequency and throatiness - he’ll wake soon, you’re sure of it. He even turns onto his side, exhaling thickly - so harsh and ragged he actually coughs up bubbles of spit. Jittering with alert, he gasps sharply and rockets upward. Snapping at his waist and swiping out wildly with his unbound arm, clawing at the musty air directly in front of him; even attempting to swing out the arm wrapped and tied around his neck.

As soon as the hair-splittingly thin burst of adrenaline fades, he hisses in pain. Cupping the covered gash in his chest before curling his uninjured arm around the other, he throws his head back and gasps again. Suffocating under the re-stretching of closing wounds and fragile muscle.

Despite his uniform, you find yourself at Pavel’s side. You brush a hand down the length of his spine before patting between his shoulder blades, your other hand soothing down his navel to press him down into the cushions. Swiping aside curls of gold, you shush his groaning and search the care bag Olivia left behind. In your palm comes a bind of tobacco and a pipe that is smooth and cold against your skin.

“Quiet, quiet,” you coo, stuffing the chamber of the pipe with the almost sickly sweet, nutty-scented tobacco before raising Pavel’s head and sitting the lip into his mouth.

His eyes are still wrinkled shut, chest beginning to sporadically pop and shrink in a struggle to suck wind through his throat.

Part of you wants to tug his hair and call him stupid, but a larger part of you is consumed with pity. Pity for a creature so entrapped with torment that he cannot remember the second most basic function of his body.

“Breathe through your nose,” you continue to run your fingers through his sweat-matted hair while striking a match against the train’s floorboards and lighting the tobacco, “Smoke slow. It will ease you.”

Pavel’s neck cranes upward and remains there, head pushing against your stroking hand as he (rather noisily) inhales through his nostrils. Then, he fills his lungs with the sting of tobacco, blowing it back out through the pursed corner of his mouth.

Once you’re confident Pavel can breathe and smoke without choking himself to death, you turn again to rattle through Olivia’s care bag for herbs. Anything to aid the physical pain before the distraction of tobacco wears off.

Eyes fluttering open, Pavel stares down at you as he lifts an arm to pull the pipe from his mouth - blowing smoke down into your face. You pinch the exposed skin of his side harshly, only letting go when he jerkily arches his back to escape your cruel fingers.

“Unbelievable,” you shake your head, “No. A Bremen pig would, of course, disrespect someone trying to heal them.”

“If you wanted me dead, I already would be.”

“I still have time.”

You unplug a glass vial the shade of elderberries and press it to Pavel’s closed lips. When he stubbornly fastens his lips tighter, you glare directly into his eyes.

“Open. Or it’s being poured over your neck.”

Pavel groans in protest, but finally opens his mouth and allows you to dump the blue liquid into his throat. He gags at the bitterness of raw, untempered pressed herbs, almost gagging until he realizes you have no intention of stopping your pour. So he chooses to swallow down the vial as quickly as it comes instead of drowning to a mere glass of blue.

When you’re tucking the emptied glass away, Pavel replaces the pipe and huffs down at you, “You’re not a very courteous nurse.”

Instead of dignifying the jab with a response, you sit up fully on your knees to scour over the lieutenant below. From his tousled hair to his bloodied and wretched uniform to his muddied boots.

You reach up and contemplate digging a thumb somewhere in the center of his bandages before thinking better of it and snatching the pipe from his lips, “You should put away your breasts.”

Inhaling the smoke, you blow it down in Pavel’s annoyed face and grin when he coughs.

He glares up at you somehow harsher than before, “I could shoot you for that. I should shoot you for that.”

“Then who would protect you from all the other people that want you dead?”

Silently, he mulls over the question. If he reaches some sort of logical conclusion, he refuses to share. Most likely, though, you’re assuming he has no such answer. Aside from you, there is Olivia, but even she could not be swayed into staying on this train longer than necessary. It could drive one mad, bound inside this narrow tube of car after car after car with the same seats and floorboards and rolling rug. So she very politely requested you to stay behind instead.

You sit down on the hard floor below you, pulling your knees to your chest and winding both arms around your legs. Pavel turns his head to the side, lips in a pout. Drinking the blue liquid earlier has revived them, at least somewhat, they are even pinker. More full. Smoother. When you’ve had enough staring there, you stare at his eyes: so gray they shine like gun metal in the flitting moonlight.

Maybe Pavel would notice you examining him if he could tear his own eyes away from where they’re lingering by the sliver of exposed skin by your ankle. Classic: boarish pig lives up to his name. His gaze crawls up your shin to your bent knees, then a little lower as if to catch a glimpse of where your thighs and rear are squished against your chest and the floor (respectively). At least you have the decency to not objectify him during your observation - not that you even could. The lieutenant is leagues more off-putting than handsome.

Once he’s gathered the guts to bore his steely gaze into your face, he grins with a half-hearted shrug, “I haven’t seen a beautiful woman not kissing the piss lord’s ass in ages.”

You ignore the pass completely, “So, the temple square?”

Pavel sighs and extends a hand, palm up and fingers splayed wide in front of your face, “A failure.”

“You don’t say,” you bypass his hand and feed the lip of the pipe directly into his mouth, pressing it against his tongue and watching him firmly tuck it between his lips before letting go, “Why try?”

Puffing from the pipe, Pavel only shakes his head while exhaling thick plumes of slate-hued smoke. He swipes his tongue over his bottom lip and cradles the pipe in his hand, turning it delicately to inspect the body, “Why not?”

You make a show of looking from his face to his bandaged torso before snickering, “Serious question?”

Pavel takes one final draw of the pipe before balancing it atop the wooden frame of the seat. He lays his uninjured hand gently over his torso, blinking up at the ceiling with tired, wet eyes.

“You are cruel, you know this?”

“It’s a good defense,” you grin at the man innocently, “Especially against brutalist pigwhores.”

“Targeted,” again, he pouts, “Mean. You are a mean girl.”

“Maybe that’s what you need. I think Mama was too nice to you.”

Pavel withholds the wince at your words, merely pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth and inhaling through his nose sharply. He shrugs when he really wants to bite, “You think so?”

Hopefully, he muses, he can rip out your throat when he finally snaps back.

“I do.”

“You know what I think?” you merely fold your arms, so he continues, “Nobody put the spoiled girl in her place. Now she’s a confident woman full of hot air,” he smiles, “I don’t do well with confident women like that. Make me jumpy.”

You ‘hmph’, but respond with nothing new before rising from the floor and snatching the care bag to squeeze against your chest like a child would their stuffed bear. Laying across the unoccupied, opposite seat, you turn so that you're faced away from the lieutenant.

Pavel stares at your back. He hadn’t been entirely teasing earlier - he truly hadn’t found a woman beautiful in a long while. Not that it was a problem to admit a girl was pretty, but there was always some dull ache to accompany the thought. Women riveted by his status in the Bremen army disgusted him, and women disgusted by him and his status were usually unwilling to bend to his charms. Even then, if he met a woman who was nurturing and sweet, undeterred by his enlistment, he was consumed with revenge.

Now that he’s officially gone and tried and horrendously failed, he can at least swim in the delusion that there is a chance for romance. Besides, he is in his thirties, that’s about the time when people begin settling down, right?

He reaches up for the pipe but finds that it’s gone out. No more vermillion embers to offer comfort.

“Oi,” he calls into the night. Not even crickets sing back. He shifts as if to sit up, but his entire waist flares with pain and sends him crashing back into the velvet cushions. So, he settles on raising his voice, “Hey!”

“Sleep, pig.”

“Pav.”

“Hm?”

“My name. My name is Pav,” he considers throwing the pipe at you altogether, but if the gold-encrusted bowl actually hits your skull then you’d likely leave and never return, “Call me by it.”

“Why should I?” you twist, scowling over your shoulder, “You signed up for the Bremen army, now take what comes with that in Prehevil.”

“You don’t strike me as a dull girl,” he grumbles, “So don’t pretend to be one.”

Suddenly, you’re sitting up again, the bag still clenched between both of your arms, “Do you know what the Bremen army has done to people? Has done to me?” you spit on the floor, right below where Pav rests, “Pigs! Horrible, wretched, rotten pigs!”

Pavel allows you to scream, allows you to finish, before returning, “Do you know what the Bremen army has done to me?”

He’s so quiet, he’s downright whispering. Voice husky and layered with years of buried terror and bloodlust.

“How should I care? You enlisted! Whatever they made you- !”

Now he cuts you off.

“They razed my home during the First Great War,” that once blinding sheen in gunmetal eyes is dark like obsidian, “My family. My mama,” he mocks you, “Dead. I joined to kill the Kaiser, I never wanted to be a Bremen pig. I never asked for this.”

“You came to kill the Kaiser as a lieutenant?”

“I did.”

“You must’ve known…” you swallow your words. A lieutenant to kill the commander? Even without the Kaiser’s other soldiers, Pavel wouldn’t possibly have been able to do that and get away with it. Not unless he wanted to hide out in Prehevil for the rest of his days.

“At least I will never die knowing I didn’t try,” he cackles sickly, “Great leader Kaiser spat the bullet out like it was nothing… Maybe he is some God sent back to torture us.”

“Maybe you missed,” you slump forward, elbows digging into your knees, “Couldn’t that be more likely?”

“No,” he looks at you with widened eyes, “No, no,” he shakes his head, “I don’t miss my shots.”

“If you’re sure,” you smile suddenly, shaking loose the stiffness in Pavel’s shoulders, “When you’re healed, we can try again, hm?”

“Really?” he’s shocked by the madness of your suggestion, “Did you miss the part where I said he took a bullet to the head and walked it off?”

“Apparently, we’ll die here anyway,” you shrug, yawning and fluttering back down onto the seat, “So, why not try again, Pav?”

A girl that nurtures despite his bloody uniform, and now despite his terrible need for revenge. You are as cruel as you are doting. Fiery and unfair and oh, he thinks he wants you to card your fingers in his hair again. Gentle only to him.

“As long as you don’t abandon me once you see for yourself,” Pavel can feel less burning in his chest when he breathes now, “Spat the bullet right out, I tell you.”

You shrug, “I guess I’ll die one way or another here.”

Pavel shakes his head, not bothering to tilt his head away from you as he drifts off.

…

DAY 3. MORNING.

He awakes to a great pressure around his throat. Snapping into consciousness, he finds you standing over him with shaking arms, and when he’s brave enough to follow the branches to where they’re stemmed - your hands are around his neck. Your breathing is shaky, and there’s wetness reflecting off your cheeks. Pavel claws at your wrists with his hand, twisting his body so his bottom half is hanging off the seat. Ignoring the scorching rage that sears over the fresh gash in his stomach, Pavel kicks out at you. His heeled boots dig into your gut, squishing intestines and fat and blood as he pushes you away.

Loudly, his boots thunk back against the floorboard when you’ve fallen away, throwing yourself dramatically across the opposite seat. Like a sick Europian lady from the Gilded Age, you drape over the frame with sniveling wails.

Pavel skims his fingers over where your own were clamping his throat shut as he shudders for breath. Ignoring your sobs, he shouts, “Did you hit your head or what?! Heal me, talk to me, just to end my life?! Are you- ?!”

“Enough!” you scream, voice snapping raw in the middle, completely fizzled out at the end. Wiping at the ceaseless tears gushing over your face, you scream again, “She should’ve gotten out of here! She should’ve gotten out and ran instead of… Instead of…” you cough out phlegm and despair trapped in your throat, “Instead of…”

Marina’s downcast face, moles decorating her frown as she twisted a cracked pair of Windsor glasses between her hands. She could barely look at you when she said it before handing over the glasses. I’m sorry, Marina whispered, Olivia… I just thought, maybe, you should know…

Pavel remains as he is, lumped against the back of the seat with both legs dangling onto the floor. Dried blood scraped up under his heels. He heaves for breath, watching as you cradle yourself in your arms and rock. You wither before him, babbling and wheezing and shrouded in shadow.

“What are you going on about?”

“Be quiet,” you snap, louring through puffy, red eyes and wobbly lips, “Be mournful. The woman that saved your life has died,” before Pavel can squeeze anything out from his gaping mouth, you stand and point down at him to command again, “Be nice. The war is over, and you’re not even a real lieutenant, you can show kindness when a person has died.”

He shuts his mouth. Opens it again. Shuts it. Then, finally,

“I didn’t know her.”

From the way you cross your arms and turn away, he can gather that that was the wrong thing to say.

“And yet she saved you,” your arms tighten around yourself, “She saved you, Pav… Be nice.”

You’re a sweet thing, Pavel thinks. You clearly hate him for not displaying the tenderness that you are around the woman’s death. At least at this moment, you hate him.

“I’m taking a walk,” you announce, flinging open the cabin door and slamming it behind you.

Pavel contemplates calling after you, but figures the sound of his voice could only make you stay away longer.

You’re a cruel, sweet thing.

Not even leaving the care bag closer for him to reach in and take from.

DAY 3. NOON.

When you return, the train car is silent sans the gentle hum of Pavel’s breathing. Almost reminiscent of clockwork, a well-oiled machine, his broad chest rises and falls smoothly as he’s rearranged himself sideways on the seat. With his slung arm over his chest and spare one tucked under his head as a makeshift pillow.

Having Pavel stretched out before you gives ample time for you to more thoroughly judge his physique - if you’d be able to strangle him while he’s awake. If he could fight back. If he could lift you with his pure muscle and restrain you with a single hand while the other…

Maybe, you think.

His arms are large, but not obnoxiously terrifying like the boxer. His waist is slim despite the broadness of his shoulders and chest.

Suddenly, he groans, nose twitching in his slumber. It draws your gaze up to his face. That unsettlingly symmetrical face with the strong nose bridge and soft, rosy lips.

Not to mention his flaxen hair - curled and tousled and forcefully in your sights with that Bremen hat off. And with his Bremen uniform (seemingly always) unbuttoned to his stomach, you make out his pectorals past his bandages. You make out two indentations over his heart: silvery scars.

He could almost be handsome. If he were more emotionally attuned.

You kneel by his side, swinging the care bag across the aisle and into your lap. His bleeding has visibly lessened, as only the lightest shade of pink has spread over the pale cloth. Sneaking scissors up by his soft skin, you avoid slicing him as you snip the bandages and begin unwinding them. Pulling gently so as to avoid waking the man, you successfully clear him from the restrictive cloth and assess his healing wound.

More coral pink than crimson red, now. You assume the mass improvement is thanks to the blue vial Olivia had provided. Even as the gnarly cut expands under Pavel’s breathing, it fails to start bleeding again. Which you’re grateful for since, as a precarious glance into the bag confirms, you have freshly run out of bandages. And you fear that snagging any old cloth from any old barrel could give Pavel an infection.

“What was it Alll-mer said? Pluck out your eyes if you cannot respect modesty?”

“I’m checking your wound,” you pinch his side. The skin is warm and fleshy and so, so soft between your fingertips. He whimpers and tries to evade your hand by squirming higher on the seat, “When did you wake up?”

“Not long ago,” he watches you reach into the bag and pull free another glass vial of blue liquid, “Only to see you ogling my body.”

“It’s a hideous one. Hard to look away.”

“You love to lie, mean girl?” he ‘tsk’s, “Shame. Lies are so ugly from a pretty mouth.”

“As if you would know.”

“Confident woman,” he sings to himself, grinning, “Confident, confident woman.”

Shoving the blue vial towards Pavel’s face, you square your shoulders and settle your face sternly, “Drink.”

“I liked it when you did it for me,” he opens his mouth then, refusing to break eye contact.

You comply, shifting onto your knees and pressing the chilled glass against Pavel’s lower lip; tipping it to flow into his warm mouth. He gulps down what you graciously offer, bringing his uninjured arm out from under his head and settling it over your hand around the vial. His thumb presses against your knuckles. You tangle your other hand into his hair and let the golden curls thread over your fingers. Once the vial is finished, you can’t explain it but there’s a sudden thundering in your chest. So vivid and hard in your ribs that it makes you nauseous.

Pavel blinks, lashes fluttering at you as his hand remains over yours.

Sunshine slants across his face. You see him more clearly now than this morning or last night or when he was wrought and warped with pain.

He looks pretty like this. Foul-mouthed and promiscuous and even forthright rude, but undoubtedly pretty.

His hand moves to your cheek, tenderly cupping the flesh with glass still pressed to his lips.

The thunder comes with lightning that strikes blazing fire. Heat fans through your chest and up to your forehead.

“If you want to go after the Kaiser, you should rest,” you whisper, as if speaking any louder could shatter the both of you from this moment, “We both should. Best to gather our strength before searching for him.”

Pavel shakes his head, obsessively smoothing the pad of his thumb over the apple of your cheek, “He will gut us both, cruel girl. I don’t want to see that for you. If I find him it’s alone,” he swallows thickly, “And I’m tired.”

“So,” you realize with a startled tremble that your internal combustion is affection for the former lieutenant, “you’ll stay?”

And with greater terror, you realize that you actually want to stay with him.

“I will die knowing I failed,” he sucks in a sharp breath, pressing his lips firmly before granting you sight of the rosy flesh again, “but I will have you to die with, cruel girl.”

At least even in humiliating defeat, Pavel can be loved.

“Are you scared to die, Pav?”

You’re a sweet one, he fondly recalls. Assuming he had much to live for outside his schlocky revenge scheme.

“Projecting, hm?”

You pinch his side. He lets you.

DAY 3. NIGHT.

“Now, bend it.”

Pavel hisses but manages to fully extend and curl his newly unwound arm with nothing more than a click in his elbow. He lays both hands in his lap as you bunch the bandages and sling into a ball and lay it off to the side.

“Good,” you utter softly, “You’ve healed a lot faster than I would’ve thought.”

“Right?” Pavel turns his head to stare down at you, tilting his head back, “You should sit with me.”

“You’re feeling charitable,” he scoffs at your tease, not moving to accommodate his invite, “Where should I even sit, then? You’re taking the entire seat.”

When he merely smirks, you get the idea.

“You’re gross.”

“Indulge me, cruel girl,” you rise to your feet, gnawing your bottom lip in contemplation, Pavel leans against the armrest and cinches his legs together, “Would you make a man die alone?”

“Yes,” you answer without hesitation.

But would you make Pavel die alone?

You swing a leg over his torso, careful to avoid the healing slash and straddle Pavel’s waist with both hands landing over his exposed chest. He cups your cheek again, now taking pleasure (and slight pain) in cradling your face with both hands. He hasn’t gotten to see a beautiful woman in ages, and he thinks maybe it isn’t so bad to go out staring at one.

Moonlight cascades over the both of you, so bright in the train cabin it almost burns.

“If we could still run, where would you go?” you ask.

“Where would you want me?”

“Flirt,” you’re leaning in, though, trailing a finger over his scarred chest. Your nails bite at the flesh, he grunts in disapproval, “How can I believe anything you say? You betrayed your leader. Would you shoot me, too?”

Pavel is sure you’re anything but serious in asking, but it's dangerous the way he feels compelled to answer genuinely, “Never. I’d miss your… What was it? Brutalism?”

“Enough,” the moonlight sears over where Pavel’s hands are curved around your cheeks. You lean down more until your lips brush his, “You call me rude, but you’re- “

He slices your derision short, pressing his petal soft lips against yours with a quiet, contented sigh.

Moonlight bares witness. And you cannot pull away even as the fire in your heart rages from affection to molten lava. You’re not even entirely sure you would want to.

…

Karin cannot feel her fingers as she stands in the open train car door. She’s seen many things - many terrible, awful things. Especially so in the past seventy-two hours than her entire career as a war journalist, but this may be what truly drives her mad. She can feel it - the need to retreat inside her mind and shut down completely; the need to give up hope of salvation. Maybe she can suppress it long enough to sit by that seashore, get a good view to wash out the image before her.

Wriggling on the train loveseat is a fleshy creature, almost like mushed peaches. Occasionally, pleased sighs and hums will escape one of its two smiling faces as the lumps slide and shift along the cushion. One face nuzzles closer to the other and the measly bread and meat Karin swiped from deserted kitchens lurches in her stomach.

None of the other monsters she’d encountered had been so undeniable in its previous humanity. It reminds her of the holed, broken, pliant corpses of uniformed soldiers dead in trenches, and it reminds her of the first time she ever saw a real dead body. She puked on its boot, unable to run back and spew bile elsewhere before it was spurting past her lips.

Karin’s stomach is stronger now, though. She has the time to turn and trudge on wobbly knees towards the seaside before she pukes - squirming flesh and smoldered limbs tangling in her mind.

Moonlight burns at the back of her neck as The Lovers moan and coo happily behind her.

#pav fear and hunger #pav yudin #fear and hunger x reader #pav x reader #pavel yudin x reader #fear and hunger fluff #working title to this was p(av) in v #laugh NEOW

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