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A review by marshaboo
Special Forces - Veterans by Aleksandr Voinov, Vashtan, Marquesate
5.0
Lots of spoilers. Lots of quotes.
It's been almost a week.. during this time I was hurting so damn much( I lost sleep, I felt hollow, betrayed and lost, I felt so much and all of it on the downside.
I think my husband started to get nuts. I was retelling the story to him in bits and pieces. I started to cry all of a sudden...
I was so sympathetic with Vadim, especially after some reviews telling about Dan's love for Jean, the unfairness of it all.
And finally today I can safely say that I'm still hurting, but in a different kind of way.
All this time I've been trying to find some excuse for Dan's behavior, but today I tried to understand him.
To understand a man who truly lost the only thing he thought was everything. the only person who was everything.
Because Vadim never truly came back to him. Never. It was not Vadim's fault don't get me wrong, but we are not talking about Vadim now, just try to keep it in mind.
Even after the therapy Vadim could have just get lost in his own head. And it was Dan who was left alone time and again.
"Dan said very little throughout the day, keeping his thoughts to himself until Duncan finally collared him and Dan tried to explain what had happened and what was going to happen. Separation. Three months. He was nauseous at the mere thought of it. Three fucking months. It’d be worse than the nine months in the mountains".
I really think that all those "others" was his way of coping with loneliness. Jean was providing comfort, it was Jean who was helping to keep it together so Dan can be a "carer", so Dan was not left behind over and over.
"Dan had remained quiet, but as attentive as he could ever be, but during the nights he felt unsure for the first time. Wanting Vadim, needing his reassurance, or whatever else sex was meant to be, but he didn’t dare to initiate it".
- These are Dan's thoughts before Vadim left for the therapy. Dan is very tactile, like Jean. There are people who crave physical contact - not only from their loved onces. And even when Dan wasn't denied it by Vadim, Vadim allowed it, tolerated it but through suffer.
Dan: "Closeness and intimacy, they’d become aliens, despite fourteen years."
Vadim: “Sometimes, he didn’t give me ... space.” Vadim kept his gaze on the ground. “After the nightmares, it’s hard to have anybody close.” “It’s ... a tightrope. Aggression, yes. Quite a bit of it, but it’s ... fear, terror, I need space, and sometimes he cornered me. He’s changed that, but at the beginning ...”
“Did you ever explain that you could not bear the closeness? You see, the relatives and loved ones of PTSD sufferers and trauma victims do not know how to deal with their loved ones, who are suddenly different to what they used to be. Many state that they don’t know this person anymore, and they don’t know how to get close, how to make them see that they are still loved. As a consequence, there might be the attempt to get physically close when the mental closeness is being rejected.”
“Closeness ... sex, if you will, used to fix everything. If I’d told him to not touch me ...” he’d have gone to Jean. The thought bit deep. Somebody who was comfortable with touch all the time, who sought it, who’d never say no.
“Did you fear that if you told him he would have taken it badly and possibly even left you?”
“It was the only thing that always worked. Different form of communication. Even when we weren’t ... partners. It goes too far back.” I wanted his touch even when I hated him. When he hated me. Konstantinov had gone deeper than that, right to the core.
“So you kept quiet and went along.” Looking at the water in his hand, then back at Vadim. “Did this ever make you resent him?”
“Yes.” Vadim felt a pressure on his chest. He had. No doubt about it.
“It won’t be easy, Dan, because, if I tell you to leave me alone, you ... you have to. Can you do that?”
Now I can even except that the feeling Dan had for Jean was much more than just lust. It was about tenderness, it was about comfort, it was about being loved, not needed. Without it he wouldn't have make it. You can resent him for it, but... what would you say to someone you care about to do if that person was in a twisted, even toxic relationship with only two options - live or adapt? Vadim Dan didn't leave.
“You told me once that you needed me. To ... to keep you together. While I wasn’t there, the whole last year, how ... I mean, do you still need me, or can you love me now?”
“Do you really want me to come?” Dan’s voice remained quiet, toneless even. “And do I really have a home?” Dan shook his head slowly, to no one there. “I am willing to be who you need me to be, but ... I can’t do that and accept the consequences, unless I know that you are certain.” He took a deep breath. “Is there love left for me, Vadim?”
But the most telling things in my opinion are:
“I was always strong,” murmured, “always matched you. Always held my own ground. The only fear I ever had was the one that kept any soldier alive. But lying there ... waiting for the surgery that meant the end of everything I’d always been, I wanted to run away. Scream, or cry, or shit myself with that goddamned motherfucking fear. Fear that ... that I wasn’t your equal anymore. That I couldn’t keep up with the likes of ...” hesitating, “Hooch.”
Another pause, before Hooch’s voice was heard again. “Listen, buddy, I understand ...” Leaving the words standing between them. “Dan’s more important. Things really alright with him? You got your priorities.”
Vadim closed his eyes. This hurt. Unexpected how much it hurt. He closed the door, dropped his voice to a murmur. “You’re too ... too deep inside me, Bozic. I can’t ... I can’t love two men.” There. Out. “I’m sorry.”
He felt a shudder rise from somewhere in his body, guilt, shame, pain, a deep horror that had only been sleeping. He couldn’t lose Dan, he couldn’t hurt Dan, yet he wanted this man, loved this man, could easily fall completely for him. Mad, stupid lust, friendship, and screw up everything he had, everything he wanted.
He hadn’t been in touch because he’d have left Dan at a drop of a hat. He’d been that close, and if Hooch had offered ... anything, an alternative, regular sex, being close, he wouldn’t have been able to resist.
But Jean offered Dan to elope with him. Offered, when Dan knew that Jean loved him. And he refused! And just maybe he never told Jean he loved him not because he was a coward, but because for Dan there was only one love powerful enough, only one feeling that was like a benchmark - and his feeling toward Jean just was not enough.
Please, try to understand that this love story is not only about Vadim - whom we readily forgive for everything, but about Dan too. Dan, who was executed too, Mad Dog who was reborn, person who had a choice - every step of the way - with his life and person in it, his other lover, consequences of his decisions. He knew Vadim loved someone else, when Vadim was sure Dan was not in love with Jean.
“Well, nothing eloping together could solve. You’re getting too old to have my babies.” Jean slapped Dan’s arse and laughed.
“Moment ago you claimed I was getting shit.” Dan’s brows danced up and down his forehead. “Not sure where your thoughts have buggered off to, but hell, Jean, you’re damn strange today.”
True, thought Jean and gave an innocent grin, as if he had no idea in hell what Dan was talking about. His normal light heartedness felt like an act now. Which was weird, because it wasn’t.
Tilting his head, Dan half-smiled. “Eloping’s right out, but not because of the babies. There’s that little matter of our partners, hm?”
“Yes ... that wouldn’t be a good idea. Vadim’s a good tracker, and Solange has the legal power to shut down my bank accounts.” Jean smirked. “Seems we’re the tragic love story that can never happen, huh?”
“Are we?” Dan’s smile was still in place. “Are we, Jean?”
Jean paused, felt his heart race all of a sudden. What the fuck are you doing? Found no clever comment that quickly, not quick enough by far. “Comrades,” he said, first thing that came to his blank mind. Good start. “Right? We’ll always be that.”
Dan nodded, with that same smile. “Aye, comrades. Friends. We’ll always be friends.” Gesturing with his chin over to the couch. “And you’d be an even better friend and comrade for sitting down there and talking for, say, five minutes.”
...
Dan rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand. “You and Solange alright?” Echoing Jean’s earlier question.
“Maybe I’m just taking her for granted. She sometimes says I do, but that’s when she’s ... feeling down. She has times like that, we call that her PMS.” He gave a small laugh. Ups and downs. Who didn’t have them? “You get used to somebody after that time. You’re some ... kind of holiday, I guess. Something she isn’t. I’m faithful, that’s weird, too, nothing I really, lack, but ... I do mean it. When I kiss you.”
“Aye, you do mean it.” Dan nodded, “I do, too.” He smiled, poking a finger into Jean’s solar plexus, right above where the bathrobe opened. “Are you going to tell me now that you’ve fallen in love with me? However stupid that may sound.” He grinned, taking the piss.
Jean grinned sharply. “Yes, it sounds stupid. So I won’t say it. I’ll keep it to myself. The whole opera about how much I fucking wanted you, and that I ... I ...” Jean paused, struggling. “Yeah, shit, I ... guess I love you – so what? Won’t change a thing, and it shouldn’t really, we’re both adults, we have ... people around, and commitments. Just ... you know, take that feeling and, I don’t know, ‘cherish’ sounds like from a bad song. You’re a guy, and I still love you when you’re here. I never did that with another guy, and Solange never really was male, so ... shit ... I just love being around you, touching you and making you smile. I feel like a complete pussy for that, weird, that I can do all that with a girl, but I feel strange when I do it with you, but it feels good.”
“Oh.” The breathed out syllable was all that Dan brought out. Gone the bravado, the jokes and piss-taking. Gone, too, his belief he’d known what Jean was going to say. Wrong. No, not wrong, just nowhere near the level of truth.
Jean swallowed. “Yeah, ‘oh’. It’s alright. It really is. Just ... good I said it, I guess.”
Dan swallowed, hand moved off Jean’s shoulder to rub once, twice over his face before he cleared his throat, looking back up. “Fact is, I sometimes wish Vadim was you. Just sometimes, you know?” He shouldn’t be saying that, should have never even felt it, but sometimes, like now, with Vadim far away and all that pain and fear and loneliness, with nowhere and nothing to soothe the worry, it was just there. That feeling. “The lightness between us. There’s no pain. The way you kiss and touch and all that, but then ...” shaking his head, smiling.
“... then I’m not him.” Jean gave a grin and reached out to raise Dan’s chin, moving close as if for a kiss. “That’s alright. Maybe some weird part of me is jealous. Does that make sense?”
“Aye. Makes sense.” Dan felt strange for a moment, the tender gesture. The way Jean treated him, different to any man he’d ever been with. There was a gentleness about him that had always somehow resonated with him.
“Last chance,” he murmured. “You could still elope with me, you know?”
Dan smiled into the handsome face before him, lined, tanned and goddamned gorgeous. Flashes of the young Jean in his mind, the man he’d met in the Gulf, the straight man ... “You realise that Vadim and I have our silver anniversary this year, aye? But I must admit I do try to not commemorate the day we actually met.” He quirked a brow, then ran a hand down Jean’s back, inhaling his scent.
Jean lifted his head to kiss Dan’s lips, fingers running down Dan’s cheek, as he opened his lips for one of those tender, skilled, heartfelt kisses. “You guys are great together though. Even Vadim looks happy these days.”
“It’s been a long ride. Twenty-five bloody years. Fucking crazy, aye?” Dan took his time to kiss Jean, to hold him and to be close. He murmured when he broke the kiss, “I sometimes think I’m making all of this up.
Vadim still was the man he’d always wanted. Everyone else, no matter who and where and what, paled in comparison to Vadim. His Russkie.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm a delusional fool, and though I will never be able to live in open relationship myself, but for the first time this week I can breathe again.
It's been almost a week.. during this time I was hurting so damn much( I lost sleep, I felt hollow, betrayed and lost, I felt so much and all of it on the downside.
I think my husband started to get nuts. I was retelling the story to him in bits and pieces. I started to cry all of a sudden...
I was so sympathetic with Vadim, especially after some reviews telling about Dan's love for Jean, the unfairness of it all.
And finally today I can safely say that I'm still hurting, but in a different kind of way.
All this time I've been trying to find some excuse for Dan's behavior, but today I tried to understand him.
To understand a man who truly lost the only thing he thought was everything. the only person who was everything.
Because Vadim never truly came back to him. Never. It was not Vadim's fault don't get me wrong, but we are not talking about Vadim now, just try to keep it in mind.
Even after the therapy Vadim could have just get lost in his own head. And it was Dan who was left alone time and again.
"Dan said very little throughout the day, keeping his thoughts to himself until Duncan finally collared him and Dan tried to explain what had happened and what was going to happen. Separation. Three months. He was nauseous at the mere thought of it. Three fucking months. It’d be worse than the nine months in the mountains".
I really think that all those "others" was his way of coping with loneliness. Jean was providing comfort, it was Jean who was helping to keep it together so Dan can be a "carer", so Dan was not left behind over and over.
"Dan had remained quiet, but as attentive as he could ever be, but during the nights he felt unsure for the first time. Wanting Vadim, needing his reassurance, or whatever else sex was meant to be, but he didn’t dare to initiate it".
- These are Dan's thoughts before Vadim left for the therapy. Dan is very tactile, like Jean. There are people who crave physical contact - not only from their loved onces. And even when Dan wasn't denied it by Vadim, Vadim allowed it, tolerated it but through suffer.
Dan: "Closeness and intimacy, they’d become aliens, despite fourteen years."
Vadim: “Sometimes, he didn’t give me ... space.” Vadim kept his gaze on the ground. “After the nightmares, it’s hard to have anybody close.” “It’s ... a tightrope. Aggression, yes. Quite a bit of it, but it’s ... fear, terror, I need space, and sometimes he cornered me. He’s changed that, but at the beginning ...”
“Did you ever explain that you could not bear the closeness? You see, the relatives and loved ones of PTSD sufferers and trauma victims do not know how to deal with their loved ones, who are suddenly different to what they used to be. Many state that they don’t know this person anymore, and they don’t know how to get close, how to make them see that they are still loved. As a consequence, there might be the attempt to get physically close when the mental closeness is being rejected.”
“Closeness ... sex, if you will, used to fix everything. If I’d told him to not touch me ...” he’d have gone to Jean. The thought bit deep. Somebody who was comfortable with touch all the time, who sought it, who’d never say no.
“Did you fear that if you told him he would have taken it badly and possibly even left you?”
“It was the only thing that always worked. Different form of communication. Even when we weren’t ... partners. It goes too far back.” I wanted his touch even when I hated him. When he hated me. Konstantinov had gone deeper than that, right to the core.
“So you kept quiet and went along.” Looking at the water in his hand, then back at Vadim. “Did this ever make you resent him?”
“Yes.” Vadim felt a pressure on his chest. He had. No doubt about it.
“It won’t be easy, Dan, because, if I tell you to leave me alone, you ... you have to. Can you do that?”
Now I can even except that the feeling Dan had for Jean was much more than just lust. It was about tenderness, it was about comfort, it was about being loved, not needed. Without it he wouldn't have make it. You can resent him for it, but... what would you say to someone you care about to do if that person was in a twisted, even toxic relationship with only two options - live or adapt? Vadim Dan didn't leave.
“You told me once that you needed me. To ... to keep you together. While I wasn’t there, the whole last year, how ... I mean, do you still need me, or can you love me now?”
“Do you really want me to come?” Dan’s voice remained quiet, toneless even. “And do I really have a home?” Dan shook his head slowly, to no one there. “I am willing to be who you need me to be, but ... I can’t do that and accept the consequences, unless I know that you are certain.” He took a deep breath. “Is there love left for me, Vadim?”
But the most telling things in my opinion are:
“I was always strong,” murmured, “always matched you. Always held my own ground. The only fear I ever had was the one that kept any soldier alive. But lying there ... waiting for the surgery that meant the end of everything I’d always been, I wanted to run away. Scream, or cry, or shit myself with that goddamned motherfucking fear. Fear that ... that I wasn’t your equal anymore. That I couldn’t keep up with the likes of ...” hesitating, “Hooch.”
Another pause, before Hooch’s voice was heard again. “Listen, buddy, I understand ...” Leaving the words standing between them. “Dan’s more important. Things really alright with him? You got your priorities.”
Vadim closed his eyes. This hurt. Unexpected how much it hurt. He closed the door, dropped his voice to a murmur. “You’re too ... too deep inside me, Bozic. I can’t ... I can’t love two men.” There. Out. “I’m sorry.”
He felt a shudder rise from somewhere in his body, guilt, shame, pain, a deep horror that had only been sleeping. He couldn’t lose Dan, he couldn’t hurt Dan, yet he wanted this man, loved this man, could easily fall completely for him. Mad, stupid lust, friendship, and screw up everything he had, everything he wanted.
He hadn’t been in touch because he’d have left Dan at a drop of a hat. He’d been that close, and if Hooch had offered ... anything, an alternative, regular sex, being close, he wouldn’t have been able to resist.
But Jean offered Dan to elope with him. Offered, when Dan knew that Jean loved him. And he refused! And just maybe he never told Jean he loved him not because he was a coward, but because for Dan there was only one love powerful enough, only one feeling that was like a benchmark - and his feeling toward Jean just was not enough.
Please, try to understand that this love story is not only about Vadim - whom we readily forgive for everything, but about Dan too. Dan, who was executed too, Mad Dog who was reborn, person who had a choice - every step of the way - with his life and person in it, his other lover, consequences of his decisions. He knew Vadim loved someone else, when Vadim was sure Dan was not in love with Jean.
“Well, nothing eloping together could solve. You’re getting too old to have my babies.” Jean slapped Dan’s arse and laughed.
“Moment ago you claimed I was getting shit.” Dan’s brows danced up and down his forehead. “Not sure where your thoughts have buggered off to, but hell, Jean, you’re damn strange today.”
True, thought Jean and gave an innocent grin, as if he had no idea in hell what Dan was talking about. His normal light heartedness felt like an act now. Which was weird, because it wasn’t.
Tilting his head, Dan half-smiled. “Eloping’s right out, but not because of the babies. There’s that little matter of our partners, hm?”
“Yes ... that wouldn’t be a good idea. Vadim’s a good tracker, and Solange has the legal power to shut down my bank accounts.” Jean smirked. “Seems we’re the tragic love story that can never happen, huh?”
“Are we?” Dan’s smile was still in place. “Are we, Jean?”
Jean paused, felt his heart race all of a sudden. What the fuck are you doing? Found no clever comment that quickly, not quick enough by far. “Comrades,” he said, first thing that came to his blank mind. Good start. “Right? We’ll always be that.”
Dan nodded, with that same smile. “Aye, comrades. Friends. We’ll always be friends.” Gesturing with his chin over to the couch. “And you’d be an even better friend and comrade for sitting down there and talking for, say, five minutes.”
...
Dan rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand. “You and Solange alright?” Echoing Jean’s earlier question.
“Maybe I’m just taking her for granted. She sometimes says I do, but that’s when she’s ... feeling down. She has times like that, we call that her PMS.” He gave a small laugh. Ups and downs. Who didn’t have them? “You get used to somebody after that time. You’re some ... kind of holiday, I guess. Something she isn’t. I’m faithful, that’s weird, too, nothing I really, lack, but ... I do mean it. When I kiss you.”
“Aye, you do mean it.” Dan nodded, “I do, too.” He smiled, poking a finger into Jean’s solar plexus, right above where the bathrobe opened. “Are you going to tell me now that you’ve fallen in love with me? However stupid that may sound.” He grinned, taking the piss.
Jean grinned sharply. “Yes, it sounds stupid. So I won’t say it. I’ll keep it to myself. The whole opera about how much I fucking wanted you, and that I ... I ...” Jean paused, struggling. “Yeah, shit, I ... guess I love you – so what? Won’t change a thing, and it shouldn’t really, we’re both adults, we have ... people around, and commitments. Just ... you know, take that feeling and, I don’t know, ‘cherish’ sounds like from a bad song. You’re a guy, and I still love you when you’re here. I never did that with another guy, and Solange never really was male, so ... shit ... I just love being around you, touching you and making you smile. I feel like a complete pussy for that, weird, that I can do all that with a girl, but I feel strange when I do it with you, but it feels good.”
“Oh.” The breathed out syllable was all that Dan brought out. Gone the bravado, the jokes and piss-taking. Gone, too, his belief he’d known what Jean was going to say. Wrong. No, not wrong, just nowhere near the level of truth.
Jean swallowed. “Yeah, ‘oh’. It’s alright. It really is. Just ... good I said it, I guess.”
Dan swallowed, hand moved off Jean’s shoulder to rub once, twice over his face before he cleared his throat, looking back up. “Fact is, I sometimes wish Vadim was you. Just sometimes, you know?” He shouldn’t be saying that, should have never even felt it, but sometimes, like now, with Vadim far away and all that pain and fear and loneliness, with nowhere and nothing to soothe the worry, it was just there. That feeling. “The lightness between us. There’s no pain. The way you kiss and touch and all that, but then ...” shaking his head, smiling.
“... then I’m not him.” Jean gave a grin and reached out to raise Dan’s chin, moving close as if for a kiss. “That’s alright. Maybe some weird part of me is jealous. Does that make sense?”
“Aye. Makes sense.” Dan felt strange for a moment, the tender gesture. The way Jean treated him, different to any man he’d ever been with. There was a gentleness about him that had always somehow resonated with him.
“Last chance,” he murmured. “You could still elope with me, you know?”
Dan smiled into the handsome face before him, lined, tanned and goddamned gorgeous. Flashes of the young Jean in his mind, the man he’d met in the Gulf, the straight man ... “You realise that Vadim and I have our silver anniversary this year, aye? But I must admit I do try to not commemorate the day we actually met.” He quirked a brow, then ran a hand down Jean’s back, inhaling his scent.
Jean lifted his head to kiss Dan’s lips, fingers running down Dan’s cheek, as he opened his lips for one of those tender, skilled, heartfelt kisses. “You guys are great together though. Even Vadim looks happy these days.”
“It’s been a long ride. Twenty-five bloody years. Fucking crazy, aye?” Dan took his time to kiss Jean, to hold him and to be close. He murmured when he broke the kiss, “I sometimes think I’m making all of this up.
Vadim still was the man he’d always wanted. Everyone else, no matter who and where and what, paled in comparison to Vadim. His Russkie.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm a delusional fool, and though I will never be able to live in open relationship myself, but for the first time this week I can breathe again.