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𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙥𝙡𝙞𝙩

Hey! This is a story about two gay Russian soldiers in opposing sides of a guerrilla. I wrote this in hyperfocus for two hours. I even made a new account just to share it. Please give me your thoughts! I think this is the best thing I've ever written. Thanks if you read all the way, I've become very passionate of this story in the span of two brief hours. Enjoy! ♡

After they both died during childbirth, people in town used to say Nadezhda’s miscarried baby reincarnated in Dima; since the moment he was born under that old tree that hung loose over their family home, there was not a second Alek didn’t want to spend next to him. A quiet love blooming in the tiniest of villages in rural Velskara, a love like when one loves a pair of fuzzy socks after walking in the snow for hours, a love like when one loves their favorite wooden spoon to eat stew with. A love only brothers could comprehend and cherish as the sacred vow that it proved to be, held by shared scratched knees, sleepless nights and broken hearts.

Alek always thought Dima was a bit weaker than him. Not because he was younger, or because his blood accumulated on his cheeks in the most vibrant and childish of ways, but because he loved harder. Because he cried at the sound of distant thunder when it reminded him of horses dying in war stories. Because he still whispered apologies to the trees after breaking off branches for kindling. Because where Alek built walls, Dima tried to grow gardens.

It was in that old barn on the Solonov property - the one with the half-collapsed roof and the hay that always smelled like memory and piss - that they used to hide from the world together. Long before sides were chosen and uniforms stitched, they spent their winters there, tangled in wool blankets and boyish dreams. The cold couldn’t touch them then, not with smoke in their lungs and laughter between their teeth. The barn creaked with every gust of wind, its bones groaning like an old man in prayer. Above, through the broken beams, slivers of a gray Velskaran sky bled light into the loft where two boys lay shoulder to shoulder, socks damp, breath fogging the air between them. The cigarette passed slowly, more for the ritual than the burn. Dima, as always, talked too much. Alek, as always, listened more than he let on.

“Do you think the trees listen to us?,” said Dima as he let out a small cloud of smoke that could’ve may as well been fog formed by the hot air in his lungs being let out into the cold and unforgiving snow that surrounded them “like… if we were to die right here, would the birch say our names to the snow?”. Alek took the cigarette from him and inhaled a long drag of smoke just like his papa did “Trees don’t talk, zaychik”. Little hare. Alek didn’t know if he called him that out of spite or love. He didn’t like thinking about it much, it was too complicated. “No, but they listen. That’s worse” “You’re soft in the head”. Dima stayed quiet at the jab for a second, staring through a crack into the vastness of white outside the creaky barn, “You’re soft in the heart, you just don’t show it…” he said it in a mumble, not out of fear of his best friend, but of fear of it being admitted aloud. The trees listened. “Someone has to be the spine when the world is snapping, Dima” “And someone has to remind it it was ever beautiful”.

Soon after, they both walked home, along the river. No matter how many meters of snow covered the paths, that frozen beast would always show them the way to go. Ever since they were kids trying to feel a glimpse of their future independence and freedom - when Dina begged his dad to let him go out into the woods alone with Alek - the friends could never get lost in the maze that the Siberian woods proved to be after a few kilometers of walking around. The water knew the way and they knew the way of the water. Dima used to say it was the third friend they never met, Alek used to roll his eyes and dismiss him with a joke about the river not being a sentient being. Dima differed.

Before the war spilled over their quiet village and tore their lives apart, Alek and Dima lived in a world stitched together by simple routines, shared secrets, and an unspoken bond that no one quite understood. The old men in Velskara had taken notice early on — not just because the boys were inseparable, but because of how tender their friendship looked to eyes hardened by years of hardship. At the market, by the frozen river, or outside the church, whispers followed them like shadows. “They’re too close, those two,” some would say, shaking their heads with knowing smirks. Others weren’t so subtle, their words coated in the bitter salt of suspicion. “Faggots, if you ask me,” a drunkard once slurred to Alek’s ear on a warm summer evening, his breath heavy with cheap vodka and stale bread. Alek’s fists had found their way into bruises that night, and though he never admitted it, he never let go of Dima’s hand afterward. People whispered after Alek beat the old man. They said that if he kept letting ‘the other one’ braid wildflowers on his coat, he’d grow soft. He’d stain his father’s name through the mud. A fruit? In his home? His mother would die of embarrassment if she wasn’t already six feet under with his dead baby brother. Dima, on the other hand, was too gentle to care what others thought, his eyes always soft and full of quiet rebellion. Alek’s life at home was a different kind of battle. His father, a widower burdened by grief and hard drink, spent more nights passed out on the cold wooden floor than sitting at the kitchen table. The man’s anger was a heavy shadow that crept through the house, a weight Alek learned to carry in silence. Yet, no matter how bruised Alek was, or how rough his edges grew, Dima’s mother was always there like a steady flame. She fed them both when Alek’s father forgot to put food on the table, sewed patches on their worn coats, and listened to their dreams with a kindness that felt almost sacred. It was in her kitchen, warmed by a crackling stove and scented with fresh bread, that Alek first understood what it meant to be cared for without conditions.

Alek never fully understood what it was that tangled his heart whenever Dima was near. It was a quiet, stubborn thing—like a shadow stretching long and dark across the edges of his soul—something he neither named nor tried to grasp. He didn’t care much for girls; their laughter, their whispered promises, felt like distant echoes from a world he didn’t belong to. There was no spark, no hunger in those moments, only the dull ache of expectation he never wanted to meet. He was handsome, scars here and there from childhood mischief that now served the purpose of decorating a more mysterious front to the ladies. Dirty blonde with a cold gaze, dirty blonde with strong hands. He didn’t cared for their attention… but with Dima, it was different. The pull was deeper, heavier, existent, but Alek buried it beneath layers of silence and stubborn pride, pretending that it was nothing but brotherhood, nothing but the shared warmth of frozen nights and whispered dreams. Dima, softer in spirit and more honest with his own feelings, seemed to hold the truth between them like a fragile flame—always careful, always quiet, but never extinguished. Once, in the hush of twilight beneath the old birch tree that had witnessed their childhood, their lips met. It was brief, trembling, a fragile rebellion against the world’s cold rules and the futures carved out for them by others. The kiss was both a question and an answer, spoken without words, full of longing and fear, before they pulled away, eyes heavy with things neither could say aloud. After that, silence wrapped around them like a shroud. They never spoke of that night again—never named the secret that settled between their breaths—but it lingered, buried deep in the spaces where their friendship met something more. It was a sorrowful truth, folded tight beneath years of snow and smoke, a love that was both their refuge and their curse, whispering always, quietly, beneath the roar of coming storms.

Even amid that fragile comfort, the world outside was shifting — slow at first, like a low wind before a storm. One evening in Dima’s kitchen, as they stacked firewood to last the coming cold, the boy’s voice broke the quiet. “You won’t join them, Alek? The army?” His eyes searched his friend’s face for a flicker of doubt or defiance. Alek’s hands stopped moving, the rough bark scratching against his roughed palms. “It’s about order,” he said, voice steady but heavy, “something this place desperately needs.” Dima shook his head, the flame in his chest kindling into something sharper. “Order? It’s just control dressed up pretty. They’ll take everything—our homes, our trees, e-even the barn.” Alek met his gaze, the flickering lamplight casting shadows that made his jaw seem sharper, colder, less loving. “We need rules to survive, Dima. Not dreams.” The air thickened between them, not with anger, but the weight of things unsaid, choices unmade. They didn’t argue more that night; instead, Alek handed him the last bundle of wood and turned toward the door. But the rift had begun, as quiet and relentless as the snow melting beneath their boots on the path home.

That winter was the last one untouched by gunpowder, politics or combat boots.

By next winter, the barn would indeed be burnt down. By spring, Alek had enlisted. By summer, Dima was running messages to the farmers in the outskirts of town. The war tearing through Velskara wasn’t a grand, sweeping conflict between empires or nations. It was a raw, bitter struggle born from the ashes of a shattered country, a civil war carved out of betrayal, fear, and desperate survival. After the old regime collapsed, a patchwork of factions scrambled to fill the void—each claiming to fight for justice, for order, for the people, but each willing to sacrifice everything in their hunger for power.

On one side were the Red Guard remnants and loyalists—men like Alek—who believed in rebuilding the country through strict control and military discipline. They saw themselves as the only force capable of stopping the chaos, protecting villages from bandits, rebels, and hungry mobs. To them, order was not just necessary, it was imperative. They wore the uniform with pride, convinced that sacrifice was the only path to a better future.

Opposing them were the partisan rebels, including Dima and many of the farmers and villagers scattered through the dense Siberian forests. They fought not for glory or control, but to preserve their way of life—small communities, traditions, and freedoms threatened by the new regime’s iron grip. To them, the soldiers were invaders, agents of a brutal system that demanded obedience and crushed dissent. Their war was guerrilla, shadowed by mistrust, fueled by the fear that if they didn’t resist, they would vanish—erased from their own land.

The night before Aleksei left for the field, he decided to pay Dima a visit under the pretense of handing his mother a plate he had taken home from diner’s leftovers three moths ago. He knew his friend’s mom was dead asleep by eleven. Dima knew he knew, too. Still, he answered the door. “It’s late, dubok” Little Oak, the one tree that never folds. “I know it’s late, I wanted to give it back before I…” “Go kill innocent kids while they sleep?” Dima said as a joke though the smirk he sported didn’t reach his eyes, Alek noticed. “Before I leave tomorrow”. He held the plate with a heavy hand, almost if it were made of steel and not the fine, flower-filled ceramic his best friend had kneeled years ago. He handed it with ease, and Dima’s finger’s grazed the soft surface before he took it from him. “You could’ve just left it, it’s just a plate” “It’s not. Not tonight, anyway”. Alek tried lighting a cigarette as he said that last part, an attempt to make it more casual, like when one asks the time or if there’s any bread left. He failed, miserably. For a moment, the only sound was the cold wind rustling through the bare branches outside. The air between them was taut with everything unsaid—the years of shared secrets, stolen warmth in the barn, the quiet moments before the world decided to tear them apart.

“You know,” Dima finally broke the silence, voice steady but edged with pain, “people in town talk. They say we’re more than friends. That maybe I’m more than just your ‘little hare.’” Alek’s gaze dropped, his jaw tightening. “I don’t care what they say.” Dima’s laugh was short, bitter. “I think you do. Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be standing here, on the night before you march off to kill for people who barely know why they fight.” “I fight for freedom, for an organized country instead of whatever your renegades want to accomplish by simply letting people live” Aleks scoffed, annoyed out of his belief at the boy who held his hand through the roughness of winters both real and metaphorical. Dima’s eyes flashed, hurt and defiance mixing in their depths. “Freedom? You think your generals care about freedom? They care about power, Alek. About control. They’ll burn villages, silence voices, and call it order. You’re just another pawn in their game.” Alek took a step forward, voice low but fierce. “Better to be a pawn than a traitor hiding in the shadows.” Dima’s laugh was hollow. “A pawn doesn’t decide its own fate. A rebel does. Even if that means standing alone.” The cold night seemed to press in closer, the weight of their words heavier than the snow settling around them. Alek’s hands trembled slightly, not from the cold but from the fracture he felt between them, an irreparable one at that. “Don’t think I don’t know what this means,” Alek said quietly, “what you mean to me.”

Dima looked away, shoulders stiff, voice barely more than breath. “Then you shouldn’t be wearing that uniform.” The words hit harder than a slap. Alek flinched—not visibly, not enough for anyone else to see—but Dima would know. He always knew. The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. Neither of them looked at the other. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” Alek muttered, like a confession spat between clenched teeth. “I didn’t want a war. I didn’t want sides. But I can’t just stand still while the world falls apart.” “You think you’re standing up by kneeling to them?” Dima’s voice cracked, sharp and bitter. “You think wearing their colors makes you a man?” “It makes me something,” Alek shot back. “It gives me something to hold on to. Something to answer for when everything else—” his voice shook, “—when everything else is confusing.” Dima turned toward him now, the light from the doorway cutting shadows across his face. “Is that what I am to you? Confusion?” Alek’s mouth opened, but the words stuck in his throat, brittle as frost. He wanted to say no, wanted to say you’re the only thing that ever made sense, wanted to say I would have stayed if I knew how to—but all that came out was: “I don’t know what you are anymore.”

Dima stepped back like the words had physically pushed him. “Right. That’s the thing with you, isn’t it? You never say what you mean. Not back then, not now. Not even after—” He stopped, biting down on the end of the sentence like it might break him. Alek turned his face away, but the memories rose regardless—hay in Dima’s hair, lips too warm for winter, silence afterward like a held breath no one ever dared to release. “Do you regret it?” Dima asked suddenly, voice quieter now. “That night in the barn.” Alek’s hands twitched, curling slowly into fists. “There’s no space for regrets anymore.” “That’s not an answer.” “I don’t have one,” Alek snapped. “What do you want me to say? That I’ve thought about it every fucking night? That sometimes I wake up convinced I can still feel it—still feel you—and I hate myself for it? That it’s easier to shoot a man than to look you in the eyes?”

The silence after that was crushing. Dima’s expression softened, but only just. Not enough to be mercy. “You never hated yourself for following orders,” he said. “Just for feeling.”

Alek didn’t deny it. He couldn’t. “You’re still my—” Dima started, then faltered. “Still something. But not the same. Not anymore.” Alek stepped back, the threshold cold behind his spine. He nodded once, jaw locked, trying to keep himself from saying something he couldn’t take back.

“I’ll be on the other side of the river by morning,” he said. “If you ever come looking.”

Dima’s voice was nearly gone. “I won’t.”

But he didn’t close the door. Not until Alek was already swallowed by the dark.

And even then, he left the plate out on the stoop until the snow buried it.

The next morning, Alek’s baby-blue eyes searched the crowd, desperate for a flicker of green—but Dima’s eyes weren’t there. Among the tearful mothers and stiff-lipped fathers, among the town’s quiet nods and final embraces, he found only strangers. On the road to what already felt like inevitable doom, Alek couldn’t help but wonder which would’ve hurt less: seeing Dima one last time, watching those eyes spit fire and fury as he left... or being met with nothing at all.

He decided he would’ve rather seen hatred than absence. Indifference was colder than any Siberian wind.

Three winters without the barn. Three summers without the river walks. Three years without a single letter—though both of them wrote hundreds they never sent.

The army made Alek forget how to sleep properly. Nights were spent half-awake in a trench, rifle clutched to his chest like a dying promise. In the beginning, he fought with fire, because fire was all he had left. They called him dependable, loyal, sharp. No one knew what it had cost him to become that. Each town they marched through looked more or less the same—burnt thatch, fields stripped bare, women who looked through you and children who never cried anymore. Every village was a memory of what his own could have become, and sometimes, in the corner of his eye, he thought he saw him—that flash of green eyes or the curve of a familiar back—but it was never Dima. Never his hare. Just ghosts clothed in snow.

He earned stripes, lost friends, got promoted, then demoted after a brawl with a superior who laughed at the “soft boys of the north.” That man's nose never quite healed right. Alek didn’t regret it. He kept a cigarette tucked behind his ear even though he’d quit smoking. He didn’t know why. Maybe because it reminded him of the barn. Maybe because it smelled like a memory he didn’t want to lose completely. Every now and then he’d light one, inhale deep, and taste smoke and sorrow. Once, during a lull between battles, he found himself staring at the trees that lined the outskirt of a bombed-out village. Birch and oak. The wind moved through them like whispers. And he thought: they’re still listening.

Dima never called himself a rebel. He wasn’t a soldier, he didn’t wear a uniform, didn’t carry a medal around his neck like a badge of righteousness. He just carried bread and names. Codes etched into the hems of coats. Secret routes through the woods mapped only by the stars and the sounds owls made when disturbed. He got older, leaner, quieter. But never mean, oh, never mean. The tears on his mother’s eyes when he left for the safe-house deep in the Siberian tundra could never allow it. He never got mean. Even when the war demanded it. He learned to look people in the eyes when he lied, to keep steady when the barrel of a gun found the space between his ribs. And still—still—he never stopped leaving offerings for the river. A folded note. A button. A piece of wood with initials carved crooked and rushed into its skin. He wasn’t even sure it was the same river he used to walk with him all those years ago. Years that felt like centuries now. He never gave up though, maybe Alek would find the note and take the right path. Go back to him, choose the good over the fist of fascism. There were stories, whispered around campfires, about a soldier with an oak’s heart who never flinched in gunfire. A northern man, quiet and brutal. Dima didn’t believe rumors. But he listened to all of them. He stopped sleeping on his left side. That was the side Alek used to take in the barn. The space next to him always felt too warm, like a sin, like a lie.

It was a nameless village. Half-buried in mud, forgotten by maps, no more than twelve homes and a church whose steeple had been reduced to jagged teeth against the gray sky. The snow had turned to slush, red at the edges. The kind of cold that didn’t make you shiver—it just sat in your bones like grief. The morning had been filled with smoke and steel. Alek had woken before dawn to the sound of boots thundering like drums across the frozen earth. Orders were barked outside, sharp as gunshots. Another sweep. Another raid. The rebels had been nesting here, word said. Civilians and fighters blurred now. No one could tell who held a rifle and who held bread. It no longer mattered. His unit, what was left of it, moved in like wolves. The flag on their shoulders barely meant anything anymore. Just a rag to remind them who not to shoot. The sun never rose properly that day—only a smear of dull orange behind clouds. Like the sky itself was too tired to bear witness to one more massacre.

They called him Dub, now. Oak. The unbreakable one. Not Aleksei anymore. Just Oak. A name said with fear by men twice his age. His silence made them uneasy. The way he never flinched, even when covered in blood that wasn’t his. The way he stood tall while others cowered or prayed. There were stories now. About how he couldn’t be killed. About how the northern wind spoke to him. About how he’d lost something so dear it made him empty and invincible all at once. Alek didn’t correct them. Let them believe he was made of bark and stone. It was easier than explaining how silence had simply grown like moss over his mouth. How you didn’t need armor when you had nothing left inside to pierce. They tore through the village. Screams. Smoke. One of the barns caught fire—it reminded Alek of another one, years ago. He didn’t flinch. There was an order to clear the last rebel checkpoint, a crude outpost made of patched wood and tarps, tucked behind the ruins of the old church. That’s where he was sent.

Gun drawn, blood already drying on his sleeves, he stepped into the camp. The tent flap was partly open. He ducked inside, eyes adjusted to the dimness.

There was someone asleep on the cot.

Blanket curled up to the chin, dirt on the soles of bare feet, fingers twitching against a threadbare sheet like they were dreaming.

Alek’s rifle lowered by instinct—no, by something worse than instinct. Recognition. A strike of lightning behind the ribs. The scar on the left hand. The sharp edge of the nose. The black hair, unruly even in sleep. His breath left him like a bullet.

Dima.

He was thinner now, paler. His collarbone jutted sharply from his frame like wings struggling to bloom. There was a half-healed cut along his cheek. He breathed shallow, quick. A fever, maybe. Or just a man too tired to dream anymore.

For a second—just a second—Alek thought he might be hallucinating. That the war had finally taken his mind. But then Dima shifted in his sleep and murmured something, too soft to catch.

He was real. He was here. Alive.

And Alek had come to kill everyone in this place.

Behind him, heavy footsteps approached. The flap of the tent was yanked open.

Alek didn’t turn around. He knew the voice before it spoke.

"Oak. Status?” General Varavin. Old bastard. Sharp-tongued and always suspicious of Alek's silences. He stepped beside him and froze. They both stared at the sleeping figure on the cot. "Rebel," the General said flatly, after only a breath. "Kill him.” Alek still didn’t move. His hand tightened around the grip of his rifle, knuckles white. His breath had gone shallow, chest barely rising. Varavin looked at him, something clicking in his gaze. “You know him.”

It wasn’t a question. Just cold observation. Alek didn’t answer.

"Kill him, Oak. That’s an order."

Nothing.

For the first time since he joined the ranks, Dub, the unshakable, flinched.

It was small—a twitch in the corner of his eye, the catch of his throat—but Varavin saw it. And that, more than anything, made him furious. “You’ve slit the throats of better men than this,” the General spat, stepping closer, voice now a whisper of steel. “What is he to you? Another northern ghost? Some soft memory from a life too small to matter?” Still, Alek didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. The barrel of the rifle hung heavy in his hand. Dima stirred again. His lips parted. A name hovered there, unfinished. Varavin hissed, “Don’t forget what you are. What you’ve made yourself into.” But Alek wasn’t listening to him anymore.

He was staring at the rise and fall of Dima’s chest. At the way his fingers curled in sleep like he was still holding onto something. The barn. The river. The cigarette passed between them.

The kiss in the dark, lips trembling, and the silence after.

The snow. The spoon. The fuzz of shared wool. The unbearable warmth of being known.

And now—this. A rifle in his hand. His name turned to bark. A man who never flinched, standing on the edge of everything he had left that could make him feel human again.

He raised the gun. The gun stayed raised.

Dima’s body shifted beneath the moth-eaten blanket, slowly, like the world was letting him wake one memory at a time. His fingers curled. His head tilted. And then—his lashes fluttered open. His green eyes found Alek’s blue ones across the tent.

And he stilled.

No gasp. No startle. Just a long, long breath—like a man who’d seen this moment in a dream before, and knew it would come to claim him. He sat up slowly, the blanket falling from his shoulders. His collar was unbuttoned. His neck bare. His heart, exposed. And still, no words.

The General stood in the corner, arms crossed, a wicked satisfaction curling at his lip. “There. No excuses now. He’s awake. Do it.”

Dima didn’t look at the General. Didn’t even acknowledge him. His eyes never left Alek’s. He spoke, quiet, tired. “So this is how it ends, then,” he said.

Alek didn’t move. The rifle trembled the tiniest bit. Dima smiled—but it was hollow. That old mischief, that stubborn light in his eyes, was gone now. Just ash left behind.

“I used to think I’d die in a field, nameless. But I never thought it would be you, Dubok.” His voice cracked slightly at the end—not with fear, but something worse. Understanding.

“You always were the one who could pull the trigger. Even when I couldn’t.”

Alek’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

“I knew you’d survive the war. Not because you’re lucky. Because you’re terrible at dying,” Dima said, with a soft, bitter laugh. “You hold on like moss on stone. And I think I always loved you for that. Even when it scared me.”

Alek’s jaw clenched. His throat worked around a word he couldn’t say.

“You don’t have to say it,” Dima whispered. “I know. I always knew.”

He raised his chin slightly. The same way he used to do when daring Alek to race him down the hill, or when facing down the older men who called them wrong for being too close. That quiet defiance, even in the face of fire. “I forgive you,” Dima said.

Alek’s face crumpled. Just a flicker. A single breath of weakness.

“I forgive you for being what they made you. For never choosing me out loud.” Dima’s eyes shone now, not with tears, but with something far worse—peace.

“Because you did, once. In the barn. That was real. You were mine then.”

Silence. Even the wind outside the tent stilled, like the world was holding its breath.

The General shifted, impatient. “Enough of this. Shoot the rebel.”

But Dima didn’t flinch. Didn’t beg. His voice lowered to a hush.

“You know I’d never ask you to run.”

He looked down, then back up—his eyes burning.

“But if I could have anything in this world, Aleksei Volkov… I’d ask you to remember what you were before they made you a weapon. Before they called you Oak.”

Alek’s hands shook. The rifle dipped just slightly—then rose again.

Dima exhaled, slow and resigned. He looked back down at his hands.

And in the most fragile, broken voice Alek had ever heard, Dima said, “Do it, then. If I can’t have you, at least let me be the last thing you lose.”

The tent filled with silence.

And Alek, the boy who once held him like he was something sacred, stood still with murder blooming at the tip of his finger.

The rifle didn’t drop. Dima did. Aleks followed.

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