covert hearts [ pen x hunting moon ]

[Penitency]

The snow underfoot seemed to grow heavier with every step, but no matter how much he wanted to, CIA Senior Agent Lucas Cross knew he couldn’t stop. Dogs barked, whistles blew, and commanding shouts cut through the chill of winter. It didn’t take a translator to know the Soviets behind Lucas were yelling things like “stop,” or “shoot him!” Of course, it was easy to tell the police from the more covert agents; the KGB didn’t yell, they spoke with their weapons.

As Moscow’s icy streets concealed secrets at every turn, Lucas found himself thrust into a perilous game of cat and mouse, where trust was scarce and danger lurked behind every corner. With his identity compromised, the American now had to find somewhere to lay low. The problem? His safehouse was far, far away. And by now, it was probably in flames as the winds of political change spread like wildfire through the Soviet bloc.

It was all a blur: the break of a window, the hotwire of a car, the rev of an engine. Gunshots rang out, piercing the window at his back which sent fragments of glass spilling through the backseat. Lucas ducked out of instinct, slammed the accelerator, and glanced up at the rear view as the vehicle lurched forwards. He pushed the vehicle to its limits, weaving between traffic and pedestrians alike.

Another vehicle was fast on his trail, the wail of a single siren bouncing off the walls of the snowy cityscape around them. They were faster than Lucas’s “borrowed” vehicle, and their front fender planted itself into his rear wheel. Lucas corrected the angle of his own vehicle, teeth gritted, his massive arms tensed beneath a brown bomber jacket. One hand shoved the shifter into fifth as he gained speed again and found traction.

A growing crowd of vehicles sped behind him, the line eventually growing bigger by the second. Another glance in the review view made him acknowledge his fate was looking grim. Moss green colored eyes moved forward to look back through the main windshield, only to gasp at the sight of a roadblock around the corner.

A loud crash sent his vehicle off course, hitting the railing of the embankment. The motor was dead. Bullets began to riddle the interior as Lucas threw open his door and took cover behind the vehicle, men firing upon him from the opposite side. Glass nicked his face, blood stained some of his beard. His dark hair was messy, wild, feral. A 1911 was pulled from a holster at his lower back.

The last stand. Eight rounds. He slammed the steel magazine into the gun and pulled back on the slide. And with the firearm chambered, he turned around to fire a few rounds from over the hood. It was a deathtrap to use this tin can for cover, but he had no choice. A round hit his shoulder as he returned fire.

Lucas fell back unto his ass, blood staining the snow. “Fuck,” he grumbled, looking over his shoulder and beyond the railing he was seated against. A river not yet frozen. There was no way he’d dive into that, right? The empty mag was dropped into the white beneath him, tumbling between his legs. A fresh mag was inserted as his breath visibly drifted before his handsome face.

A bold KGB officer stepped forwards, a thick black trench coat upon his form. A Makarov had been clutched in the burgundy colored glove of his right hand; Lucas stared down the barrel of the PM fearlessly. The two traded shots, the PM missing and the 9x18 bullet sparked the rail besides the American. Lucas was fast to his feet, before another shot hit near the heart– inches from a fatal blow.

The 1911 fell into the snow as Lucas tripped up over the rail, and free fell into the flowing river below. The unnamed KGB agent stepped up, a black face-covering masked most of him from the nose down. Those steely blue eyes looked at the river from over the rail, and he could not find a body– it must have been washed away in the rushing current.

“Get down there and search,” the agent was quick to command, “now!” He’d motion with his PM pistol toward the river, before holstering his sidearm at his hip within the trench. Following, a brick of a radio was snatched from his beltline and brought to his lips as the officer began organizing a recovery event. They'd undoubtedly get more hounds on scene.

Later...

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Luckily, Lucas had plunged far enough in the river that he didn’t surface immediately to the enemy above. The currents had been strong enough to move him further along the bank, until the American washed up on snowy shores. Unconscious, the brute lay soaked and at the mercy of nature– the biting cold would otherwise make him shiver painfully so.

A pair of jeans clung wet to tree-trunk thighs and powerful calves. A pair of brown boots, long soaked, covered his feet at risk of frost bite. Atop of that, his bomber jacket and long sleeve black shirt were more of a detriment than help now. His hard, muscular figure was on clear display, outlined in the fabric, from generous pectorals to the ridges of his abdominals and v-cut hips. A wild mane of black hair spilled behind him, water dripping from his beard. The cold only got more bitter, his lifeless form still bleeding from chest and shoulder.

Snow slowly dropped and collected across his nose, promising to bury him alive if no one came to eventually help. Crimson trickled, creating a trail beneath him toward the flowing waters.

If Lucas could use a miracle, now was the time.

 

[The Hunting Moon]

⟼ @Penitency || 1460 Words || Что посеешь, то и пожнешь || F - List ] ⟻​

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Chapter 1: The Miracle The wind was biting cold that evening as the old steel-grey metro bus pulled up to the stop. Flurries of snow kicked up into the air as passengers huddled outside to step onto its claustrophobic confines. Sliding doors creak open, letting their travelers into the ice and snow. Mixed results emerged as the traffic flow from both ends bogged down. A sea of individuals stuck in the muck of shoving and irritated curses filled the air. The faded streetlamp flickered overhead like a silent spectator. Katya Belyaeva left to stagger free of the bog. Her fur-lined infantryman's coat, which still smelled of her father's cheap cigarettes, doggedly did its best to keep her warm in the ice and snow. Her black gloved fingers were gripping the satchel she carried slung over her left shoulder tightly. Head on the move, as she would trudge through the snowdrift that had built up alongside the bus stop. Her nose stung with the frost as she separated herself from the crowd. Pulling hard on her fur-lined hat to attempt in vain to shield her delicate ears better. Her feet were absolutely aching in the heavy boots she wore. Kayta would admit in her most private moments as she made the pilgrimage to her closet of a studio flat at the edge of Moscow, that she had one of the better jobs in the Soviet Union. After all, while others labored away in the ironworks or factories, all she had to do was dance for ten hours a day. The stress of her work came in the form of the sharp lash of the madam's tongue or the physical strain of the proper form. She was blessed in that. Her pocket was filled with a small pouch of folded rubles and a well-kept Communist Party card. A sacrifice for which she could thank her father's service in the great patriotic wars for granting her. It was undoubtedly useful these days, as Katya had skirted by many a checkpoint with the little piece of paper many a time before. It was getting harder to do that, though these days. One dared not speak of exactly what caused it, but every good Russian citizen had a keen idea of what the underlying condition was. It's easier to stay quiet and avoid getting arrested or worse. Clouds of hot breath rose from the ballerina's lips as she looked about the street both ways. Crossing over to the sidewalk, which followed along the frigid Moskva. The ice-cold currents still ran swiftly in the areas that hadn't entirely frozen over. Her boots crunching on the ice and snow, she would let out a sigh. Her eyes turned down towards the flow of the water. Its dark surface shimmered at the edge of where the light from the streetlamps nearby could reach out and touch. Her light blue eyes traced along the dark waters tiredly. A growl from Katya's stomach drew her gaze downward. "Praise be the party. Their ample handling of our food makes it so wonderfully easy to diet." She'd mutter darkly to herself in a begrudging tone. Her head turned back behind her as she said that. Eyes scanning to assure herself that no soul had heard her idle complaints. It was by the time she had rotated her head about that her eyes would catch something odd on her walk back. A shape on the bank of the river that stood out among the rest. Katya's father had once told her nature never crafted itself in perfect lines—an old Army trick to find and kill German soldiers who had hidden in buildings to be certain. However, tonight it would save a man's life. Neither he nor Katya would or could grasp that as of yet. As she drew closer, the shape on the bank became clearer to her. At first it seemed to be a wet mattress. Nothing new given the number of random things which were just brazenly tossed out. On closer inspection, the man's limbs would register fully in Katya's tired psyche. The blonde's eyes widened a touch as she continued to walk closer. Was he a drunk from a nearby bar? Passed out while wandering the river's edge after downing the cheap swill from nearby. If he was, he appeared as if he had fallen, given the soaked appearance of his clothing and the snow which clung to him. Kayta's pace quickened as she reached the railing near him. Her voice calling out in her native tongue to the stranger, "You're either a fool or an unlucky bastard to have taken a dip in weather like this." Indeed, not the kindest gesture, but her background had made the lithe woman tougher than she appeared. She would wait quietly for the man's response. Nothing returned. A curse escaped her as she looked about. Not a soul in sight. No broad-shouldered factory man nearby to whom she could pawn his safety off on through batting her eyelashes. It was a risk for a young woman to carry a man of his stature home. Yet her mother's words called out to her in the back of her mind. "Что посеешь, то и пожнешь." ("As you sow, so shall you reap.") Her hands gripped the stone railing for a second longer. Time ticked by painfully slowly as she debated her decision. She'd be asking for trouble with this... Katya started to climb the barrier and onto the frozen slope leading down towards the bank. All her balance as a dancer needed to be kept steady. Boots fighting for some manner of traction as she made her descent. When she came alongside the man, she would offer a better look at his haggard appearance and strange clothes. Her blue eyes drifted to the crimson that stained the snow. Then they would trail upward the nearby water crossing bridge, a popular spot in which the dissatisfied cut their ties with their worldly binds. Fuck. Delicate fingers would grab the cloth of his jacket roughly. Katya's little strained grunts were somewhat pained as she would lift the hulking brute of a man onto her shoulder. Balancing him precariously as she shuffled along with him. All manner of foul curses left the pretty dancer's mouth as she wouldn't even bother trying to ascend the slope. The man's legs dragged limply behind her as she moved along. She required stairs, and an unconscious man certainly wouldn't begrudge her a bit of road rash if she were in the process of saving his life after all. It would be a labored haul back to her shitty little living space anyhow. Ten minutes hence... Nothing about being a professional ballet dancer prepared Katya for gunshot wounds. The ballerina dared any soul who said otherwise to show her where in the job description that came into play. When the woman had reached home, she had deposited the man in her bathtub rather unceremoniously to prevent him from bleeding on the furniture. It was in that moment, as she was trying to strip his soaked bomber jacket off of him, that she found out the extent of his injuries. It turned what was just supposed to be leisurely stripping him to his pants into a mad rush to peel most articles of soggy clothing from him till he was in his underwear. Katya rushed back and forth, all the while between the tub and the cabinet under the sink and returned with what few medical supplies she could spare. If he were semi-conscious, he was going to hate the next fifteen minutes of his life. The Russian woman was doing her best to stem the bleeding before eventually settling on the idea of wound packing and mild cauterization with a lighter. Given her lack of actual medical experience or training, Katya decided to stay the hell away from anything that came even remotely close to trying to extract the round from his chest. Now it was just a matter of sitting there with her gloved hands pressed tight against the half-naked man in her tub's chest. Her breaths winding down from the panic of earlier into a steadier pace, her blonde hair falling in strands out from under her fur-lined hat. The girl neglected to remove any of her own layers while treating the man. It was there in the silence of her cramped bathroom that Kayta Belyaeva did something she hadn't in years. The action itself frowned upon due to the Communist Party's doctrine. She began to pray an Orthodox Prayer and hoped for a miracle. ​

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[Penitency]

No one could blame Katya for her struggles; the big American grizzly she was dragging about was six foot, four inches tall, and probably weighed in at two hundred and fifteen or so pounds of muscle. Unconscious? Lucas was even heavier and more unwieldy. He was lucky his head didn’t bang on the wall anymore than it did before–

Thump!​

The striking American hit the porcelain of a tub’s basin. Both arms limply hung from the tub’s sides, his feet following the upward bend of it at the opposite end of his cradled head. With bomber jacket stripped, his undershirt the same, she’d find an Adonis laying there before her. His rippled and striated abdominals were still, slowly, rising and falling in a sign of breath. They were flanked by the long runway of his v-cut hips at either side.

Above all that, his large pectorals ran beneath the mountainous rise of shoulders. Blood streamed from a wound at his shoulder, and another beneath it near the heart. Powerful, tree-trunk sized thighs and calves laid out within the confinement, the crimson of his wounds trailing to the drain drip-by-drip.

As Katya put pressure on his wounds first, she’d find the thump-thump-THUMP of his heart resounding against her palm. It was getting more sudden, more intense! A BIG gasp, the suck of a breath, the lurch of his massive chest against her tiny hands signaled the brute came back to consciousness as she tried to stem the bleeding. Immediately, his eyes shot to the blonde, panicked. Irises were wide, pupils dilated.

Instinctually, Lucas figured he had been captured.

Immediately, he’d reach for a tarnished tool nearby that spilled from her small collection of medical supplies on the floor. Just as fast, he’d bring it to his neck to finish the job before they could torture him. With his moss green eyes square upon her, a scalpel to his neck, the brute’s chest rose and fell rapidly like some cornered junk yard dog ready to bite. Silence then came, her prayer calming him with her sing-song voice; Lucas could hear the hammering of his heart in his ears now.

“Who ar– where am I?” The brute licked his dried, cold lips with his tongue to wet them. Panicked eyes scanned about the drab, standard bathroom most living spaces shared. This wasn’t the police office, nor was it a KGB interrogation room. Lucas then leveled eyes into her own, this time a calm was beginning to wash over him. The scalpel lowered when he noticed she had been putting pressure on his wounds. Why was she helping him? Was this a trick?

“Ugh fuck,” he groaned, head hitting the porcelain of the tub behind him with a thud, “I must be dead. I've gone to heaven.”

His American voice had a southern accent to it, adding to his deep, gravely pitch. The scalpel was released, let to clamor across the floor between them. A hard swallow shifted his throat as he turned his head to look at her once more, his wild hair stuck to his head. Then he thought to himself about the cold, the chill biting into him.

His underwear.

“Uhm, these have to come off–” he was shivering now, the adrenaline no longer enough to shield him from the pain as his muscles began tightening, hard. And with his thumbs sliding in, the brute pushed down, exposing tree-trunk thighs. Even limp, cold, he was impressive– but this temperature was not flattering right now.

The wet slop of his wet underwear hitting the floor joined the rest of his stuff nearby. He’d grab her hand and press it harder to his wound, Lucas's palm double the size of her own. Lucas licked his lips again, “my name is... Lucas… What… what is your name?” The loss of blood and adrenaline had him seeing double, as if there were two blondes at the ready to service him. He must have been going delusional. Was this a KGB trick?

Another hard swallow, things going hazy.

"Why are you... helping me?"

He'd motion to the scalpel, "I need to dig the pieces out before... before... before you seal me up."

He was getting dizzier, the world going round-and-round. He couldn't tell if she understood him or not at this point. He just keep talking to keep conscious.

"I wish... I wish we didn't have to meet... like... like this." He'd fish for the scalpel, his thoughts going delirious.