Chapter Text
Nikto POV
Get us some vodka.
And cigarettes, too.
“Why don’t you get it yourself?”
Nikto turns over in bed for the fifth time in the same hour. Usually, he’s as still as a stone in his efforts to fall asleep, but the voices are persistent tonight.
There’s a convenience store down the street; go now.
“Shut up; I’m trying to sleep,” Nikto says to the empty room.
We can sleep once we have a drink in our system.
“It’s two in the fucking AM,” Nikto retorts with another turn, shoving the pillow onto his head to block out the voices, but they’re relentless.
There’s no better time for a drink.
Or for a smoke.
Nikto throws the pillow across the room in frustration. “Fuckers!”
He doesn’t always listen to the majority rule, but tonight, Nikto drags himself out of bed. It’s pointless to attempt to sleep with all the noise anyway.
He quickly throws on the clothes draped over his chair and taps his hoodie pocket to confirm that his wallet is inside. While he wishes that he didn’t have to bother with the mask, civilians can get annoying about seeing his bare face, so he begrudgingly shoves it on while stomping into his boots. As soon as he finishes attaching the last clasp on his mask, he’s out the door.
The voices chatter about nonsense – something about their preferred brands of alcohol – as Nikto trudges onward towards the glowing lights of the store in the distance. The midnight stroll makes him consider living in a remote, rural area someday if he ever decides to retire, just so that the voices won’t make him run errands in the middle of the night.
Or perhaps they would simply make him travel further on their whims.
Soon enough, Nikto is stepping out of the shadows and into the air conditioned building that welcomes him with a jingle.
Reader POV
Your manager told you that pulling up a chair to sit at the registers isn’t allowed, as it’s “unprofessional.”
But he didn’t say anything about leaning against the wall. So, you enjoy another night of mild rebellion as you let your body rest against the one spot along the wall that isn’t covered by goods and machinery.
The music playing through the store speakers is barely audible, but it helps you to dissociate and simulate interview practices in your mind – a much better use of your time than twiddling your thumbs in an empty store for eight hours.
You have nothing much to do anyway, unless a customer with a sleep schedule warped worse than yours walks through the automatic doors. The floors are mopped, the snacks are restocked, and the pre-morning shift set-up can only be completed closer to sunrise.
There is a single ceiling tile that has its corner jutting out, but fixing that is above your pay grade, so you instead use the salient spot as a target for your eyes to land on as you craft answers for the trickier interview questions.
“What is your greatest weakness?”
This one is less about your answer and more about how you word it.
“Tell us about a time when…”
That one is a fine balancing act of humble bragging without obviously blame-shifting.
You definitely have enough work anecdotes in your arsenal to cover for any situation the interviewers may bring up. It’s not about practicing these interviews anymore, really; you just need to land one at all.
You’re in the middle of a self-pitying sigh– when suddenly, the door jingle goes off.
Immediately, you shoot off of the wall and fix your expression.
But before you can chirp out your greeting, the sight of your customer freezes you in place and sends needles all across your body.
A massive man – easily over six foot – dressed in all black storms through the entrance. But most notable about him is the terrifying mask that he wears – perfect for protecting his identity from the security cameras.
You really only get a glimpse of him before he beelines to the back of the store without acknowledging you.
This is what they warned me of.
A young woman working the night shift only welcomes danger, they’d said.
The alarms are going off in your head, but your body refuses to budge. There’s a call button specifically for these circumstances, but you fear that the wrong move may trigger the man. Why, between the two options of fight or flight, did your body have to pick the secret third option of freeze?
The man is rummaging through the alcohol section. He’s sure to grab whatever he fancies, and then rob you at gun point. Even without a gun, he’d easily be able to overpower you.
But while you’re still stuck in the middle of your panic, the man finishes his shopping and walks over to you, posture exuding absolute confidence in himself. Each heavy step of his boots echoes threateningly throughout the store and quickly carries him to the spot across the counter from you.
You’re face to face with the thickest chest you’ve ever seen. His hoodie does absolutely nothing to hide his musculature – both his pecs and his tree trunk-like arms are bulging out of the cloth – and you wonder if this outfit was put together on purpose as an intimidation tactic.
The man sets down his chosen bottle of vodka and stares down at it as though cursing its existence.
He reaches into his pocket, and you hold your breath, waiting for the inevitable weapon to reveal itself–
When he pulls out his wallet.
No gun;
No threat;
Just a tall man with an unusual mask waiting for check-out.
And just you, who jumped to conclusions.
When the pieces belatedly click into place, unveiling a picture of complete normalcy, you quickly try to recover your professional smile and jump back into the mandated script.
“Did you find everything okay, sir?” you ask in the sweetest voice you can muster, as if to counteract the mental slander you’d just conducted against him.
The man lifts his gaze from the counter to look at you, and you’re stunned by the color of his eyes. As expected of someone who’s out at this hour, his eyes are bloodshot, but more striking than that, are his gorgeously cerulean irises.
But the longer you hold eye contact, the more they slim into thin rings surrounding large pupils.
Is he feeling anxious about something?
You hope that he doesn’t notice your mouth twitching as you hold your smile while waiting for him to respond.
Three too-long seconds pass.
Could he be considering whether to take out a weapon after all?
He blinks.
Your smile falters by a fraction, but you pick it back up just as quickly.
“Is this all for today, sir?” you rephrase your question in case he didn’t understand you the first time.
You can’t help but gulp nervously when he continues to do nothing but stare at you.
“Sir?” you ask once more, tentatively.
When you don’t receive a response for the third time, you decide to move the interaction forward by yourself.
“I’ll just ring this up for you, okay?”
You pass his item over the scanner, and then as though the beep from the machine flipped a switch inside of him, the man suddenly jolts out of his trance and frantically opens up his wallet. After fumbling a bit with the money inside, he slams down a large bill.
Without a single word, the man takes his purchase and bolts out the door.
“Sir, your change?” you call out after him, but within seconds, his figure disappears into the darkness. You’re left standing in the dust to process the bewildering interaction you just had.
At least he wasn’t a robber after all.
In fact, he left quite a bit of money behind, instead.
You count out his change in silence, and decide to leave it to the side in case he decides to come back for it. If he doesn‘t return by the end of your shift, it’s probably fine to drop it into the tip jar.
You breathe a sigh of relief as the thrumming in your ears fade and the soft radio music becomes audible again. You return to your spot on the wall, but your mind is still stuck on that customer’s puzzling behavior.
One second, he walked with the unabashed confidence of a man with a hidden weapon, but the next, he was acting even more frazzled than you.
Perhaps he was just shy?
You almost feel bad for distrusting him, but could you really be blamed? He was wearing the most suspicious, robber-like outfit possible.
Now that you think about it, there’s a private military base nearby. It would certainly explain his intimidating figure, and now you’re considering the possibility that he’s hard of hearing; it’s not uncommon among military men.
Regardless of the reasoning behind his behavior, if that man always leaves behind a wad of cash in “tips,” you wouldn’t mind seeing him again.
Nikto POV
How was he supposed to know?
What the fuck was that, you idiot?
You made a fool of us!
The flurry of insults has not relented since Nikto made his escape from the store.
But it’s not his fault. How was he supposed to know that making eye contact with the cashier would rattle him so badly?
So badly that his head would go completely blank?
So badly that his throat would go completely dry?
Frankly, it was ridiculous. He’s been in far more stressful situations – on the mission field, surrounded by enemies – yet the one who catches him off-guard is some civilian woman?
Why didn’t you fucking open your mouth when she asked us a question?
These voices sure have some nerve with this big talk when they had also shut down in front of the cashier. The one time when Nikto could’ve used some backup, they’d offered no help.
“If it wasn’t for you asking for vodka, this never would’ve happened,” Nikto shoots back. “I’m never listening to you fuckers again.”
And you forgot the cigs anyway, another voice grumbles.
“Suck it up; we’re not going back there,” Nikto says firmly as he slows his jog. They’re back on base grounds, where he’s finally safe from the eyes of a certain cashier.
Fucking pussy.
It’s just a cashier. All you had to do was ask for the cigs behind her.
Still don’t know why you were acting like such a fucking–
“Shut up!” Nikto cuts off the voice and aggressively hits his head to forcefully quiet the chatter, though he knows it’ll only work temporarily.
Even without the voices berating him, he knows well enough that he was acting like a fool. For a man who yells into the comms until his vocal cords are fried, it’s astonishing even to him how words had failed him in that moment.
You had only asked him a couple of simple yes or no questions, but as he stared into your eyes, he could feel all of the confidence in his body evaporating. His head was void of any concrete thoughts; yet, unfamiliar feelings buzzed throughout his body:
Self-consciousness,
Nervousness,
Desire–
…
Desire?
Nikto quickly shakes the thought out of his head as he enters his quarters.
He must be seriously exhausted to be acting and thinking this way. Why else would he care about what some cashier thinks of him?
Nikto swiftly locks the door behind him and opens up his hard-earned prize from his outing tonight, not even bothering to strip off his clothes before sitting on the edge of his bed to chug the drink.
On the bright side, at least no one witnessed his interaction with the lady. Now, he can just go to sleep, pretending that it never happened, and none would be the wiser. He’s supposed to be an elite soldier, not a bumbling idiot.
Once the entire bottle is downed, he collapses onto the bed, ready for a well-deserved rest.
As he drifts off, Nikto swears that he’ll never step foot in that store again.
But the voices have other plans for him.
The gym is the perfect place to empty his mind (– on purpose, this time). They all know the importance of keeping up with training, so usually, the voices will be in sync with Nikto’s efforts to exercise and practice self-discipline.
Key word: usually.
Nikto settles in his usual corner and starts with the weights, blocking out all other noise to count his reps.
Two, three, four–
Her voice was so sweet…
Can’t stop thinking about her lips…
Focus! Nikto corrects them. We were on eight… No, seven?
She was so pretty…
Shut up!
As he knocks his fist into the side of his skull, Nikto is all too aware of the heads that turn and the whispers that point directly at him.
“–talking to himself again…”
“Shh, he can hear you.”
Perhaps a few years ago, he would’ve taken them up on the fight that they’re picking, but at this point, he’s become numb to the wary glances. In fact, he figures that any men on base who still react strongly to his behavior are simply outing themselves as rookies.
Nikto continues his workout, letting the weights speak for themselves of his capability as a soldier.
Unfortunately for him, the voices return soon after with a renewed vigor, continuously filling his head with nonsense.
Even during a meeting, his mind wanders in the direction that the voices lead him towards.
Let’s go see her again tonight.
What is with their obsession with her?
It’s not as though he’s never seen a beautiful woman before. He’s interacted with his fair share of assassins who use their visual appeal to eliminate high-profile targets.
While Nikto could recognize that they’re conventionally attractive, seeing them has never sparked anything in him; their looks were simply another form of weaponry. Compared to them, there shouldn’t be anything that makes that cashier so–
It was the look in her eyes, a calm voice interrupts his thoughts with a dreamy tone.
Her eyes...
Although they’re supposed to be listening to their colonel speak, Nikto’s mind has been taken back to that moment when they stood in front of you.
You stood with your back pin-straight and spoke with a perfectly polite voice. Anyone else might have mistaken the facade of your professional smile as one of calm, but Nikto immediately saw through the window of your eyes the instinctive fear that hid behind everything else.
You were almost pitiable, but more than anything, he was simply captivated by the innocent gleam of your eyes that has become the rarest of sights in his field.
It made me want to–
Eat her, an aggressive voice interjects.
… –protect her, the first voice finishes with irritation.
I want her in our bed, he says without heed to the other voice’s yearnings. Don’t you want to feel the warmth of a woman?
We don’t have time for a woman, Nikto chides the both of them. How frustrating that even with two others living in his head, he still must act as the voice of reason.
At the very least, it would’ve been great if one of them were suave enough to carry a conversation. Then, they wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves at all.
And what woman would want to share a bed with us? Nikto continues. Did you forget? We–
Suddenly, he feels a kick to his shin.
It’s Horangi – trying to subtly alert Nikto to the gaze of the colonel that had landed on him while he was floating away in dreamland.
“Were you fucking listening?”
The colonel’s German accent grates on his ears, but Nikto doesn’t so much as blink at the reprimand. He simply stares back, still as a statue and without concern.
Though his head is filled with noisy voices hurling insults, Nikto manages to contain them, showing his superior the bare minimum of respect.
“If you’re not going to contribute, why are you even here?” the colonel snarls at him. “Nikto, dismissed.”
And like the good soldier he is, Nikto obeys the command without complaint.
Fuck that guy.
We have better things to worry about, anyway.
Back in his room, Nikto tries to distract himself by cleaning his weapons, but it’s clear that the voices could not care less about his stubbornness, and they continue to make their desires known.
We want to see the woman again.
Yes, go to the store again tonight. Another voice agrees. And get cigs this time.
“We’re not going there again,” Nikto says. Who knows how many times he’s repeated that phrase today? “Just to see some civilian woman?”
If she’s just “some civilian woman,” why don’t you prove just how inconsequential she is by going there? a voice taunts.
“I told you I’m not fucking listening to you anymore,” Nikto reminds them. “She’s probably not even there, anyway.”
Then it doesn‘t matter to you if we go then, does it?
Fuckers.
It’s so easy for them to tell him what to do.
He gives the voices the silent treatment until he finishes polishing his favorite knife to his liking.
Then,–
“Fine, we’ll go,” Nikto gives in.
Surely, he can maintain his composure this time. Especially if he knows what's awaiting him.
Even as he approaches the store from afar, Nikto strains his eyes to see past the glass windows to see if you're there behind the cash register again tonight.
The voices erupt in foolish cheer the moment he confirms it.
Nikto refuses to slow his pace as he crosses the threshold of the store, refusing to show any sign of uncertainty.
He knows what to do this time. It'll be different.
He's an elite soldier.
He's handled far worse.
He's–
"Welcome!" you greet him with an angelic smile.
He should have never returned to this store.