Dream Drive: Yuri Ch. 01

Yuri looked at the group, trying to figure out if he knew the bride-to-be. She would be easy to spot. Apart from being probably the youngest woman there, she was also the one that was required to attend the preparations, but was strictly forbidden from doing any of the work. If the bride touched the chickpeas, the marriage would result in stillbirths, the Zibar believed.

It was a stupid superstition, but Yuri had to admit that he loved the flavor of the chickpeas. He had only gotten to taste them a few times before, when he had attended the weddings of his cousins.

He finally spotted the young woman. She didn't look familiar to him. He sighed and decided to take another route home. He didn't want to get sand in his nose, or hair. He was too tired to overlay a mental map of the enclave in his mind's eye, so he just went down the side street, intending to return to his usual route at the next turn.

Yuri walked past a group of old women that were sitting together on some chairs on the sidewalk, knitting and gossiping. They shut up as he walked past. A mouth-watering smell was spreading from an open window of the building across from them. There were men walking around, carrying heavy bags and looking nervous. He could feel their open-mouthed gazes on himself.

He lowered his head and walked past, intent on getting home and to his bed as soon as possible. He was surprised at all the attention he was getting until he noticed the green at the bottom of his vision. He was still in uniform. Usually, he changed in and out of civilian clothes at the Cipher School, but he had forgotten to change before leaving today.

"Well done, Yuri," he muttered into his chin. "Well done indeed."

Yuri had heard the rumors about himself that were going around the enclave. It was hard not to. The idea of a Zibar working for the Caliphate Intelligence Service was so outrageous that it made for very popular gossip. Some said that he was a spy for the Arabs. Others said that he was an operative of the Bloc, or the GAU. The nature of his agenda and mission were speculated on daily. There were even some people who firmly believed Yuri didn't exist.

Despite all the rumors going around about him, few in the enclave knew him by name. Even fewer knew his face.

He made sure that everyone whose needs he saw to kept silent about him. They all seemed glad to keep his name out of things. He guessed that it gave them a modicum of power and importance when they suddenly brandished a rare item, or medication, that no one could obtain and casually said that they could get more at a few days' notice. By keeping him out of it, they kept that power to themselves.

A quiet segregation of Arabs and the Zibar had been going on for as long as Yuri can remember. He had definitely felt it, but only on a personal level. On paper, he had been equal to any other child while he had been growing up. He had gone to schools no better and no worse than all the others in the Caliphate. He had a doctor treat him when he had been a kid, a dentist fix his teeth, food on the table, clothes on his back, a roof over his head. He had even managed to get his hands on some entertainment, every now and then.

There had been hate crimes against the Zibar, but only out in the sticks, where the rubes probably also wed their sheep. The old folks spoke of bad times to come, but Yuri couldn't see it. It was all just talk, as far as he was concerned. One side talking nonsense, then the other one-upping them in return. Yuri hated listening to people flapping their mouths, just for the sake of taking their turn to make some noise.

The crowning argument for the impending doom of the Zibar nation was, according to everyone, when the Zibar were gathered into enclaves. Yuri didn't see the downside to it. The enclaves were places where they could live free. It wasn't like they were imprisoned in them. They could leave to go to work, if they had it. They could go visiting their relatives in other enclaves, or abroad. Zibar emigration was not as strictly forbidden as that of Arabs. With no Arabs in sight, there had been no more violence and he didn't have to listen to the endless talk of all the bad things that were coming. He still could, but he chose not to. He chose to focus on his work.

Work which he wouldn't have been able to do if not for the forced relocation into the enclaves.

Zibar society was defined by its traditions. It was organized into tribes, for lack of a better word, according to where the Zibar lived. Each tribe had its elders and, as part of transitioning from child to adult, every Zibar had to go before the tribe's elders to declare their chosen profession and receive the elders' blessing for it.

Yuri's family had lived in a suburb of the capital and they had their own elders, separate from the elders of the other Zibar communities in the capital. When Yuri had professed his desire to become a code breaker for the Caliphate military, the elders had forbidden it.

He had been gutted. Without the elders' blessing, he had to either find a new career, which he couldn't even begin to consider, or he and his family would be shunned by every Zibar of their tribe, and then some.

During the spring of his last year of high school, his guidance counselor tried to steer him towards a number of professions, but to Yuri, the man's speeches sounded like a funeral dirge someone was playing two streets over. A string of notes that he couldn't quite make out, nor did he particularly want to.

As the firstborn son, leaving his family was tantamount to taking a wet shit on all the graves of his ancestors. His sister was expected to leave the family hearth when she got married, but it fell on him to bring a woman into the family and father a new generation to keep the traditions and the family name alive. To care for the elders of the family as they grew old.

Even if his family moved to another part of the capital, they needed the blessings of both their current and future elders to change tribal affiliation. That blessing would probably only come with a string attached; the one that said his ban on a military cryptography career had to be upheld.

He saw no way out of his predicament, not without breaking his parents' hearts. He knew he'd feel like shit whatever he chose.

When all the Zibar in the capital had been moved to the enclave, Yuri could have shouted his joy from the rooftops. By Zibar custom, living in one area mandated a single gathering of elders to lead them. That meant that many of the elders had to give up their prestige and social power and none of them seemed willing to do that. A power struggle between the various city quarters' elders had ensued.

While they had been busy sorting out their new hierarchy, Yuri had seized the opportunity the power vacuum had provided and joined the Army. By the time they had gotten around to establishing a unified council, he had put them before a fait accompli.

Even if they wanted to do something about it, they were now practically powerless to stop him. The Arabs had wedged themselves into every decision-making process regarding the enclave and they controlled who lived where and what could and couldn't be delivered into the enclave. The elders' power was now reduced to determining who sat where during social functions and in which order everyone's tea cups got filled.

As far as Yuri was concerned, it served them right for trying to dictate his life for him.

If the elders tried to decree his family ostracized, people would play along and shun them in public, but in private, they'd have to come to him, hat in hand. Yuri had seen to that.

He used his military privileges to sneak the things he obtained into the enclave. It was mostly things that were hard to come by, even for the more affluent amongst the Arabs. Several of the elders had actually asked Yuri to bring them things in the past few years. He had obliged them, but that had not resolved the tensions between the council of elders and himself.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked faster. A bubble of silence walked with him. He focused on his feet. He couldn't look up and see those gawking eyes. Not today. Today, he had followed his dreams and saw them come to fruition. Today, he wanted to feel good about himself.

All his life, Yuri felt like he had to explain himself. Like his very existence was some kind of anomaly. In elementary school and high school, whenever he saw an Arab kid with similar interests to his own, they'd be shocked that he wanted to be their friend. The ensuing awkwardness stopped him from ever forging any lasting friendships with Arabs. The Zibar kids would look at him like he was insane that he wanted to even talk with "them".

His childhood had wound up being a very solitary experience.

He had hoped that, once he left school, things would get better, but his hopes were quickly dashed. All those artificial divisions in Caliphate society kept intruding into his life, every single day. Everywhere he went, he was gawked at as if he was a freak of nature. There were times he wanted to start every interaction with other humans with a punch, in the hopes that their eyes would go back into their sockets and that whatever was stuck inside their brains would get loosened. Only at the Cipher School did he feel like people could see past the superficial to what was important.

Well, people who were not Colonel Ali, that is.

After a few wrong turns, Yuri managed to return to his usual route home. Normally, the winding streets presented no challenge to him, but he was having a hard time figuring out the cardinal directions. Just two turns from his apartment building, a pair of heels planted themselves right in his path. He tried to walk around them, but a soft hand grabbed his elbow. "Yuri, wait!"

He looked up to see the smiling face of Wada Rial, his old flame. While his brain struggled to make sense of the sight, his mouth went on autopilot. "Oh, didn't see you there," he said, in Arabic.

She frowned at his choice of language, but continued in Zibar. "Well, I'll say you didn't. You've got your head hanging so low, you're nearly brushing the pavement with your nose." She reached up and gave his nose a quick squeeze. "Honk!"

Yuri grinned despite himself. He leaned away from her hand. "Hey," he exclaimed in his native Zibar. She honked his nose twice more and he had to pull his hands out of his pockets to get her to stop. "Cut it out! What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong." She shrugged. "What? Can't a girl touch an old friend's nose? And make noises doing it?"

"Yeah, ok...I'm just..." He took a good look at her. She was dressed in a fairly form-fitting blue dress. It accentuated her body far more than concealed its shape. Her pitch black hair was done up in tight, little curls. She had worn it like that a few times, back when they had been dating, and he had never failed to tell her how much he liked it done up like that. Red lipstick adorned her smiling lips. There was some blush on her cheeks and her eyes were made up, too. Yuri almost frowned when he was looking into her brown eyes. They didn't quite seem to match her smile. "Um..."

"Yuri, you old dog, how long has it been?"

"Since...?"

"Since we got together to talk. How long has it been?"

Yuri had to actually think about that. He knew the exact time and date of their last conversation; it was the one with which she had dumped him for that med student. He just couldn't, for the life of him, muster the present time and date, let alone subtract one from the other and give her the answer. "Uh, long..." He nodded. "It's been long."

"Well, can we talk now?"

"Um, I'm tired and..."

"Tired? Isn't it a bit early in the day to be tired?"

Yuri squinted up at the sky. The sun was past its highest point, approximately half way to the horizon. "Uh, I guess, but I was up all night, and..."

Wada snuggled closer to him, hugging his elbow with her breasts. "What were you up to all night long, you naughty boy? Making trouble for all the single ladies in the enclave?" She winked up at him and giggled.

"No! No, I was on duty the whole night long!"

"Oh, relax, Yuri, I'm just teasing you." She looked him up and down. "Though, I've got to tell you, you look great in that uniform."

He could feel his cheeks burning. "Uh, thanks."

She felt his arm with her hands. "Oooh, and you feel so strong to the touch, Yuri. You do a lot of exercise, huh?" She winked. "It definitely shows. You're quite the hunk now."

He didn't feel comfortable hearing her talk like that in public. "Where's, uh," Yuri squinted as he struggled to recall the name of the med student. "Where's Abraham?"

Wada shrugged. "He's helping out at the clinic."

"Oh." Wada kept smiling up at him, even as she kept his elbow pressed firmly between her breasts. "Well, what would your fiancé think about you standing so close to me?"

"Abraham knows we're close, you and I." Yuri's brow rose. "Well, he knows weused to be so close." She leaned in and rested her head atop his shoulder, not breaking eye contact. "Don't you miss it? Us being close? Together?" Yuri's mouth worked, but no sounds were coming out. "I do. I've missed you so bad. I've often thought about getting back together with you."

Yuri gulped as his throat was suddenly very dry. He could feel her breath against the bottom of his chin. Some kind of floral perfume was lingering in his nostrils.

"I used to lie in bed, sometimes," she whispered, "and imagine what it would be like to get back together with you." She rubbed her cheek against the top of his shoulder. Her breasts rubbed against his bicep at the same time.

Her overtly sexual motion snapped Yuri out of his surprise. He cast his eyes about. There were few people around, but most of them were glancing their way. "Wada, stop that," he hissed, "someone will see you!"

"So?"

"So? So, you're acting like a wanton whore, Wada. Stop it!" He stepped away from her and pulled his elbow out of her grip.

Wada kept smiling. Her fingers traced the front of her dress. Yuri gulped when he realized she was tracing around her nipples. He could see they were erect and that meant she was braless. A flood of memories rushed into his mind's eye. Broken images of her riding atop his hips, her face scrunched up in concentration as she yelped and gasped. Her tits, her naked, smooth, soft tits in his hands, getting redder the more he played with them. He started feeling his cock swell against his boxers.

"Used to be, you didn't mind me behaving like that. Used to be, you liked it. A lot."

Yuri frowned. "That was then. We're not together anymore." He forced himself to look away from her chest and cast his gaze about again. "And we never did anything untoward in public."

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, if you're worried about public indecency, we can go someplace more private. Someplace where we can be as alone and as close as we want to." She stepped closer and embraced him.

Yuri could feel her breasts flatten against the muscles of his chest. He could feel her nipples poking into his skin. They felt like a pair of electrodes, poised to make his heart race and stop beating at the same time. The heat of her soft, pliant body against his was too powerful to resist. His cock sprang up to full hardness, poking her in the hip, despite the heavy canvas of his combat fatigues.

"Ooooh," she cooed in delight. "I can feel how close you want to be to me."

"No, no, no, that's not...no, I..." His eyes darted everywhere, noting the disapproving looks the passers-by were shooting him.

"If you want me to stop being so close to you, just say so and I'll move away and let you and your," she shot an amused look at his crotch, "big friend walk home all by yourselves."

"No," he exclaimed softly and pressed her closer to him. Hugging a girl on the street was indecent, but walking around with a discernible erection was utterly unacceptable. He'd be ostracized for such behavior. His family, too. He could push back against the elders' nonsense, but this...

He felt Wada's soft laugh against his chest, even as his eyes darted around in a panic. "Wada, stop it," he hissed.

"Stop what? I'm not doing anything." She held her hands up above their shoulders. "Look, my hands are up here!"

"Wada!" Everyone's eyes were on them now. He could feel sweat break out across his brow. He had never seen Wada act like a harlot before. He had never seen any girl act like this in public. He didn't know what to do.

"If you're worried about everyone's eyes, we could duck inside, out of the way."

"Yes! Yes, let's!"

"Come on!" She turned around, took him by the hand, and led him to the nearest doorway.

It was a small apartment building, only three stories high, with two apartments per floor. He was almost relieved to be out of the street, but then he heard children's laughter coming from higher up on the staircase. "Wada," he hissed heatedly, "children can't see me like this!" His erection was somewhat subsiding, but he still needed to hide it. He maneuvered his messenger bag in front of it.

"Come on! We can hide in here!" She unlocked a door and pushed him in before he could object. She locked the door behind them.

Yuri looked around the small apartment. It was somewhat cramped, with lots of furniture lying around. There were neatly folded clothes and books everywhere. "Wada," he whispered, "people live here."

"Yes, my family does. Don't worry." She winked at him. "No one's home."

"Oh." He frowned. "Wait, so you live here? I thought you and Abraham moved south after you..." She looked a bit sheepish at his comment. "Since when do you live here?"

She shrugged. "A while now."

"I had no idea. I live just two streets over. Why didn't you ever come over and say hello?"

"Your mother hates me."

"No, she doesn't."

Wada shot him a look. "Yes, she does. But that doesn't matter." She moved his bag aside and stepped closer to embrace him once again. She was sporting another inviting smile.

His eyes fluttered closed and he sighed as he felt her warm body press itself against his. Her pliant hip rubbed against his erection. Even through their clothing, it felt excellent. "Wada, we can't."

"Sure we can."

"We shouldn't."

"No," she said, giggling, "we definitely shouldn't."

He looked around and then at her. "I, I have to go."

"No, you don't."

"Wada, please!"

"Please, what?"

"Just, let go of me. I have to...I have to use the bathroom."

She laughed softly as she rubbed herself against him all over again. His cock instantly regained any hardness it might have lost and he had to grit his teeth to keep from rubbing along with her. "Why, Yuri, that's a sin, you know."

He shot her an incredulous look. "And this isn't?"

"Was it a sin when we were together?"

"We, uh...we're not together now. You're with Abraham."

"Forget Abraham." Her hands roamed up and down his back, squeezing his buttocks and tracing the cleft between his shoulder blades with her nails.

He sucked air and grimaced. His upper back had always been sensitive. Just getting touched like that was making him relive all the times he had spent himself inside her quivering sheath, her nails raking his shoulder blades bloody as she climaxed with him. His knees felt weak, all of a sudden. "Wada, no."

"Yuri, yes," she breathed into his chin. She tilted her head and began sucking on the side of his throat.

He groaned when her tongue joined in on the fun. She kissed across his larynx, tickling away until he was unable to speak, only gasp for breath. She kissed up the side of his throat until she reached his ear. "Be with me, Yuri, just like old times. Be with me."

"Wada, no."

Her hands reached up and pulled his head down for a kiss. When her lips touched his, he couldn't fight it any longer. He dropped his bag and seized her ass. Her buttocks felt so right in his hands, their soft flesh overflowing between his clenching fingers. She squealed into his mouth and then jumped up to clamp her legs around his midriff. He supported her weight with ease.