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Waking up was a surprise. Alexei couldn't say why, but when his gummy eyes blinked open the fuzzy light beyond inspired a brief pang of awe. Then he snapped them closed against the sudden throb of a headache. His stomach lurched and and unfamiliar voice called out to him. It didn't make much sense and she sounded like she was talking through a mouthful of mashed potato.
"Cain goo harm?" Mash potato nurse asked.
Alexei shook his head and licked his chapped lips. His mouth was dry and he didn't want to acknowledge anyone else. He groaned instead and heard the soft beep of someone pressing the button for more pain killers. The ache in his chest eased and he remembered.
"Seer, dough no ware sewer?"
Alexei forced his stubborn tongue around the words, "Ich spechen nicht Englisch."
He couldn't speak english. He couldn't speak much German either. Hopefully America's failing education system would keep that from being too obvious. He was pretty sure he fucked up the grammar on the negative but it was better than speaking Russian, even if he hadn't had to worry about his cover, one conversation with Murray had been enough to remind him of where most American's heads were at.
She asked something else, an incomprehensible jumble of nasal vowels.
"Joyce Byers." he answered. Then, "Jim Hopper. Murray..." Did he know murray's last name? He couldn't remember.
He opened his eyes again to look up at the startled nurse hovering near the clear IV bag at his bedside. He squinted up, repeated the list of names until she scrambled for a pen to write them down. He needed someone else to do the thinking for him right now. The room was spinning and flashing around him like the carnival rides he'd seen earlier.
"Morphine?" he asked.
"Yes morphine."
"No morphine." he corrected, hoping she'd understand. It always made him sick, and he didn't want to see what his stomach came up with after being shot in the gut. "Fentanyl, please. Demerol? No morphine." His mouth tripped over the words but he thought he did a pretty good job.
The patronizing smile and pat on the arm she gave him after suggested otherwise.
"Eyell tuck toe ducktur." She said like that meant anything to him. What the hell did she think, 'ich spechen nicht englisch' meant?
She left and returned with an attractive older man with a false grin and silver spectacles who gave him a long speech in English that Alexei was so uninterested in trying to pick through that he pressed the button to lower the bed flat. He closed his eyes and hoped his 'fuck this' had been communicated in full.
The next time he woke up he had to resist the urge to giggle at the sound of the beeping heart monitor. They'd gone with the Demerol then. Or some horrifying mix of the two. You never could tell with Americans. When he turned his head to find Murray slumped into the chair beside his bed with eyes closed and drool in his beard he really did laugh. The combined amusement and relief at seeing a familiar face boosted the effect of the drugs to near euphoria.
He felt a heavy knock against the inside of his rib cage as his heart gave a funny lurch. An unusual side effect to the drugs, maybe, but not the worst he could have gotten.
Murray was dressed in half of a familiar Russian uniform, the top half tied around his waste. The tank top underneath seemed like too little clothing in the cold hospital room but he was sleeping soundly. Alexei couldn't wait to ask him how the disguise had gone down. His hair wasn't regulation cut and beards hadn't been common in the military; they must have spotted him immediately. He bit down on his smile.
Murray had survived it somehow.
Maybe they hadn't tried yet. Alexei had no idea how long he'd been in here.
He squinted toward the man. The wall swirled in a vortex around Murray's face. His very large face. How much of his face was just beard?
"Your head is big." he said.
The chair creaked as Murray shifted awake, eyes bruised by lack of sleep or stress or something else. He blinked slowly and grunted a questioning sound.
"Has anyone told you you have a big head?" Alexei asked.
Murray inhaled deeply and sat upright, rubbing his face with both hands before shooting him a weak glare, "Not recently."
"I think it's twice as big as mine."
"I think you're high."
"Oh." He slumped back into the pillows and let his eyes roll over the room. The TV in the corner was flashing a colorful news bulletin, the screen flashing with the police car lights in the video. They painted the shopping mall red, then white, then blue.
Did that mean they'd done it?
"What happened?"
Murray groaned and dropped his head against the back of the chair. He spoke to the ceiling when he answered, "Thought that fucking terminator had killed you. Sorry about that, your friend was still wandering the carnival and we couldn't feel your pulse... a doctor and his kid found you and brought you here. I know you asked for Joyce but the children needed someone to-"
"I didn't know your last name." Alexei interrupted.
"Oh. Bauman."
"Bauman." Alexei repeated, trying it out.
Murray sighed, "We lost Hopper."
That brought his high down to a gentle, almost normal, simmer. Alexei hadn't liked Hopper but it was a shame. "Now they'll never have sex." he said, then gaped at the ceiling.
What an awful thing to say.
Murray laughed.
It echoed off the walls and bounced around in Alexei's head like happy butterflies. He couldn't stop himself from joining, and soon they both had tears streaming down their cheeks. Murray snorted, then stifled his laugh as footsteps passed by the door. Alexei tried to follow suit, not wanting to get yelled at for making noise in the middle of the night, but he couldn't quite manage and another giggle slipped through his lips.
"Jesus Christ," Murray laughed as he rubbed his cheeks dry, "They're really giving you the good stuff, huh?"
Alexei shrugged and gave him a lopsided smile.
Murray nodded. "Yeaaah. All that bitching and denial," he waved a hand, "then he's dead and you're broken-hearted anyway," he frowned and cleared his throat. "Nurse said you were German?"
"Better than Russian." Alexei offered.
"I can't speak German."
He grinned. "Me neither."
II
Do not mix pain relievers and alcohol. Alexei couldn't read the instructions on the bottle but he knew it said that somewhere in the fine print.
He took another sip of vodka.
As soon as the hospital was told Alexei had no insurance or paperwork he was booted out and Murray was free to take him back to his place. He managed to finagle a prescription for more painkillers from the doctor and the nurse gave him detailed instructions on how to care for the wound once they left, which Murray took careful note of on a free piece of paper and Alexei blinked sleepily at.
Now they were on day three of their medical vigil.
Life in the bunker was a nice change of pace. Days spent lounging in pajamas (Alexei's boxers and one of Murray's old flannel shirts left unbuttoned for easy bandage access) and watched cartoons and game shows all day. They were ignoring the shit they'd done last week and the shit they had to figure out in the next and they were doing a pretty good job.
Plus, day time TV was much better under the influence of pain killers and alcohol. Loony tunes was as amusing as ever, but with the drugs even the shows with a lot of English dialogue became entertaining. It helped that Murray kept up a constant stream of commentary.
"Oh look she stole someone else’s purse during the walk from her place to Angela's."
On TV a woman dramatically slapped another, her hand never coming within a foot of the woman's face and knocking her away with the power of sheer dramatics. A purse not at all like the one she'd had previously swung from her elbow. Alexei didn't think he would have noticed.
"Who is this?" Alexei asked.
"Oh. It's her cousin, but they've never gotten along and her husband just told her he'd been having an affair with her. So," he gestured to the TV, "obviously this needed to be resolved right this moment so she's gone over to have a slap and avoid talking it out with either of them."
Alexei nodded and finished his vodka.
The combination also turned Murray's bunker into a museum of interesting things to look at. Stern posters watched him from every corner of the room and yesterday morning Alexei's medicine and a cup of coffee had inspired him to try and hold a staring contest with the king crimson album propped near the record player. Everything was unusual and interesting and the most notable thing about it was what was missing.
Murray's bunker had all the hallmarks of a bachelor pad. The mismatched furniture, the stack of dirty dishes in the kitchen. The kitchen shelves bare of anything but vodka. It felt like being back in his cousin Yuri's first flat but for that one thing. There were no posters of women. There wasn't just an absence of scantily clad women, there was an absence of women, full stop. Even Alexei's first serious boyfriend had had a pin up or two hung on his walls.
And really. Alexei hadn't needed to look for the clues. As soon as the thought was in his head it seemed obvious. He dropped his head back and just listened to Murray ramble about the dramas on TV. He was really quite good.
"You never told me why you learned Russian."
Murray paused, his rant about the crumbling marriage on screen stopped. He shrugged. They were sitting close enough together that Alexei could feel the shift of the couch cushion as Murray moved.
"We have a saying; Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
It sounded vaguely familiar, though Alexei had never heard the phrase translated quite like that.
The thing was, Alexei had always liked older men. He'd been too smart to let it get him into trouble, but it could have. But Murray wasn't his professor. Or a commander, or boss. Or fucking Russian. He was just a guy who happened to be older and didn't seem to have any better idea where to go from here than Alexei did.
So… "How close?" he asked.
The sound Murray made could be best described as "buh?"
They were already sitting right next to each other on the couch, barely an inch between them, so Alexei rolled over and threw a leg over Murray's lap, and sat himself right there with a triumphant grin and a question in his eyes. He got no answer but surprised blinking, so he plowed forward.
Murray pulled back. "Wait."
"Oh. Sorry, sorry. Are you…not?" Alexei didn't want to ask. He was in his lap, so really he didn't think he had to clarify.
"No no…this is fine."
Alexei sat there, hovering, and still felt like he had to explain. "You stared at Hopper's ass."
Murray cleared his throat and nodded. "It was a nice ass."
"It was."
They shared a moment of quiet memory for the man. Maybe friend. Then Murray said, "Yeah alright." then something in English that sounded self deprecating, and finally pulled Alexei down into a kiss. It was different. He'd never been with anyone who could grow more than the barest of beards. He grabbed at Murray's face, pressed his fingers to the thick hair and bit down a laugh. He'd once heard beards referred to as face pubes. He understood the comparison now. They were a little softer. A little thicker.
Murray pulled back and squinted into his eyes. "Are you still taking the pain killers?"
Alexei's heart gave a little flip and he smiled. "No. Some ibuprofen. I'm just happy."
It wasn't a lie.
III
It was strange watching the American news. It was filtered through Murray, but it was obvious that nothing important was being said about what had happened. The word HELL flashed across the screen.
American's were so dramatic.
"Joyce probably has the right idea getting the hell out of here." Murray said.
"Without her nothing will ever get done."
Murray scoffed at that. "You're not wrong." He turned the TV off just as the voice over took a less ominous tone. "But I need to relocate. And we should get you out of here."
"What's wrong with Illinois?"
Murray twisted in his seat, turning fully to face Alexei and say, "Too close to Indiana, where there was a Russian invasion." he smirked, "don't you watch the news?"
Alexei shrugged. "I can apply to stay. I have more than sufficient cause for refugee status, no?"
"Really want to throw your lot in with us American pigs?"
Alexei turned to mirror Murray's position. "I like America." he poked a finger at Murray's chest, "I like pigs."
Murray rolled his eyes, "Yeah alright, fuck it. We'll stay. We can drive into town and get the paperwork tomorrow." He topped up their glasses and lifted the vodka in a toast.
Alexei clacked their glasses together. "God bless America," he said in his best attempt at an American accent.
"Don't you fucking dare."