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Sergei's heart has been caught in his throat ever since he first laid eyes on that wretched photo.
Now, even with Oleg safe, alive, his head in Sergei's lap in the backseat of the Mercedes, it still hasn't seemed to come back down. His fingers are still covered in blood (he's not sure of whose anymore) but he runs them absently through Oleg's hair to keep himself tethered to his body, his surroundings, to Oleg, as Lera speeds through side roads.
Oleg had been shivering when Sergei had first gotten to him. It has subsided now but only just. Sergei had draped his jacket over him, covering his chest and arms best he could and tried to leave his back exposed to not irritate the broken skin.
His mind flickers to their trip back from Cancun some years back, Oleg coughing as they waited for a taxi in St. Petersburg, and then taking Sergei's offered sweater and jacket with reluctance. In spite of the chaos and the firefight, Sergei misses that trip, misses how it made him feel, and the rush Oleg seemed to get out of it and how he glowed with it.
They should go back, he thinks, and he'd even be content to lounge at the beach, or just stay holed up inside the hotel room and order in--
"We're here," Lera cuts sharply into his reverie. She's parked them in an indoor garage and shoots him a look in the rearview. It's the same keep-it-together look she's worn since he first picked her up in this car. "Stay put. I'll be back in a bit," she says before getting out.
He knows he's been fraying at the edges but, fortunately for all of them, there seems to be no time to unravel fully.
"Where..." Oleg rasps.
"Hospital," Sergei says. "Lera's. Can't risk going back to the base just yet and can’t patch you up all cramped in the car." He may very well be getting paranoid but there's also a real chance that every space they’ve been in is now compromised. He takes Oleg's hand and gives it a squeeze. "I'll figure it out, promise."
Lera returns, no longer in the earlier under-suit but donning hospital scrubs and a labcoat with a large tote bag tucked under her arm. She throws two oversized sets of scrubs at Sergei, and there are surgical caps and masks folded in there as well.
"Get yourself into these best you can. We’ll go in through the staff entrance. Can he walk?"
"We'll manage," Sergei says.
They do manage though at a third of the usual pace, with Oleg limping beside him. Lera captures the service elevators before too long, which is fortunate because Sergei needs to lean against its walls to catch his own breath long enough to power through the rest of this endless night.
Lera steers them towards the darkened hallway of what Sergei assumes to be unoccupied staff space once the elevator doors ding.
"Medical trainee lounge," Lera says by way of explanation, badging them in and guiding them past a row of computers and printers to a smaller side room. "Fortunately for you, we're understaffed tonight."
It's sparsely furnished: twin bed, chair, small desk with a corded phone, and a basket for used linen. Sergei helps Oleg onto the bed and Lera upends her bag, pouring out her smuggled arsenal on the table.
She kneels by the side of the bed and disinfects the wound. Oleg tenses perceptively but settles soon after. Sergei knows Oleg has tolerated worse than this, including but not limited to by Sergei’s own hand, and lived to tell the tale. Still, he can't help the way his jaw clenches at the sight. He grows restless as Lera works and gets up to pace, feeling utterly useless, and perhaps she senses it.
"Hand me some of those towels," she asks him, and he does.
"So do you sleep in here?" Sergei asks, not that he cares much but it's small talk for the sake of getting his mind off the curved needle threading in and out of Oleg's skin.
"Sure, if you count disjointed eight-minute naps which felt like a gift during my surgery rotation."
"Hm, must've been our luck you learned to suture just in time."
"Of course," she says, deadpan, "this is everything I ever dreamed of. When people asked me what kind of doctor I wanted to be growing up, I told them: plague."
Sergei would normally have a witty comeback about the importance of infectiology ready to fire at that but he feels fresh out for the night. He forces himself to watch the movement of her hands instead, tapping an erratic beat with his own fingers against the table.
"Thanks, Valera," Oleg breathes out, once he's all gauzed and taped up.
"You’ve also likely banged up some ribs--"
"--half my face, my wrist, and shoulder," Oleg finishes for her. "I've been worse."
"Probably, yeah," she frowns, taking off her gloves and fishing out a handful of pills wrapped in blister-packs from her pocket. She sets them on the table. "Couldn't sneak out anything stronger on such short notice but this should dull things some. I'll be back with a sling and wrist splint but are you sure you still don't want to go to emergency proper?"
"No need," says Oleg.
Sergei says nothing, keeps tapping softly at the table, feels caught in the space between being here and also not at all.
*
"I stuck a cleaning sign by the hallway entrance so no one gatecrashes our little party," Lera tells him outside the room as they let Oleg sleep.
She had returned earlier with the necessary equipment along with coffee, water bottles, and soggy hospital cafeteria breakfast for all.
"I suppose I should say thank you," says Sergei, swirling the leftover dregs in his paper cup, "for everything."
Her brows shoot up. "That sounded oddly earnest."
Sergei smiles and the fatigue is slipping through. "So is this where you quit and then sell me out?"
"Thought about it," she says. "Might still be thinking about it, but Altan's still on the loose without any accountability and this ridiculous gig is my best bet at some form of justice for now unfortunately. Besides, you still have an account to close out."
Even with her cynicism, she reminds him of a version of himself, younger and more idealistic, before it all fell apart.
"The road to hell and all that," he says.
"I'm still not killing anyone," she counters, fierce.
Sergei studies her. "You really are something. Sure, it's why we chose you but I sometimes wonder if maybe we should cut you loose while you're ahead."
Lera snorts. "What is this, reverse psychology?"
"Oleg's oddly quite fond of you though and might actually be upset with me if things went south."
She squints. "I thought--no, never mind."
"Not like that," he scoffs, and then, "you thought what?"
"Just..." she motions vaguely with a hand between Sergei and the door behind which Oleg rests.
Sergei tilts his head back so that it hits the wall he's propped up against. He lets her unfinished thought hang in the air and does not come to her rescue. Part of him almost dares her to say it out loud and he can't explain why. He also knows that no matter what, she'll be wrong. There isn't a word that exists for everything they've been and are to one another. There isn't a word in the world that could ever suffice.
"It's not my business," she says quickly, suddenly irritated and a little embarrassed. "I have to get back to the wards. He can stay for another few hours before shift change and I'll check in when I can. Just try not to, I don't know, burn down the building."
"A solid effort will be made!" Sergei calls out to her back with false cheer.
*
It's just past dawn when Oleg wakes up and Sergei's nearly finished making arrangements for them to lay low for a few days at a new address.
"You look like hell," Oleg mumbles.
"Put on my best suit for you and that's what I get?" Sergei aims for playful but it doesn’t quite land, not with the way his heart is still hammering, feels like it might tear right out of him at any moment.
Against all his better judgment, he makes his way into the too-small bed and it brings them chest to chest. It's certainly not made for two grown men, being roughly the size of the ones they had at the orphanage in their teens and it creaks just the same. Somehow, there is a small comfort in this. Though, in all honesty, he knows the real source of the comfort, and it has nothing to do with the bed and everything to do with the proximity to the other person in it.
"Let's go back to Cancun," Sergei murmurs, "or maybe somewhere new this time. Kai Tak, Macao, or how about Vegas? You can get as drunk as you want, raid as many casinos with your magnificent dumb luck. I'll even give the local mafia a heads-up. You got a real kick out of it all last time."
"Can't tell if you're getting delirious," says Oleg. "When did you last sleep?"
"How about," Sergei says, nearly breathless with a rush of desperation, "we not take care of me today?"
"Bit like telling me not to breathe," says Oleg, so simply and matter-of-factly that it chokes out a sharp, broken laugh from Sergei. And the tears come with it, sudden and unbidden.
Even here, even now, Oleg brings his good hand to the side of Sergei's face, rubs the spot under his eye with a shaky thumb, and Sergei is nine years old again. Someone tore up his drawing and pushed him into a wall and the world is cold and harsh and unfair and leaves him trembling in the arms of the only person in the world that was ever really there, ever really safe and warm and his.
"Hey," whispers Oleg. "It's okay. I'm okay."
Sergei shakes his head. "It will never ever end. Not as long as you're with me. I thought you were dead and I couldn't breathe."
"Seriy." Oleg's always known how to cut through everything, all the noise inside Sergei's head, with a single word, spoken in a way only he ever can.
He lifts Oleg's hand from his face, presses a kiss over knuckles that have gone to battle for him a hundred times over, and then another, against his palm.
"Monte Carlo then," says Oleg, softly, "next time."
Sergei exhales, and it is here that his heart finally seems to settle some. He knows that Lera may be back any second to tell them they need to clear out but he's also already dreaming up ways to drag Oleg to the opera at Salle Garnier because the mental image of this is far preferable to that of ropes and hooks still burned behind his eyelids.
"Monte Carlo it is." He squeezes Oleg’s hand once more for good measure and knows that, even in this, it is Oleg taking care of him.