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Oleg had his fair share of awkward mornings after. But never one like this. Never with Sergey.
Sergey is huddled up in a plush chair, one foot tucked under himself and the knee of the other leg drawn against his chest. That small part of Oleg’s heart that wishes everything could be just like it used to be, is swelling with fondness at the sight. Sergey’s steadfast refusal to learn how to properly use furniture is simply endearing. But there’s a bigger part of him that notices the cloud of misery and nervous tension around his best friend - how much he looks like a spooked animal in an oversized sweater - and how he holds a mug of hot coffee in both hands but isn’t drinking it.
There’s a small tea table between their chairs, covered with plates of untouched breakfast, and the distance between them seems almost overwhelming.
Oleg is starting to feel he might have made another mistake. But it’s too late. They’re already here, on the safe and neutral ground of the living room, to face the inevitable and talk about… whatever the hell happened last night.
Oleg is still not sure he didn’t dream half of it. But no. That… thing with a sharp smile, sharp nails and contemptuous voice, it was definitely there. In his arms, solid, dangerous like a lit fuse, every point of contact like a hot spark going straight through the core of his touch-starved body. It was there, laughing in his face - up until it wasn’t. The switch had been so sudden it left him reeling, and he barely got a glimpse of Sergey’s blue, wide open, and terrified eyes before the man wrenched himself out of Oleg’s embrace, scrambled out of his bed, and bolted for his room.
Oleg understands, he really does. He keeps telling himself it’s not because Sergey doesn’t want him anymore. So what if it stung, spending the rest of the night sitting in front of Sergey’s door and listening for any answer, any reassurance that Seryozha was okay - that’s just selfish of him, this nagging feeling of rejection, and Oleg knows it. This isn’t about him. This is about Sergey who just found out that the monster he’d thought he banished is still very much there. Coming back to himself and finding his own hands wrapped around his best friend’s throat… that must have been a shock. Oleg understands.
He also tries not to think about his own confused reaction to that unnaturally strong pressure against his airways, the way the whisper of the threat ignited something inside of him, something acute, aching and good . Hopefully Seryozha didn’t have time to notice that before he ran.
Judging by the way Sergey is currently looking anywhere but at him, Oleg shouldn’t be holding onto that hope too much.
Finally, Sergey takes a gulp of the now lukewarm coffee, makes a face, and clears his throat. Oleg holds his breath.
“I’m sorry.” It sounds dejected as if Sergey himself doesn’t believe that Oleg should just accept it. As if he doesn’t believe that an apology would solve anything.
“It’s not your fault,” Oleg says immediately.
“How can you say that?” Sergey asks, his tone a little irritated now. He must be used to taking the blame for what the Bird did while having free reign of his body. People don’t believe in demons. In the end, they believe in camera footage, DNA samples, fingerprints. It’s Sergey Razumovsky, the murderous lunatic, who they see.
“Your eyes,” Oleg explains. “They were...”
“Yellow,” Sergey finishes grimly.
Yellow is such an underwhelming word, Oleg thinks. Golden, like poisonous honey, he would say, but wisely he keeps his mouth shut.
“I could’ve hurt you.”
“Not you,” Oleg reminds him. And after a second of deliberation, he adds: “And I don’t think he wanted to, either.” He doesn’t plan on telling Sergey exactly what the Bird wanted. But perhaps he can put Sergey’s mind a little bit at ease, let him know that Oleg wasn’t in real danger…
Across the table, Sergey’s eyes narrow minutely. “That’s what he said to you?”
“You don’t remember?”
Sergey stares into his mug. “I never do.”
It’s a blessing of sorts, Oleg thinks. That whole ordeal with the Plague Doctor left Sergey’s mind badly bruised but not broken. If he actually remembered murdering a child…
“But you used to...” Oleg pauses, searching for the right word. There doesn’t seem to be any. “... see him?”
“Wearing your face,” Sergey finishes what Oleg left unsaid. “A charade he put on to explain away the time I was missing.”
And do other things, Oleg carefully keeps from saying aloud. His fingers dig into the plush armrest of his chair as the Bird’s mocking words ring in his ears, I took care of him when no one else did…
He must stop it, he realises. This misguided jealousy will help nobody and get him nowhere.
“So you’re not aware at all when he’s...”
“In charge?” Sergey scrunches his nose at his own joke. “Not when he doesn’t want me to, no.”
The topic is just as morbidly fascinating as it is off-putting but Oleg feels he has to ask these questions. He was a soldier; he knows there’s no campaign without proper reconnaissance. He wants to protect Sergey, and so he must know what he’s dealing with.
“And is he? Aware?” Oleg waves his hand awkwardly, trying to gesticulate what he means. When the situation is reversed. “Now?”
Sergey stares for a moment somewhere next to Oleg, gaze locked on nothing in particular, and then he squeezes his eyes shut. Oleg is about to ask what’s wrong when Sergey sighs and resumes his sullen staring into the cold coffee mug.
“He’s always listening. Sometimes I can...” he abruptly points at his temple, circling his finger around, and lets his hand fall back, loosely wrapped around his knee. “Hear him. See him, even. Around.... or in the mirror.”
And then he adds, coldly and almost resentfully: “He doesn’t bother wearing your face anymore.”
Oleg’s heart skips a beat. He forces his tone to remain soft and gentle. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No!” For a moment, a bit of life returns to Sergey’s eyes. “That’s a good thing. I need...” he swallows. His jaw works a little, as if he is chewing on his words, sorting them out on his tongue.
“I need to be able to trust you,” he finally says, so quietly it’s almost a whisper.
Oleg leans forward, his first impulse to reach out and take Sergey’s hand - but Sergey makes no move to uncurl, staring absently into the void above the coffee table. So Oleg just catches his gaze and holds it as he says, “You can. You know that.”
Sergey’s eyes flick to the side and back, he blinks nervously, and doesn’t say anything. The unspoken Do I? hangs in the air between them like a foul smell, scratching at the back of Oleg’s throat. He downs the rest of his own coffee in one gulp to get rid of the sour taste and then he gets an idea.
“Can you block him out?”
Sergey snorts. “I thought I could.”
Oleg knows what he means. He found the half-full bottle of pills Sergey took every day at the bottom of the trashcan this morning. Another idea occurs to him.
“Can you… call him up?”
He doesn’t even know what exactly he means by it - but before he can explain it better, Sergey’s mug of coffee slams against the table, the thick dregs splashing everywhere. The dejected air around him is gone, replaced by defensive rage.
“Why do you want to know about him so badly?” Sergey hisses, rising from his chair. He points a trembling finger at OIeg. “Do you want to see him again? Did you like him so much?”
“No - please, calm down-”
“Are you the doctor now?” Sergey’s voice rises half an octave. “You should put me in a straightjacket - they always had me in one when they asked me to let him out, because he would have killed them otherwise! ”
Shit. Bringing up the memories of whatever dubious “treatment” Sergey was subjected to in the mental facility was the last thing Oleg wanted.
He finally works up the courage to do what he should have done in the first place. He pushes away that stupid table - of course, even that must have reminded him of a doctor’s office, two chairs facing each other - gets up and pulls Sergey into a hug. He ignores the flinch, rubs at the stiff muscles in Sergey’s arms and holds on. Eventually, the tension in Sergey’s frame uncoils and he lays his head on Oleg’s shoulder. He breathes through his nose in little sniffs, the puffs of air tickling Oleg’s skin. It’s familiar. He’d held him like this so many times, it’s muscle memory. It’s comforting.
“I’m sorry,” Oleg mutters into his hair. “I just want to keep you safe.”
Sergey pulls away with a sigh, takes his face into both hands and stares directly into his eyes, brows drawn together in urgent seriousness.
“Don’t mess with him, Oleg.” He gives him a little shake with every sentence, as if he wants to make sure his point gets into Oleg’s head.
“He hates you. He was happy when I thought you were dead. He’ll mess with your head if you let him.”
Oleg wishes Sergey would see his point.
“You’re stronger than you think. In the end, he needs you. Don’t you see? You have the upper hand here.”
Sergey laughs weakly. “I really, really don’t.”
Outside, the city has long woken up, people rushing to work huddled in thick winter coats, but the sun is slow to rise, lazy and pale through the perpetual grey of clouds. Even in that bleak winter daylight Sergey’s eyes are blue like mountain pools, a colour that Oleg could paint from memory. Nothing like that sick golden colour of last night. He didn’t imagine it, he’s sure about that.
“He could make me kill you, and you wouldn’t see it coming until it’s too late.”
Oleg pulls him close again and plants a kiss into his hair - the most he allows himself.
“I’d know if it’s you or not,” he assures Sergey. “I’d always know.”
“Right,” Sergey says. “The eyes.” He doesn’t sound very convinced about it. “Sorry about the mess.”
The coffee spilled onto the carpet. It’s one of the nicer stains in the collection that already was there.
“Don’t worry about it.”
*
Days pass. There’s snow on the streets now, as much as there can be in the middle of the city, brown sludge along the curbs and a dirty snowman with dead grass sticking all over it in the middle of the yard.
Sergey spends more time online these days. Shifting his assets somewhere the police can’t track them, making anonymous investments, or just browsing real estate sites. They talked about moving again. Currently, they’re holed up in a drab little place, one of a hundred identical pigeonholes in a dilapidated sprawl of panel buildings from the seventies, and Sergey gets a real spark in his eye when he talks about what he would like. Something bigger. Somewhere warmer.
There isn’t much Oleg wouldn’t do for Sergey to see him smile like that more.
Now that he dumped the useless pills, Sergey’s appetite is back in full force, and with it his frankly appalling taste. Oleg can spend an entire afternoon cooking only for Sergey to barge into the kitchen with two delivery boxes of Hawaii pizza. Oleg would be madder about it if it weren’t for the nearly obscene moan Sergey lets out when he bites into it. He watches him lick the tomato sauce off his fingers while he scrolls down on his phone and can’t bring himself to be mad at all.
Sergey’s sweet tooth extends to drinks, too, so Oleg isn’t even surprised to find at their door a delivery of bottles with labels half of which he can’t even read. But now that he can drink without feeling guilty, he won’t say no to enjoying a nice glass of whisky neat in the evening while Sergey experiments with something sugary and bubbly. Sergey sits closer to him on nights like this, sometimes resting his head against his thigh as he lies sprawled sideways on the sofa, legs dangling over the armrest, and scrolls the social media to the background drop of news on the television. On nights like this, it would be the easiest thing to lean down and kiss him. But Oleg will not rush this.
The Bird is suspiciously absent the whole time, and Oleg waits for the other shoe to drop.
*
The thing about jealousy is that it makes one blind. Blind to anything else that isn’t the perceived slight against oneself. Blind to the fact that other people could be jealous too.
Did you like him so much? Sergey had yelled at him. Oleg really should have paid attention to that.
*
Even though he never leaves Sergey alone for long, it doesn’t mean they spend every waking hour together. Oleg sometimes needs stuff from places that don’t do delivery, he has a workout routine he sticks to, and Sergey won’t let him smoke indoors. Plus Sergey’s room kind of became a no-go zone after he crammed in the sixth computer screen - he uses them to watch the city security camera feed he hacked into, claiming he feels safer when he knows what’s going on in the streets, and Oleg has no desire to twists his ankle by tripping over the mess of cables in the dark.
He’s just coming home from one of his late night strolls when he realises that ridiculously tinted sunglasses aren’t the only thing Sergey’s been shopping for on the internet.
The first he notices is the change in lightning. The flat is darker than it should be. He shrugs off his coat - it would only slow him down - and palms the outline of the gun in his pocket. Just to make sure it’s there, within reach.
“Seryozh?” He nudges open the door to the living room and steps in.
The blinds are drawn, blocking off the street lamps and the occasional beams of the passing cars. Instead of the typical harsh blue glow of a phone screen - a thing Sergey seems to be glued to at all times - he’s greeted by the warm, flickering light of what must be dozens of candles, scattered across every surface available.
A soft music is playing, something with a deep, hypnotic rhythm that matches the sudden rush of blood in his ears. Because in the middle of all this setup, like a centrepiece of an art installation, sits Sergey, languidly leaning back on the sofa, and Oleg immediately knows this is not Sergey at all.
“I’m seriously tempted to make that joke,” Not-Sergey drawls, rising from the sofa and walking over to the cabinet where they keep glassware, “but I know that’s a Glock in your pocket, and I know you’re happy to see me.”
He fills two flutes with champagne and turns, cocking his head with a smirk. He’s wearing a luxurious silk shirt, unbuttoned at the top and with his sleeves casually rolled up, and black leather pants that look painted on. The outfit shows off the delicate paleness of his skin, emphasising every gesture of those elegant, finely boned hands. He looks like every dirty fantasy Oleg ever had and he doesn’t even have to look into those half-lidded eyes to know they’re that sick, unnatural yellow.
“You’re wrong,” he finally finds his words. He feels very wrong-footed all of a sudden, and he hates it.
Not-Sergey saunters over to him, hands him one of the glasses, and then runs his free hand over Oleg’s hip in a bold, seductive caress. Oleg nearly spills the champagne all over himself with how quickly he steps back. Not-Sergey just hums and grins wider.
“Right. That’s the Makarov. My bad.” He clicks his tongue and returns to the sofa, making himself comfortable with a clear come hither quirk of his lips.
Oleg puts the glass away and crosses his arms over his chest. “What. Do. You. Want.”
Not-Sergey sips from his glass, that calculating smile never leaving his lips. “To give you and me what we both want.”
Oleg angrily looks around, over the romantic decadence that makes his skin crawl with wrongness even as he can’t deny that on some level, it’s working. He’d been denying himself for so long. But that’s exactly why he can hold on a little longer.
He notices the champagne bottle on the cabinet. It’s already empty. Sergey almost never drinks champagne, only when he’s sad. They’ve been friends for years, longer than they’ve been lovers, Oleg was there for enough breakups to know how Sergey coped, splurging on himself to soothe the sting of the rejection. It makes him even angrier, how the Bird claims to care, and can’t be even bothered to get the details right.
“I told you. I want him, not you.”
The Bird rolls his eyes. “You keep saying that.” He licks his lips, still looking infuriatingly pleased with himself. “Isn’t it curious then, why you never make a move?”
Oleg stares at him. His fingers twitch with the urge to slap that smug smirk off his friend’s face. He balls them into fists instead.
“I’m waiting for him to heal,” he says pointedly.
A flash of something - anger? - passes over Sergey’s face but it’s gone before Oleg can pinpoint it properly.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” the Bird replies, his tone back to the bored playfulness it carried before. He gets up again and comes closer, slow and deliberate like a predator on a prowl.
“He’s just as he’s always been. Weak, nervous, indecisive, twitchy… No wonder you keep waiting for someone else.” He rounds Oleg and whispers the next words directly into his ear: “Someone confident… dangerous... someone better.”
Oleg steps away again but the Bird follows him like glue. And it’s not fair, for him to be so close to being able to feel his warmth, to smell that stupidly expensive cologne Sergey bought after he landed his first well-paying programming gig in uni - to look so fucking tempting when all Oleg wants is to shove him away and run.
“You don’t get to complain about him,” he says sharply. “Not when it was you who made him like that.”
It surprises him when the Bird actually recoils at that. He slams back the rest of the wine in his glass and makes a disgusted face.
“That was you, actually,” he says, mouth twisted into a defiant scowl. Something creeps into his smooth voice - something raw, unstable, cruel. “You should’ve never signed up for the army. You left-”
He closes his eyes and squares his shoulders, breathes in and out. When he opens his eyes again, they’re back to the cold, unfeeling yellow.
“You left him alone,” the Bird finishes matter-of-factly. “I just picked up the pieces.”
No. Oleg refuses to accept this. It was just the way things were - he had to get a life of his own, he wasn’t smart enough for university, he couldn’t live out of Sergey’s pocket indefinitely, and he sure as hell couldn’t imagine himself in some straight and narrow, boring office job. Sergey understood that. And Oleg always planned to come back - they didn’t even break up. Except he… got killed. At least that was what Sergey was told.
Maybe they should have broken up formally. It wasn’t fair leaving Sergey hanging like that.
Maybe Oleg really shouldn’t have left.
“But now I’m back,” he snaps, harsher than he wants. “So you can kindly fuck off.”
The Bird smiles - a thin, humourless, threatening thing. “Oh darling, I never do anything kindly . And I think that’s part of the allure, isn’t it?”
He’s so fucking close, if Oleg closed his eyes he could pretend it really is Sergey, his slender hand, so familiar, teasing along the edge of his shirt, his voice whispering suggestively in his ears. His heart is pounding, he can’t risk moving - if he did, he doesn’t know what would win: his desire to kiss Sergey so hard until he bleeds, or his rage telling him to rip out the Bird’s damn throat with his teeth. Either choice is the bad one here, so by the last threads of his self-control, he keeps still.
“Come on, Oleg. Don’t be so damn chivalrous. He won’t even know.”
Fingertips trail along the edge of his jaw and Oleg nearly sways as he fights his muscle memory to lean into the touch. He braces himself for the sting of sharp nails breaking his skin-
-except, it never comes.
Oleg’s eyes snap open. He knows he didn't imagine it that night, the threat of clawed fingers around his throat. But the fingertips caressing his cheek now are soft, the nails blunt and bitten short, a nervous habit Sergey never quite managed to shake off.
He snatches the offending hand by the wrist and spins around, grabs Sergey’s chin and jerks his face towards the light.
“What are these,” he growls, peering into his eyes. Sergey is staring back, petrified. “Yellow contacts?”
The sudden, damning blush spreading under his hand is an answer enough. Oleg shoves him away and Sergey stumbles, all that poise and sultriness gone. When he opens his mouth to speak, it’s a terrified stammer of-
“Oleg, I-”
“You what?” Oleg is nearly blind with anger, hurt and disappointment, all mixed together in an indecipherable mess. “Wanted to fucking test me? I told you I’d always recognise you.”
“That’s not-”
“And what is it? Wanted to see if I’d pick him over you?” Oleg yells and Sergey takes another unsteady step back. Now he’s definitely drunk, all the bravado, leaving behind just a shaking, devastated man.
“He was right,” Sergey sobs. “Everyone likes him better than me.”
Oleg wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Did you even listen-”
Sergey cowers, lifting his hands and ducking his head behind them with a whimper. Even in the miserably weak light of the candles, Oleg sees the red bruise around that pale wrist, where he twisted his hand earlier.
Fuck. He didn’t want that-
-Sergey told him, Sergey fucking told him how the Bird would gradually become more and more violent with him while wearing Oleg’s face -
Sergey somehow finds the last of his footing and bolts out of the room. Oleg throws himself after him but he’s met with a door in his face and the click of a key turning in the lock.
In the hiss of candles going out in puddles of melted wax and the crunch of broken champagne glasses beneath his feet, he could swear he hears the Bird’s laughter in his mind.