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somebody is screaming.
at first pete thinks it’s himself except his mouth is closed, pressed against vegas’ chest as if in supplication to a higher power to stop this, please. take it BACK-
his mouth opens against vegas’ shirt, lips dragging against the sticky fabric and no sound comes out but the screaming hasn’t stopped, ringing in the empty courtyard and echoing off the high windowed walls.
he feels someone try to pull him up, tugging at his arm and he resists as hard as he can, lashing out with fists because his gun is missing, where is his gun, he’s going to shoot the fucker - pete hears a grunt behind him and then voices and then multiple hands are dragging him off vegas, he kicks and scratches and bites like a dog but it’s no use, he’s being taken further and further away and vegas looks so cold and lonely by the side of the pool, his blood starting to mix into the water.
-
pete wakes up in chains and thinks, ah.
it was a dream.
another waking nightmare in this room at the minor family safehouse while he waits to die, at vegas’ hands or his own. he feels a sick rush of shame at how relieved he is that it was a dream, even the parts where vegas was soft and touching him gently and saying he lo-
telling his lies.
his vision clears and he sees khun kinn on the other side of the bars and for a moment he’s terribly confused about why kinn would be here in the safehouse, he cares about his bodyguards but not to the extent that he would put himself in danger like this. only for porsche would he do such a thing.
pete notices khun kinn has a black eye and split lip and for a moment he thinks vegas might still be- still be—
pete tries to smile at kinn but his face feels cracked, his mouth won’t do what he wants it to. he slumps down, curling himself around the shackle on his wrist and drifts.
at least the screaming has stopped.
-
“i’ll take care of him from here, khun,” and pete knows that voice, that particular note of mockery beneath the politeness.
he scrambles upright as much as he can to see porsche opening the door to the cell (cell?) and pete’s so glad to see him that he almost weeps, but he’s so dehydrated that he knows it would be wasted effort. porsche’s hands are gentle as he unlocks the shackle and pulls pete to his feet, holding him in a hug for a moment and pete has never felt this safety, this warmth, not even the last time he was with his grandma.
“come on, i’m getting you out of here,” porsche whispers to him and yes, pete thinks, they have to run before any of the guards discover he’s been rescued. before vegas -
pete must lose time somewhere between the door of the cell and the elevators to the main family’s compound, because he blinks and misses whatever journey they must have taken away from the safehouse.
porsche is speaking to him quietly about seeing a doctor and that makes sense, pete thinks, he can’t feel where he is hurt specifically but he has been in an unbearable amount of pain since he regained consciousness. he looks down to see his hand is dripping blood onto the floor of the elevator and porsche must notice as well because he wraps his hand around pete’s, holding on tight.
porsche leads him to the hospital wing and at first pete almost doesn’t recognize it because it’s so full - bodyguards are everywhere in various states of undress and pete thinks i’m glad i won’t have to deal with this mess before porsche stops outside of the vip rooms.
porsche looks at his face as if searching for something but pete has no idea what he must look like right now. he feels so much like a ghost he’s surprised his best friend hadn’t run away at the sight of him.
“he’s lost a lot of blood, the doctor says - we had enough on hand to help stabilize him but i've instructed arm to start going through everyone’s medical files to find suitable donors.”
pete thinks about the conversation he had about blood types and remains silent. he feels empty; surely he has no more blood left inside him to help anyone right now.
porsche cups the side of pete’s head and gives him a little shake, “come on in. everything will be fine, i’m right here with you.”
porsche opens the door and stands aside to let pete enter. pete looks to the huge bed in the centre of the room, dwarfing everything else in his vision. vegas looks so small in the centre of it that it takes a moment for pete to even recognize him in amongst the wires and machines.
“the doctors said a bullet had clipped his heart and caused him to go into cardiac arrest, but they’re confident that he’ll wake up soon-“
pete drops to the floor, his strings cut because vegas is ALIVE, somehow, and there’s a rushing in his head like something is screaming, a dying animal noise, and he crawls on his hands and knees, not caring who else is in the room (porsche), who might see him like this; a wounded animal crawling to its master.
he climbs up onto the bed with shaking hands and curls forward, presses his forehead to vegas’ forearm against the only part of vegas not covered by wires, and whispers; “vegas, please. wake up. you said you would feed me.”
“i’m hungry.”