Chapter Text
Operating Room One spat Mydei out into the sterile corridor of the surgical ward only after ten hours of a continuous, exhausting dance with death.
The harsh fluorescent lights painfully cut into his amber eyes. Mydei pulled off his surgical cap, irritably ruffling his damp blond hair, and leaned the back of his head against the cool wall with a hollow exhale. The muscles in his back and shoulders, pulled tight as ship ropes beneath the thin fabric of his burgundy scrubs, hummed with tension. His personal "battle trance" - a state of absolute, icy focus in which he had literally pieced together the shattered pelvis of the incoming motorcyclist - began to recede, leaving behind a gnawing emptiness and a heavy ache in every cell of his body.
The air around him was thick, almost tangible. The heavy, oppressive scent of smoke from funeral pyres, juniper, and scorched metal - an alpha aura that Mydei wasn't even trying to suppress right now.
The automatic doors slid apart silently once more.
"Brilliant, Dr. Mydei. Simply brilliant," a soft, velvety voice rang out.
Cassander. The lead anesthesiologist stepped into the corridor behind him. Unlike Mydei, who looked like he had just returned from an actual battlefield, the omega looked outrageously fresh. Not a drop of sweat, not a single crease on his uniform, and his natural scent - an exquisite, teasing blend of orchid and white pepper - slipped down the hallway, attempting to elegantly intertwine with Mydei’s heavy juniper.
"The way you bypassed the iliac artery in the seventh hour... that was art," Cassander stepped closer, closing the distance to the exact edge where professional space smoothly transitions into the personal. "Most surgeons would have given up and amputated the leg. But you, as always, didn't make a single wasted movement."
Mydei winced, pulling off his mask. He was barely listening. The anesthesiologist's voice sounded like the annoying buzzing of a fly to him. Right now, his brain demanded only two things: to stand under a scalding hot shower until his skin turned red, and then... then to bury his nose in something cool. Into a neck that smelled of mountain snow and edelweiss on the edge of an abyss. The mere thought of that scent made his pulse pause for a second before striking with renewed vigor.
I just need some fresh air, nothing more, Mydei lied to himself out of habit, chasing the delusion away.
"You look tired," Cassander's voice dropped lower, taking on those intimate, confidential intonations that worked flawlessly on most alphas in this hospital. "Let's go to the main lounge. I have some Ethiopian Arabica beans in my locker. I'll make us some real coffee, not that slop from the vending machine. We can discuss the post-op period while we're at it..."
Mydei didn't answer. Ignoring the omega's presence, he reached into the pocket of his scrubs and pulled out his phone. The screen flared to life, displaying a dozen missed notifications from the corporate department, which he swiped away without looking. He only cared about one chat. Ten hours offline - for the ER of Okhema Central Hospital, that was an eternity. In that time, Phainon could have burned the department down twice, gotten stabbed by a psychopath, or, most likely, worked himself into a fainting spell from forgetting to eat.
A message from Hephaestion sat at the very top, sent just two minutes ago. The Head of Security was clearly tracking the surgery's status via the cameras.
Hephaestion: Go take your shower in peace, idiot. Callista poured some soup into him an hour ago. The ER is still standing, hasn't fallen apart yet. But if you kill any of the interns right now on residual adrenaline, you're hiding the body yourself.
The corners of Mydei’s lips twitched in a barely noticeable, half-erased smirk. The red rhombus tattoo beneath his right eye stretched slightly. The tension that had held his spine like a steel rod finally let go. Fed. Alive. The ER is intact.
"...and I thought the painkiller dosage should be adjusted considering..." Cassander kept cooing, taking another step. He raised a hand in a graceful, calculated gesture, about to touch the surgeon's bare, tattooed forearm. A perfectly calibrated touch meant to demonstrate support and hidden admiration.
"Adjust it. Leave the report for Disan," Mydei threw back in his usual hoarse, rumbling baritone that usually made the interns' knees shake.
Without looking up from his phone, Mydei spun on his heel and strode down the corridor toward his private office, leaving behind only a trail of bitter smoke and fading irritation.
Cassander remained standing in the middle of the sterile-white hallway. His hand, with its slender, manicured fingers, froze in the air a couple of inches from where Mydei’s forearm had just been.
The smile slowly, like melting wax, slid off the omega's perfect face. He lowered his hand deliberately, curling his fingers into a fist. His light brown eyes, tracking the surgeon's broad back, darkened with a cold, calculated resentment. Cassander wasn't used to being disregarded. And he certainly wasn't used to losing.
Hot streams of water washed away the alien blood, the acrid smell of antiseptic, and the surface-level fatigue, but to completely shake the ten-hour surgery out of his head, Mydei needed something more. He changed into his usual "civilian" armor - a black cashmere turtleneck that securely hid the crimson script of tattoos on his arms and chest, and a heavy leather jacket. Looking like this, he resembled a crime boss more than the Head of Trauma, but he couldn't care less.
The elevator brought him down to the first floor smoothly, with a quiet hum. The doors slid open silently, and Mydei stepped into the very heart of the chaos: the Emergency Room of Okhema Central Hospital.
The air here was always different. Thick with other people's panic, saturated with the smell of cheap coffee, bleach, and wet asphalt tracked in on patients' shoes. But the moment Mydei took a couple of steps down the hall, his acute sense of smell instantly plucked out from this mess the exact thing for which he had, in fact, made this "completely accidental" detour on his way to the parking lot.
A delicate, crystal-clear scent of edelweiss and cold mountain snow.
Mydei turned the corner and froze.
In a niche of the corridor, right under a bright fluorescent lamp, stood an empty medical gurney against the wall. Slouched on it, carelessly dangling his long legs in dark trousers, sat Phainon. His white coat was unbuttoned, and his platinum hair stuck out in all directions even more chaotically than usual, as if he had run his fingers through it a hundred times today.
Next to him on the gurney, kicking his feet, was a boy of about four. The tracks of recent tears glistened on his smudged face, but right now the child was staring wide-eyed at the Head of the ER and laughing in ringing, infectious peals.
Phainon was enthusiastically telling him something, gesturing actively with his free hand. In his other hand, he held a bright blue lollipop. The exact same kind, only cherry-flavored, was in the boy's hands. At one point, Phainon sighed theatrically, popped the lollipop into his mouth, and pulled such a hilariously serious grimace that the kid erupted into a fresh fit of giggles. A wide, genuine smile lit up Phainon’s exhausted face, softening his delicate features, and in that moment, he truly looked like an angel descended from the heavens.
The system in Mydei’s head threw a critical error and went into a forced reboot.
He stood in the shadows of the corridor, unable to look away. Phainon and kids - it had always been a prohibited low blow. A sight that made something right beneath the severe surgeon's ribs, just behind his sternum, pull so painfully and sweetly that it became hard to breathe. Mydei could dig through people's insides for hours without batting an eye, but just one look at this ridiculous, radiant alpha with a lollipop in his mouth made his insides tie themselves into a tight knot.
Suddenly, Mydei’s gaze, accustomed to scanning the environment for threats in the background, caught on a detail.
On the left sleeve of Phainon’s white coat, right near the elbow, a bright, wet crimson stain was spreading.
The world around Mydei narrowed to that single point. His pupils dilated instantly, flooding his irises with black. The alpha instincts, usually locked in a steel cage of iron control, roared to life. The air within a five-meter radius instantly grew heavy, filling with the suffocating scent of burnt juniper and scorching metal. Blood. He's hurt? Why the hell didn't Hephaestion say anything?!
Mydei had already leaned forward, ready to sprint to reach Phainon as fast as possible, when a short figure stepped right into his path, directly under this steamroller of concentrated fury.
A fearless hand in a blue medical glove landed flat on Mydei’s chest, right over the turtleneck, stopping him with the inexorability of a concrete wall.
"Easy, Immortal. It's paint," came a raspy female voice, filled to the brim with universal exhaustion.
Mydei blinked, breathing heavily, and with great effort shifted his darkened gaze to Callista. The Head Nurse stood before him with a clipboard tucked under her arm, looking as if she had spent the last twenty-four hours manually unloading freight trains. She didn't even flinch at his aura, which usually made the young interns slide down the walls.
"Gouache, to be precise," Callista continued melancholically, not removing her hand from his chest until the smell of burning ash in the air began to dissipate a little. "We ended up with four little ones on the waitlist tonight. Parents in the treatment rooms, kids in the hallway. They started tearing the ER apart. Had to issue them sketchpads and paints."
She nodded toward the gurney.
"Our 'God of Triage' decided he makes an excellent canvas for modern art. So, he 'suffered' a bit in the process of saving the interior design."
Mydei swallowed the lump in his throat and looked back at Phainon.
The boy had just reached out and smacked his little palm against the doctor's shoulder. Phainon leaned sideways with a laugh, playing along with the hit, and in the harsh light of the lamp, Mydei saw what he hadn't noticed before. A scattering of golden glitter shimmered on Phainon’s left cheekbone. A couple of blue strokes were stamped on his chin, and the platinum hair at his temple was slightly glued together by something suspiciously resembling cotton candy.
Mydei closed his eyes. His chest slowly fell in a heavy, jagged exhale.
He raised a hand and forcefully rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to shove back into his skull that unbearable, overwhelming wave of fondness that threatened to burst through all his internal dams.
Phainon, please, Mydei groaned mentally, feeling himself irreparably falling into the abyss, just for one fucking day, don't be so perfect.
Because Mydei was absolutely certain: just this morning, he had loved this insufferable idiot to the absolute maximum of his capabilities. But right now, looking at that stupid glitter on his face, he realized that there was simply no limit to this disaster.
Callista felt the surgeon's stone-hard pectoral muscles finally relax beneath her palm. The suffocating smell of burnt juniper began to retreat slowly, reluctantly, curling back into a light, tart trail of pine needles and sandalwood.
The Head Nurse sighed heavily, removing her hand, and measured Mydei with a long, expressive look of a person who had seen absolutely everything in this life.
"Christ, Immortal," she muttered under her breath, but loud enough for the alpha's acute hearing to catch every word. "Tell me, purely out of medical curiosity... is it even physically possible to be more obvious?"
Mydei stoically ignored the jab without even twitching an eyebrow. Over his years of working in this hospital, he had learned one golden rule: arguing with Callista was the same as trying to out-argue Hephaestion. An absolutely useless endeavor that wasted a ton of nerve cells, carrying a one-hundred-percent risk of learning a few new, strikingly accurate, and highly unflattering facts about himself in the end.
Mydei only gave her a short nod in gratitude (for stopping him before he managed to tear apart half the ER) and, shoving his hands into his pockets, finally stepped out of the corridor's shadow and into the bright fluorescent light.
His footsteps - heavy, measured, echoing off the tiled floor - made Phainon look up.
The exhaustion on the ER Head's face was instantly replaced by a smile so genuine and warm that for a second Mydei thought someone had flipped on an extra set of lights in the hallway. Phainon’s crystal-blue eyes sparkled with joy, and the glitter on his cheekbone caught the light, turning him into some ridiculous but maddeningly beautiful fairytale character.
"Mydei!" Phainon pulled the blue lollipop from his mouth, waving it in the air. "I thought you'd already left. Heard from Disan that the surgery was over."
The little boy on the gurney next to him instantly fell silent. He stopped kicking his legs and stared wide-eyed at the approaching... doctor? In his black cashmere turtleneck with the jacket thrown over it, with his grim face, piercing amber eyes, and the red rhombus on his cheekbone, Mydei looked like a classic comic-book villain. Any normal child should have tearfully hidden behind the back of the nice Dr. Phainon.
But the boy wasn't scared. He only opened his mouth slightly and began examining the guest with bated awe. This always amazed Mydei to his very core. With some supernatural instinct, children always picked up on what lay beneath his terrifying facade of a dominant alpha. They didn't sense a threat from him - only total, absolute, impenetrable protection. The flip side of the coin for those who were born to kill but chose to protect.
Mydei stopped two steps away from the gurney, towering over them like a dark mountain, and looked down at the child. The boy sniffled and suddenly, emboldened, held out a small clenched fist to Mydei. Mydei arched a questioning eyebrow but offered his massive palm. A slightly crumpled lollipop in a green wrapper was dropped onto his skin. Apple flavor.
Phainon laughed softly, affectionately, sending a pleasant shiver down Mydei's spine.
"Looks like you passed the test," Phainon smiled, nodding at the gift. "He's been saving that apple one for the last half hour."
"Appreciated," Mydei replied in a steady, deep voice, carefully tucking the candy into his jacket pocket. Then he shifted his gaze to Phainon, his eyes sliding over the crimson gouache stain on the sleeve, the blue strokes on his chin, and finally settling on that damned golden glitter. "Your shift ended forty minutes ago, Dr. Phainon. If you don't get your ass off this gurney right now, I'm calling Hephaestion, and he'll personally carry you out of here over his shoulder."
"Oh, stop grumbling, we were discussing strategically important issues of saving the galaxy," Phainon ruffled his already wildly sticking-out hair, and a single speck of glitter drifted slowly down onto his nose. "His parents are finishing up with their bandages right now, and then I'll go."
"I'm driving," Mydei dropped casually. For the thousandth time this year. "I'll give you a lift."
"Oh, you don't have to, really," Phainon waved his free hand dismissively. For the thousandth time this year. "Why would you wait for me? I still need to hand over my shift, fill out a couple of charts, and then try to scrub this... masterpiece of abstract expressionism off myself. It's going to take a while. Go on, you need to rest."
Mydei sighed heavily. But he tried to do it imperceptibly.
Why would you wait for me?
And the most infuriating part was that Phainon knew exactly why. He knew that Mydei wouldn't drive anywhere until he was absolutely sure he was safe.
He would wait an hour while Phainon took a shower. He would wait two while he finished writing his stupid reports. If necessary, he would sit in his dark car in the hospital parking lot for an eternity, just to make sure this impossible, bright idiot made it home safely, instead of falling asleep at the wheel of his beat-up sedan at some traffic light.
"I'll drink coffee in the car," Mydei cut off in a tone that brooked no argument. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and, turning toward the exit, tossed over his shoulder: "Half an hour, Phainon. If you don't show up in the parking lot in half an hour, I'm coming back with wet wipes and I'll scrub that glitter off you right here, in front of the whole department."
And just as he was about to disappear around the corner, Mydei heard the cheerful boyish voice behind his back:
"Is your friend always so scary?"
And Phainon’s soft, affection-soaked reply, which made the surgeon's heart skip a painful beat:
"He's not scary, buddy. He just... cares about everybody very much."