I'm just in a mood for this story oml aren't you guys so lucky this stuff is actually getting not-shit
Also I have found out I am a natural on a quad bike whoop whoop.
Here be the chapter where shit goes down, and we all know that Yassen's gonna flip his shit over the scorpion tattoo that I mentioned like once before but is actually important I swear.
So.
Also for some reason I'm finding myself low-key shipping Yassen and Croc? like idk why but tell me if you want me to put that in the epilogue (which is gonna be so much later, but like I said before this is a gen fic soooooo)
Pls,, I know I sound needy af but pls REVIEW I love you guys so much.
** I've reposted the entire thing again, fresh, but with edited chapters. I'm sad to loose all of my stats, but if you guys could just re-read and tell me what you think? That's why this chappie has taken so long. Go click back and read!**
Alex wakes up with everything feeling a little bit fuzzy and light. The beeping and whooshing machines are all muffled, the room is a bit too bright as he squints his eyes open, and he feels chilly from the air conditioning.
It also doesn't take him too long to realise he's probably been drugged beyond what a 14 year old should ever be allowed. (He feels too floaty.)
"Lynx? Kid?" A heavy, warm hand splays across the middle of his chest, and Alex blinks slowly. He squints, and scrunches his eyebrows to focus his swimming vision, and finally makes out Croc's face after much intense concentration.
"Croc." Alex says, happy with himself that at least he isn't too doped to see straight.
"Yeah, Lynx. You good?" Croc sounds a little tense, and Alex winces. He bets the man's angry as fuck - he can feel the thick dressing and bandages under his gown.
"Croc," Alex mumbles, tossing his head back onto his fluffed pillow, pouting slightly at the ceiling. Croc leans forward, worried, until Alex groans suddenly and loudly-
"I'm really fucking high."
A lot of laughs make the room feel a lot warmer, and Alex starts a little because he hadn't realised there are more people in here. Now that he's listening properly, he can distinguish Panther's hysterical hiccuping and Bear's deep chuckles.
Croc sighs, drops his head to hide his relieved smirk, and his hand rubs comfortingly across Alex's chest. "Good for you."
Alex grins a little bit, his teeth poking out of his crookedly open lips, and he doesn't know why he's smiling. He thinks it's because he's loopy and can't handle his meds.
"Croc, it's better to just ask him now," someone says, Alex doesn't see who. He'd already turned his attention to his side to look at the figure leaning against the wall. Alex thinks he must be really doped up because he sees Yassen smile a little at him from the corner of his mouth, looking thoroughly entertained. His jaw drops open.
Yassen's smile grows so uncharacteristically wide that the man coughs a little into his hand to hide it. Alex bats away the hand trying to tilt his head back, and stares harder at Yassen.
"You fuckshit." Alex moans at Yassen, lips pulled back in a half-grimace/half-snarl. Yassen holds his hands up innocently, but his sly expression proves just how truthful that is.
"Language." The man says, mockingly. Even with his filtered vision, Alex can see the glint in his blue eyes from here. He huffs a raspy chuckle, disbelieving that this is what the man says to him when he's supposed to be DEAD. It sharply turns into yelp when a finger pokes him in the side of the neck. His ear immediately jumps to press against he shoulder, and Alex whines at Croc because his fingers are cold.
"What the FUCK-" The Medic shouts at Alex, cheeks red, and he screws his eyes shut to stop the hallucinations of Ian. That angry face looks so similar it makes his heart feel sick. "Were you doing?! Running after us like that! Disobeying my orders! What the hell were you thinking, Lynx?!"
Alex swallows, shying away from Croc's voice. He thinks he might have accidentally sealed his eyes shut forever, because he doesn't really remember how to open them again. It seems like too much effort, anyway.
"That you were all going to die!" He shouts straight back defensively, and then chokes on the bitterness the truth left on his tongue.
There's a long stretch of silence after that. Alex doesn't think Croc take a single breath in all of it. He continues, quietly and not exactly consciously, "I didn't want it to be my fault."
Red flashes before Alex's eyes, red fire and red blood and red hair. Someone has the gaul to put a hand on his forehead and swipe away the fake-black strands that had tumbled and stuck down on it, making a generic soothing noise over all of the silence and Alex goes still. Only one person would be so disregarding of Alex's boundaries, so uncaring of anyone else's reactions.
"...again." He whispers, the words spinning uncontrollably out of his mouth, and the thumb that had been smoothing out the creases in his eyebrows freezes. And then the sound of a chair being dragged hits his seemingly cotton stuffed ears, and Alex practically sinks into his hospital bed when those familiarly calloused hands closes around one of his slightly possessively.
"Never." Replies Yassen, and Alex hums a little at his voice, because his face is too slack and unfamiliar with the concept to smile. He thinks it's funny that the man has finally lost any trace of the subtle accent Alex used to barely hear. He sounds proper and English and it's funny, for some reason Alex doesn't really know. Probably the meds.
"Shit." Panther groans, gravel in his throat. "That's...that's-" he doesn't know how to finish, obviously, because his sentence trails off. Bear decides to lend a hand.
"Extremely worrying?"
Alex makes an agitated sound in the back of his throat, and Bear rightfully takes it as the argument it is. "Don't you fucking deny that your shitty self-preservation doesn't make me want to piss myself, Lynx, don't you fucking dare!"
Alex thinks the man's standing up now, probably wildly gesturing and looking scary. He's used to scary, though. He doesn't respond. Yassen's hands tighten further at his stillness.
The room's quiet then. Alex can hear someone speaking lowly with someone else - probably Panther to Bear, calming him down - but mostly, everything is quiet.
Alex is about to fall asleep, throwing his other arm loosely across his stomach when Yassen's hands suddenly go slack around his. It startles him enough that he instinctually opens his eyes, and immediately wishes he didn't.
Yassen is staring, horrified, at the scorpion tattoo on Alex's wrist. It's a little obscured by the wires and needles in it, but easy to make out. Alex winces when the ex-assassin's fingers run over the curve of the tail.
"What the fuck is this?" Yassen asks him in Russian. Lazily, wary, Alex responds in English. "Blunt thought it would be a good reminder." He whispers hoarsely. His throat feels like bloody sandpaper. A moment later, the plastic lip of a cup is pressed against his mouth. He swallows the water gratefully.
"Reminder of what?" Yassen whispers back to him, in English like Alex, and leaning close to Alex's face so they can hear each other and no one else in the room could. Alex doesn't look at him, but if he did, Alex thinks Yassen would probably look furious.
(In actual fact, Yassen is looking pale and feeling dread and guilt. He can guess exactly what a scorpion tattoo is supposed to be a reminder of.)
"Pfft, I don't know...Of what it was like there. How I could have it worse." Alex mumbles, eyes far away and staring up at the ceiling. He wonders if he'd be this truthful if he weren't pumped full of drugs. "How Blunt could make it worse." He adds on absentmindedly, eyes trailing along the lines and tiles above him.
He can hear Yassen's audible intake of breath, but no exhale. He shuts his eyes, sated, as the Russian presses his palm against his forehead. He's already asleep as Yassen walks out of the room.
"This is Her Majesties Secret Service, who is-"
"It's Gregorovitch." Yassen cuts in with a whisper, not wanting the soldiers standing on the other side of the door to overhear, staring angrily into nothing whilst his mind cannot rip the image of the brand on Hunter's boy's arm.
Things are going to change. They have to. He cannot allow things to go on the way they are.
"I'm calling in my favour."
[NeXt chapter will be the team finding all about Alex's med history lol good luck. Yassen's gonna be pissed]
aNNND REVIEW::