Chapter 5- Black Luck
Save for Alexei and Murray going over things in Russian, the rest of the car ride went by silently. It wasn't entirely uneventful, however, as Alexei made sure that some part of his body was always touching Laurie's. And for some reason, it kept a smile on Laurie's face, knowing that he seemed to be intentionally keeping physical contact.
So much for not flirting.
Laurie dozed off slightly, resting her head on the side of the car, rocking awake whenever they hit a pothole in the road. Eventually, there was a gaggle of bright lights ahead and Laurie could just make out the sounds of a typical American fair.
They drove through the parking lot looking for a spot and as soon as Jim found one, he parked the car and yelled at Murray to stay.
"You," Jim said, pointing at Laurie, but speaking gently, "watch Smirnoff," he ordered.
Laurie leaned her elbow on the side of the car and stared, boredom etched on her face. "Alexei," she corrected him before Joyce could.
"Whatever," he threw up his hands and took off with Joyce.
"I can help," Murray said dejectedly as Jim and Joyce headed off.
Laurie stared off into the parking lot for a moment, her back to the fair. "You hate kids, Murray," she said. "You hate crowds." She sat up and looked across the car at the man. "You kind of hate everything."
Murray flipped her off in response.
Laurie smiled and looked at Alexei who was half-smiling at Laurie, though not understanding the conversation. "Murray is a dick," she told him, winking.
Alexei's smile spread across his face, Laurie enjoying the lines in cheeks at his large smile, and he nodded. She liked to see him smile and sitting right next to him, even in the dark, she couldn't help but stare. His cheeks pushed up, causing cute little wrinkles around his eyes. Laurie wondered if he understood what she had said or if he just liked the interaction with her.
She was staring. Stop staring, she told herself. Coughing, Laurie moved, pushing the front seat up so she could get to her bag on the floor. Laurie climbed over the side of the car and put her bag on the trunk.
Murray turned around in the backseat and watched as she opened her bag and pulled out a vest, setting it down next to her bag. "Make sure he wears it," Laurie told Murray. "No matter how uncomfortable, he better wear it."
Murray nodded and told Alexei, who had also turned around the seat to watch Laurie, what she had said. He frowned, but nodded himself.
"To stay safe," he acquiesced.
Laurie smiled softly, but immediately found herself yawning. Her day had started at 5am and it was starting to catch up to her.
"Take a nap," Murray ordered in a rare moment of kindness. He began to climb out of the car. "Come on, Alexei." Murray landed on his feet and walked around the end of the car. "Get some sleep, we'll go over the plans again. We'll definitely need you on your A game, hmm?"
Laurie thought it over for a moment. She didn't want to sleep, but she definitely knew Murray had a point. Alexei climbed out of the car through the driver seat and joined the other two at the trunk of the car. He walked around Laurie, reaching out to lightly brush the small of her back. Laurie sucked in a breath, freezing in place.
Murray, in another rare moment, mistook her freezing at Alexei's touch as apprehension to get some sleep. "Look, here," Murray grabbed the vest and held it up to Alexei. "Put it on so she'll take a nap."
Alexei looked confused for a moment before he reached for it. As he reached with his right hand, his left hand fell from her back and Laurie immediately missed the feeling.
"Uh, no. Under the shirt," Laurie ordered, looking between the two men. She coughed slightly, her nervousness showing.
"She, uh, she wants it under your shirt," Murray explained to the further confused Alexei.
Laurie hoped the men couldn't see her blush as Alexei began unbuttoning his dirty shirt. He pulled it off, a white, and also dirty, undershirt beneath it. Alexei handed the shirt to an annoyed Murray who then again tried to hand him the vest.
"Um, no!" Laurie said again, stopping them again. "Everyone will see it beneath that shirt. It's gotta go all the way under," she pushed, completely realizing what it meant and yet, the Agent in her took over. If the Russian Terminator, who was apparently named Grigori, saw Alexei in a vest, he would probably shoot him in the head.
Murray grunted. "You….you want him to take his other shirt off?" he asked, incredibly incredulous and annoyed.
"Come on, Murray! If Grigori knows he's wearing a vest, he'll shoot him in the head. If we can hide it, maybe we can keep Alexei alive." She snapped her fingers at Alexei. "Both shirts."
The paranoid man sighed ridiculously loudly and translated for the still confused Alexei. "She thinks it's best if you put the vest under both shirts."
Alexei looked from Murray to Laurie and she struggled to keep his stare without blushing any further. She called on all of her Agent training. She had gone undercover before, surely she could pretend to not be turned on?
The Russian held Laurie's stare for a moment longer and then began to pull of his undershirt, not breaking the stare until he had to pull the shirt over his head. Laurie stood there, hands on her hips, trying not to dip her stare to look at his naked chest. She mostly averted her eyes. Mostly. The shirt off, he handed it to Laurie, who reluctantly took it. Murray silently watched the exchange and when Alexei held his hand out wordlessly, the man handed over the vest.
Laurie waited as Alexei clumsily put the vest on, having to break his staring contest with the woman again as he fumbled with the straps. But once it was on, he looked up. "Good?"
She almost spoke, but remembered her ongoing ruse, and waited for Murray to translate.
"He's asking if its okay."
Laurie nodded. "Perfect." She held out his undershirt and continued to watch as he redressed, slipping the shirt on and then taking his other shirt and buttoning it on over the vest and the undershirt. Once he was fully dressed again, Laurie allowed herself the opportunity to look him over once. "A little bulky, but it'll keep him alive." I hope.
With another deep sigh, Laurie turned to Murray. "Now I'll nap." Laurie turned on her heel and walked around the car before crawling in and laying face first on the backseat, breathing in the leather of the Toddfather, her eyes squeezed shut as a mantra began flowing through her head Don't dream about Alexei.
She could hear the men began to talk about the experiment and the bunker, but Laurie tuned them out. She really did need to get some sleep before Jim and Joyce came back.
As she drifted off, her mantra seemed only to make sure that Laurie dreamed about Alexei. She dreamt about his naked chest; the slight touch of hair he had on his stomach leading down to his pants…how toned he was despite the fact he was a scientist. Laurie wondered if they kept a gym down in the bunker for the Russians living down there.
She imagined what it might feel like to touch his chest...would he like it if she ran her fingers down his chest…all the way down…
And then she jerked awake before she could touch his chest in her dream. Laurie sat up on the seat, embarrassed to find she was drooling slightly. Her dream hadn't even been that good, for fuck's sake; she hadn't even touched him, just watched him take his shirt off again and again.
As she wiped the drool off her chin, Laurie noticed it was quiet. She whipped around.
"FUCKING MURRAY!" she yelled when she noticed Murray and Alexei were gone. She quickly stood up on the seat and began looking around, climbing onto the back of the car as she did so. Where could they have gone? Did the Russian get them both? But where were the bodies then? Would the Russian just kidnap Alexei or kill him outright?
A million thoughts went through her mind as she looked around.
The fair.
Laurie scrambled down the back of the car and began booking it towards the busy fair. Murray would be dumb enough to take Alexei there. What if Grigori was already here?
Fear coursed through her body which was quickly followed by the horrible realization that her gun was still in her bag. "Fuck," she cursed at herself too loudly as she entered the fair, ignoring the looks of suburban families.
Inside the fair, Laurie was overwhelmed by her choices. How on earth was she going to find Alexei in this mess? She picked a path and began making her way through the obnoxiously loud Fourth of July faith, pushing through families. Every noise set her on edge, every scream made her search desperately for the source.
"Hey watch out!" a teenager yelled at Laurie as she pushed past.
She ignored the kid because yards away from her was a familiar dirty shirt walking further away from her.
"Alyosha!" Laurie yelled. But there was no way her voice would carry over the loud noises of the busy fair. She took off as fast as she could, but there were so many people in her way. "Move!" she yelled as she ran, but nobody cared.
Nobody cared that somebody's life was in the balance.
She kept running. She was so close. "Alyosha!" she yelled once again.
To her delight, Alexei heard her. She smiled in relief as the younger man turned around, holding a comically large plush Woody Woodpecker in his arms, but something was wrong. He stumbled to the side the plush falling from his arms. Murray was suddenly at Alexei's back, helping the man stand.
"What's wrong? What happened?" Laurie asked quickly as she skidded to a stop in front of Alexei, looking him over. Alexei stumbled even more, collapsing to his knees as Murray tried to hold him up. Laurie finally saw the problem. Two bullet holes in his chest. The vest had helped, she guessed by the lack of blood, but she knew that a vest didn't make it painless.
"My chest," Alexei whispered painfully as Laurie and Murray began moving him out of the main fairway.
Laurie looked over at Murray. "Find Joyce and Jim! We've got to get him to a hospital!"
"But the vest?" Murray questioned, still holding onto Alexei as they moved behind a tent.
"It stopped the bullets from going through, but it hit him on his sternum Murray! He could have a broken sternum. The bone could have punctured his heart. We need to leave now!" she yelled his face, a mixture of concern and anger. They didn't have time for this!
"Okay, I'm going!" he said, letting go of Alexei and stumbling out of view.
Alexei fell into Laurie's arms and she helped him to the ground. "Shh, Alyosha. You're going to be okay, just breath slowly."
"You…you speak Russian?" he questioned, sweat beading on his forehead.
Laurie smiled down at him and wiped his hair off his forehead. "I do. I thought it would be funny to pretend I didn't."
Alexei managed a smile. "Your accent is very good." He started coughing, clearly in a lot of pain.
Laurie was worried. She had been shot before, both in a vest and not. The vest might stop the bullet from ripping through you, but that didn't mean it was pain free. And if it hit in the wrong place, it could still be bad.
The Russian, whom Laurie had never noticed, had managed a perfect shot. And if Alexei hadn't been wearing the vest he would most certainly be dead already. At least that was something Laurie could work with.
"We need to get the vest off," Laurie said, beginning to shakily unbutton his shirt. She took deep breaths, trying to remember her training to be calm. She could do this.
Alexei's smile grew. "This isn't how I envisioned you taking off my shirt for the first time," he joked.
Unable to help herself, Laurie blushed. She pulled off his shirt carefully, wincing when he groaned in pain. "I'm sorry, Alyosha," she said as she reached under his undershirt and undid the Velcro at the shoulders. She then moved down to the right side to do the same, her fingers brushing over the two bullets still in his chest.
"I'm sorry we left you," he said, frowning and then crying out in pain when Laurie pulled the vest down.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she apologized before tossing the vest to the side. She lifted his shirt to look at where he had been shot. "Shit, shit, shit," she cussed as she stared at a huge and ugly bruise forming over his sternum.
"Is it bad?" he asked.
She gulped. She had seen internal bleeding before. This wasn't good.
"Here, here!" Laurie heard Murray say. Joyce and Murray rounded around the corner of the tent and found them on the ground.
"Oh my God, Alexei!" Joyce said, falling to her knees. She looked at Laurie. "How bad is it?"
"We need to get him to the hospital now!" Laurie said urgently. She looked around. "Where's Jim?"
"He was leading the Russians away!" Joyce told her.
Laurie groaned. "We have to get Alexei out of here now! He's probably bleeding internally and he might have damage to his heart. We can't wait!"
Joyce nodded and she moved out of the way as Murray helped Laurie get Alexei to his feet. Together, they hurried from the fair, heading back to the parking lot. Alexei gripped her shoulder tightly as they moved, a silent communication between the two.
It felt like an eternity before they finally reached the car. Joyce started the car as Murray held the passenger seat up. Laurie tried as carefully as she could to help Alexei into the car, but he still cried out in pain. He collapsed into the backseat and Laurie hurried in after him, helping him sit up.
"It's okay, Alexei. We're on our way," Laurie said as she held him in the back seat, holding one of his hands as the other ran through his hair, trying to calm him.
He groaned in response.
Murray rounded on her from the front seat. "You. Speak. Russian?!" he screamed in a weirdly high pitched voice.
Laurie rolled her eyes. "Obviously, Murray. Did you think they would send someone who didn't speak Russian to deal with your paranoid ass?" she shot back, the anger of the night's events coming out.
"Well I obviously wasn't too paranoid, was I?" Murray yelled back, gesturing to the world around them.
Laurie shrugged, turning back to Alexei, whose eyes were closing. "Alyosha, open your eyes. Stay awake, please," she pleaded in his ear.
He tried, turning his head so their foreheads were touching. "So…cold…," he said.
"Joyce!" Laurie yelled, urging the woman along.
"There's Hop!" she said, slowing the car so the cop could get in.
Forget him and go, Laurie wanted to say. But she kept her mouth shut. Just stay with me, Laurie urged silently, running her fingers through his hair over and over. Stay.
"Go, Joyce, go!" Jim yelled as he threw himself into the backseat of the car, unintentionally hitting Alexei as he did. The Russian cried out and Laurie silently cursed Jim, even though he didn't know what was going on.
"Shit, Alexei?" Jim said, noticing the man as he settled in the car.
"The bullets hit the vest but it was right over his sternum, Jim," Laurie said, her voice starting to choke up. She moved back from Alexei and wiped his forehead again. He was sweating so much, but he kept his eyes open, his hand still gripping hers.
"Hurry Joyce!" Jim yelled, echoing Laurie's worry even though he had just gotten into the car.
Laurie caught Jim's eyes, frowning. He gulped as they stared at one another, both thinking the same thing.
Please get there in time.