!! content warning for medical scenes including blood and pain !! please put your mental health first
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The motel smelled like sweat and potpourri, and the hallways were long, narrow, and high-ceilinged, jaundiced lightbulbs flickering imperceptibly. Russia stepped over the charred corpses of four enormous moths below, turning the room key over and over in his hand.
Getting into the motel had been almost disturbingly simple. He'd had an arm around America's shoulders holding him upright, though his head lolled like his neck was made of yarn; though the coat he'd put over him covered most of the gashes but the blood down his face was still evident, the traces black as ink in the yellowed light. Russia'd kept a hand in his pocket on the last round in the tiny pistol just in case the meager disguise didn't fool somebody. The guy at the front desk, though, was high off his ass and more than half asleep. He checked them in without question and Russia left him there mumbling, loopy, to himself.
"Love who you love, man," the guy called backward, inanely. Whatever the hell that had to do with him.
Rus stepped into the cramped room allotted to them, kicked the door shut, and locked it. Stripped the bed, wrinkling his nose at the mattress stains, and set America down, and then he rolled his sleeves to the elbow and lit a cigarette.
Bad habit, yeah. As if this motel needed to smell worse than it already did. It would steady his hands, though, he justified as he snapped the curtains shut, flicked on the bedside lamp, and sat heavily on a chair next to the bed.
As a final 'f-ck-you' from fate, America was burning up with fever already. Smoke curled out of Russia's nostrils as he placed a hesitant hand on his forehead, swallowing hard as America's head turned unconsciously in his direction.
F-ck. This was about to really, really suck.
He stubbed the cigarette out on the bedside table, a reedy thread of smoke trailing still from the ashes, and crouched to throw open the door to the mini fridge, observing the contents through narrowed eyes. Ah. There it was. Russia pulled out a bottle of Stolich as long as his forearm by the neck and popped it. Yeah. This would do.
"Okay, America," he murmured, and sat behind him with his back against the headboard. "C'mere." Pulling him up under the arms, Russia tipped America's head back by the chin and poured two shots down his throat. "Best anesthesia I have got." America coughed weakly as Rus undid the coat, laying bare the gashes across his chest, sternum, his neck. They were going rust-colored, pus weeping from the biggest ones. Damn it.
To tear his eyes away, Russia stripped free a pillowcase and twisted it in his hands, before pressing it gently into America's mouth, thumbs lingering at the corners.
"You will want to bite that."
Shifting so he knelt over America, one knee on either side of his body, Russia bit down on his knuckle. Maybe he'd thought about this before. His annoying-ass mission partner getting knocked down a peg, anything to wipe that smug look off his face just for a second.
Well. His wish had come true, as they often do. America was slack-jawed, locked in the hellscape of some comatose fever dream, an upset crease in his forehead already. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow and too fast. And all it was doing for Russia was making knots in his stomach.
He was going to fix this.
Without letting himself doubt it, he leaned forward, tore a square out of the rolled-up bedsheet, and doused it in vodka.
"Bozhe, Pozhaluysta."
The yell that wrenched from America's chest as Russia pressed the disinfectant to the first cut must have torn holes in his vocal cords. His eyes flew open, fluttering madly, rolled to the whites in the throes of his unconsciousness. Rus leaned forward to press one hand over his mouth, squeezing blood and alcohol out of the other one.
"I know, I know, I am sorry—"
He scored the cloth along another gash, dimly aware of America's hands clawing instinctively at Russia's own over his face. Another cut. Was he imagining the hiss that the alcohol made on contact? America writhed and bucked underneath him, eyes enormous and unseeing and shedding tears down the sides of his face— Russia was reminded wildly of an exorcism—
He threw the scrap, dyed furious red, aside, tore a new one with his teeth.
"Halfway there, luchik, halfway," he promised hoarsely, holding him in place with both thighs and slopping more vodka over the new one.
"MMGHHHH." America's fist pounded deliriously on his leg, leaving bruises— Russia swiped the gashes clean, teeth gritted so hard his jaw trembled, burning the infection out of America's blood. His chest was finished. That left his neck.
Russia tipped his head back to catch his breath, aware of America's kicks losing their frantic vigor beneath him. His muffled screams had splintered into raspy cries as his voice died, and he didn't writhe so much as jerk, in pained spasms, against Russia's legs.
Breathing hard, Russia leaned forward onto his elbows to look at the cuts across America's neck. Small, malicious things, on the most sensitive part of the body. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn't killed the masked man in the dungeon. Too fast. What he wouldn't give to do it again.
"This is gonna hurt like a b!tch," Russia muttered, and risked taking his hand off of America's mouth to cup his jaw, "but I will make it fast."
Even if he weren't halfway unconscious, the delirium of pain had to have clouded America's head enough that all Russia was doing was talking to himself. But he reached up and clasped Rus's wrist with two trembling hands in a way that made something hot and protective rise up his throat, sent an unfamiliar tremor low through his stomach.
"Fast," he repeated hoarsely, thumbing the corner of America's jawbone where it met his ear, and then drew the cloth across the soft column of his throat, cut by cut by cut.
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Russia sank back against the headboard, eyes half closed. Pale gray light had begun to filter from behind the curtains as the sun crawled laboriously upwards. America, slumped over in front of him, was wrapped chest to neck in hypnotic loops of crisscrossing bandages, torn from the shredded bedsheet and tied tight in the back. Stanching the blood flow had already begun to help: the deadly sheen had left his forehead, though every time Rus's fingers brushed his skin it was viciously hot, and the occasional muscle spasm wracked his huddled body. Russia leaned forward, bit down on the trailing end of the last bandage, and tore it off clean.
"All done," he whispered, rough with sleep deprivation, and skimmed his thumb across the cotton. America stirred. "What are you doing," Russia mumbled, leaning back again as his patient turned toward him, unsteady, and pushed his face into Rus's chest.
The hell.
His trembling hands closed on fistfuls of Russia's shirt, urgent and tight for a moment before he relaxed, and his shaky, rattling breath began to fall into rhythm.
I'm too tired for this, Russia thought, tipping his head back to rest on the headboard. The water-stained ceiling blurred before his bleary eyes. America was in a lot of pain. Maybe he coped like this, like some kind of house puppy—bedding down into the nearest warm person for comfort. Yeah, that checked out. It didn't mean anything. At all.
So it didn't matter if Russia ran his knuckle over the row of knots in the bandages. Or. Or America's back beneath, brushing the knobs of his spine one at a time. Saints, he looked so much smaller asleep. Curled into a ball. Ridiculously trusting.
What in hell was he thinking. Gritting his teeth, Russia groped for the Stolich bottle on the nightstand and swilled around the inch remaining. He couldn't afford to get— confused. Sentimental. He was on the run, for heaven's sake. In the pallid morning light, he realized for the first time that he was bleeding— the back of his hand, the one he'd clamped over America's mouth, was plowed with desperate fingernail marks. Hm. He raised the bottle to his mouth, took a healthy swallow, while he inspected the wounds. Skin broken four times, said the medic voice in his head. Mild irritation covers majority area. Treat with disinfectant and healing period will last one to two weeks.
There was another feeling under that one, though, strange, hazy, far from clinical. Russia held his wrist up to the light and found the four crescent-shaped marks, deep and glowing, where America had gripped his forearm like it was a lifeline while he cleaned those cuts. America. Fingernails sinking into his flesh, scrabbling to find a grip.
I wonder if they will scar, Russia thought, and finished the bottle.
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a/n: you guys better enjoy this cause my search history for it definitely put me on some kind of watchlist