[center] Alek

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Hgoj1vd.jpg[/img]

LOCATION Private apartment — Coffee shop

[hr][/center]


Daylight came in lines, stretched across the empty expanse of white paint over smooth drywall as sunlight filtered through the plain white blinds of the lone window in the lone apartment of the small apartment. Pale grey tendrils of smoke lifted in the air, coiling around the lines of light quickly before disappearing towards the ceiling with each exhale. There was only a single light on in the apartment, that was the light up in the hall, it's glow barely visible from the lone bedroom. A glow that came to Alek's eyes in faultering waves of consistency as his focus remained hard on the cigarette at his lips, to the small dollar store ashtray, and back again to his lips. 

Noise and activity broke the concentration, leaning his body forward from it's heavy rest against the wall under the lone window, the heavy plastic under his body making tiny protests with each little move he made. Protests that hardly matched the protests that came with fire inside his own body, through his nerve endings. That she was the furthest thing from his mind didn't seem possible two months ago. He had been so certain if he could just clear his head that things would be different, that everything would work itself out. That he would be back with her one day. The only thing that seemed to work itself out last night, though, was who died and who lived. 

Alek had never been more certain after last night that right, and wrong, hadn't factored in the slightest little bit into what worked itself out. 

"Hey."

Alek's brown eyes met Sergei's grey-blue eyes as his friend haunted the doorway of the single bedroom. In one hand Sergei carried a black duffle bag, and in the other he carried a black garment bag. Though Alek took his sweet time re-focusing his eyes on his old friend, and the figure behind him, finally he nodded his head upwards just-so, "Hey." 

"I brought a change of clothes for you."

A half-hissed inhale of cigarette smoke, an exhale more sigh than release of cigarette smoke, and Alek nodded his head downward in understanding. "Thanks. Is this...?"

Sergei shot a look over his shoulder, before entering the room to set the bag down and set the garment bag in the bathroom attached to the bedroom. "Doc Smith."

Alek had a strong suspicion the doctor's name wasn't really "Smith", but kept it to himself as he put the cigarette out with a few jabs of it's lit cherry into the ashtray. "Hey Doc. Thanks for this."

A good bit past middle age, sliding on blue latex gloves, a crown of salt and pepper hair on sun that rarely looked to see sun with a nose just a size too big for his face and white eyebrows, Doctor "Smith" stepped into the room and looked at Alek with minor concern. "Your money already thanked me well enough." The doctor knelt at Alek's side, moving the ashtray with it's stamped out half dozen cigarettes well off to the side before placing his own dark blue duffle bag next to him, and began picking through it's collection of side pockets and primary compartments for the medical supplies he'd need. 

"How much pain are you in?"

The doctor asked at the moment Sergei set down both the small glass, and the bottle of vodka so pure it wasted like water, on the opposite side of Alek. Alek smiled, faintly, "I'm fine. The blood makes it look worse than it is."

That was the white dress shirt he had been wearing since the night before, the entire right side of his midsection a blood stain. A stain that had been there since everything went so well for the Zimas in the US, yet so incredibly sideways for Alek himself. Emotionally exhausted from the wrestling of his heart and his head since last night, physically exhausted from the blood loss, and mentally numb Alek silently went to the task of removing his shirt, and peeling off the wifebeater under it. "Smith" was watching him for signs of pain, for discomfort. There wasn't much of a show for the good doctor to see. 

Bare chested the tear in his skin along the side of his body left by the grazing bullet fired at him by the only woman he'd ever loved became fully visible. 

"Not bad, actually," remarked the Doctor, before he went about his work. 

"He's a hardy son of a bitch." Sergei joked, with little grin on his thin lips. Sergei's high and tight dark brown hair, the small scar on his chin, the bulk evident on his body despite his otherwise 'business casual picked up from the local Wal-Mart' choice of clothing--all of it screamed the kind of man most men were careful not to stare. The man was a bulldog, not the smartest, but Alek had never met a more loyal person in his entire life. "Where do you think she is?"

Alek met the question a quickly contained grunt of pain, as the Doctor began the quick stitch job of the bullet wound. Sergei went for the bottle, kneeling to undo the bottle's top, and pour the Zima heir a double shot. Two double shots later, Alek's face twisted in a mix of pain and acceptance, before returning to it's prior numb state, giving the glass over to Sergei so he could take his shots. Alek wasn't greedy with his friends. "She's in European airspace by now. She's gone."

Sergei snorted as he filled his own doubleshot. "Sounds like her."

"Yeah, well, I'm starting to think she's the smart one in all this."

Going off facial expression alone, the doubleshot didn't seem to register with Sergei at all. "More like manipulative bitch than smart, I'd say..."

When Sergei's eyes reconnected with Alek's after he took his shot, the mistake was clear, the unspoken warning in Alek's look putting an end that particular subject. She may have shot him, she may have used him, and none of it for the first time. But she was still who she was to Alek, and the heartache had still felt like a broken bone that refused to properly set and heal. A feeling that he knew that she long ago knew had become well acquainted. If anything he was the one learning lessons the hard way that he long ago should have learned from the woman. 

"Done. I'll leave the pill bottle on the kitchen counter."

Alek blinked down, surprised at what he saw, "That's some damn good work, Doc."

The Doctor's voice swelled with pride, "I used a new dermal regena--" Doctor 'Smith' and his voice trailed off as he realized the dull, empty, stare Alek was now giving him. "Right. You don't care. I'll be going if there's nothing else?"

"Pay the man double, Serg."

Sergei popped up as the Doctor placed the bandage over the wound and replaced all his supplies in his dark blue duffle. "Follow me, Doc, and we'll get you all set. The clothes are in the bathroom, boss." 

A few shots, or five, later and Alek was in the bathroom before setting bottle and glass at the vanity just outside. He couldn't be bothered with the light in the bathroom, and pissed in darkness. The garment bag was taken to the vanity, the black dress shirt, black slacks, and black dress coat that was many thousands of dollars more than Sergei's outfit in all likelihood. That, Alek thought as he downed another shot, or his friend needed a better tailor. In the duffle Alek found his black sunglasses and Dunhill cologne. The vodka was re-capped and set back in the black duffle from which it had came, zipped up and ready to go. Out in the empty main room of the one bedroom apartment safehouse Alek swiped the pills and swallowed two, tossing the bottle in the duffle too. Sunglasses on, he escaped out just in time for Sergei to return to lock the safehouse door.

"Where to?"

"Coffee."