Page 21 of Pistols and Plush Toys

He was afraid, and that only drove the spike of anger that much deeper in.

“If Vitale wants to fuck with me, then that is how it is,” Nikolai growled as he crossed the room. He did it in just three strides and grabbed Brooks. It wasn’t gentle, the way he took hold of Brooks's upper arm and dragged him out of the bed. The man came stumbling, almost falling.

“W-what?” His voice was small, groggy from sleep.

“He wants to fuck with people’s lives? Fuck with me? I will show him what it means, fucking with a Tkachenko. He wants to see me play the bad guy? Fine. I know what it takes to be bad guy. We are going to be making another message. Maybe this time your boyfriend will listen .”

Brooks let out a whimper of a noise as Nikolai pulled him along, but it was so small Nikolai barely heard it.

Ideas were sliding into his head rapidfire as he stomped out of the bedroom, dragging Brooks behind him.

The car was still outside, and it could take him to a filming location.

He didn’t need props, didn’t need Gerard’s approval, not for this. Gerard would understand.

Maybe he should do something other than a video. He could make Brooks call Vitale, make him plead on Vitale’s answering machine for his life.

That would be sickly satisfying. Without the visuals it would even be better. He wouldn’t have to do anything to Brooks other than to scare him, and Vitale’s imagination would fill in the blanks.

Yes. Yes, that was… a plan.

They got to the front of the house and Nikolai threw the front door open.

“P-please,” Brooks’s voice was a quivering thing. “Please—“

“What are you begging me for?” Nikolai spit it in Russian, slipping into his first tongue in his anger.

English wasn’t strong enough, not right now.

“A woman is going to die because your shitstain of a boyfriend wants his drug empire. Wants to traffic women into the city, pimp them out. You’re complicit, do you understand that?

This is on you too.” Nikolai snarled. “I don’t even think he wants you, you’re just a toy to him.

You cannot fix this! I cannot fix this!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Brooks whispered. “I-I don’t understand—”

Nikolai switched back to English, shaking Brooks by the arm. “What are you worth, Elliot Brooks? I take you for peace, but there is none. Maybe I am too soft. Maybe I must crush cockroaches with my boot.”

He turned around and continued through the door, jerking Brooks with him. If his father saw him now, he’d be laughing. Or maybe he’d just stand there in that stony way of his and look down at Nikolai impassively.

I expect failure from you, so now I am never disappointed. His father had said those words to him so many times they were burned into memory. Every time he came up short, he heard those words in the back of his mind like venom.

If there was ever a time to feel like a failure, it was now. He shouldn’t have tried the soft method with Vitale. He should’ve considered that vermin like him didn’t have ethics or morals.

Brooks made another sound, almost a choked sob, before it was hastily stifled as he struggled to keep pace with Nikolai’s longer, angry stride.

Nikolai had a vice grip around Brooks's arm as he made his way down the steps toward the car parked at the far edge of the driveway, so he felt when Brooks stumbled again, when the man lost his balance and went down.

The motion jerked Nikolai to a stop, and when he turned to snap at Brooks to pick himself back up, Brooks was already hastily scrambling to his feet, gasping out an apology. He winced as he stood, and Nikolai’s focus narrowed to Brooks’s knee, which was bleeding.

In the early morning sunlight, Brooks was haloed by soft light.

He was dressed in a pair of sleep shorts and a T-shirt—pajamas that Nikolai had given him two days ago—and they offered no protection.

His feet were bare and he was clutching the stuffed giraffe in one hand, keeping it curled up against his side, almost tucked where Nikolai couldn’t see it.

Nikolai’s gaze ran up Brooks’s body until he was looking at Brooks’s face. Brooks stared wide-eyed back at him, muted terror painting his expression as tears began to trail down his cheeks. He made no sound, but his lip was bleeding again.

Because Nikolai had burst into his bedroom while he’d been asleep and dragged him out. Dragged him out in his sleep clothes, with his stuffed animal in tow.

Brooks looked startlingly young then. Not in a way he could be mistaken for a child, but with a fragility that swept throughout his trembling frame.

An innocence. He looked so easily harmed in his soft clothes and his bare feet, in the way his shoulders shook as he wetly inhaled, making a tiny, hitched noise before he hastily looked at the ground, tucking the giraffe further behind him.

He was so easily harmed.

Nikolai had harmed him.

The ballooning anger popped like a bubble. Guilt swelled up in its place.

Brooks was trembling, unable to stop the sobs that were heaving his body, even as he tried to stifle the sounds.

“Пизде?ц,” Nikolai said with feeling. This wasn’t what he wanted.

Terrorizing Brooks wasn’t going to solve his problem, and the man didn’t deserve it.

In his fury, Nikolai had accused Brooks of being complicit in Vitale’s plans, but that couldn’t be true.

Not this quiet, timid man who knew so well how to keep from making noise when he was hurting.

Nikolai had let his anger take the controls, and now Brooks was hurt.

“Brooks,” Nikolai said, at a loss. Blood was starting to drip down Brooks’s leg. Nikolai needed to get that cleaned and dressed, needed to not be out here on the front steps with a sobbing man for any of his employees to see. What would Meredith or Gerard say if they saw him right now?

They’d probably punch him square in the face, and he’d deserve it.

“We will… we will go back inside.”

Carefully, gently, he guided Brooks back into the house. Brooks didn’t fight him, was as gentle as a lamb as he was led to a front bathroom. He was still trembling, tears dripping down his cheeks when Nikolai had him sit down on the ledge beside the bathtub.

The man flinched when Nikolai stepped back, as though he expected more violence.

Was Nikolai any better than Vitale, really? He certainly wasn’t acting like it right now.

He turned and found one of the big first aid kits under the sink. Nikolai rifled through for antiseptic wipes and bandages.

When he returned to Brooks, he knelt to reach the man’s knee. Knelt also because it would help if Nikolai wasn’t looming above him.

Brooks made a caught sound, sinking his teeth back into his abused, bleeding lip, but he didn’t pull away.

“I am sorry,” Nikolai said seriously as he ripped open a packet of wipes. “I… lost my temper. That was unacceptable.”

Brooks sniffled, but didn’t say anything. The hand clutching his stuffed animal was white at the knuckles.

Nikolai focused on wiping the blood and dirt away. The scrape wasn’t too bad, but he hated seeing it, knowing it was his fault.

He went through two wipes before he grabbed the gauze, which would be easiest with the bend of the knee. He wrapped Brooks's knee quickly and efficiently, testing that the wrap wasn’t too tight before taping the end down.

In the silence he could hear the click of Brooks swallowing. “I’m sorry,” Brooks whispered again.

Nikolai sighed, sitting back on his heels. There was a bone deep weariness in him now that the adrenaline and anger were burned up.

“Is not you who should apologize,” Nikolai said heavily. “Is me. I say again, I am sorry.”

There was silence, and then, in a tiny voice, Brooks asked, “Did—did something happen?”

It was only fair to offer an explanation.

“Vitale, he has been retaliating against me this week,” Nikolai started, gauging what to say.

He had no idea how much Brooks knew about Vitale, but he had an inkling now that it was very little.

He was coming to understand that Brooks was a gentle soul.

Someone who wouldn’t be with a man like Vitale if he knew what he was capable of.

“This morning there was… an attack. I was angry and I took that out on you. I am sorry. I should never do that. It was wrong.”

When he raised his eyes to look at Brooks, the man was staring down at him. His face was blotchy and his eyes were red, but at least he wasn’t actively crying anymore. Still, Nikolai felt horrible looking at him.

“R-retaliation?” Brooks asked.

“For taking you.”

Brooks flinched, and something clicked in Nikolai's head.

In interviews with Vitale’s previous partners, there had been mentions of violence. The kinds of slapping around a man did when he needed to lord his power over others. If Brooks was that naive to Vitale’s business, had he entered into a relationship with the man without knowing what he was like?

Brooks had been with Vitale for five years.

And he… certainly flinched enough for a person familiar with unpredictable men.

Fuck. If that were true, that was—that wasn’t good.

Not at all. Not good for Brooks, not good for Nikolai's plan.

Because if Nikolai was trying to stamp out the shit Vitale was trying to bring into the city to save people from that harm, how could he in good conscience send Brooks back to a man who hurt him?

“Oh,” Brooks said quietly.

Nikolai stared up at him. It wasn’t as though he could just keep Brooks either. Brooks didn’t want to be here. He loved Vitale.

But people often loved their abusers despite the harm.

“What did he do?” Brooks asked tentatively.

Nikolai weighed the truth. He wanted to be honest, but he didn’t know if he could be responsible for the fallout it might bring if it shattered Brooks's worldview.

Or worse, if it didn’t, and the man came to Vitale’s defense. Nikolai wasn’t sure he was in the state of mind to hear excuses made for Vitale, even if it was coming from another victim's mouth.