Page 201 of Red Rooster

Sasha’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm. His lashes flickered as his eyes moved beneath the lids; restless, but never opening. Smudged with shadows, sunken. Just like his cheeks, and his belly beneath his ripped and stained white shirt. He’d always been slender, with knobby wrists and ankles, caught in that slim teenage shape forever. But he looked like he’d lost ten pounds or more since Nikita had last seen him. His hair needed washing, clinging in greasy clumps to his forehead. Nikita reached to push it back off his face instinctively, lingering after, hand cradling the top of his skull, feeling the sweat and excess body heat there in his skin.

“Nikita,” Trina said from the doorway. So gently. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the manor and it isn’t safe.”

“He’s feverish,” he said. His mouth was so dry it was hard to form words; brittle and crackling on his tongue. In Russian, “What did they do to you?”

“Nik,” she prompted.

“When he wakes.”

She gave a cut-off little sigh and walked away, easing the door shut most of the way. He could hear the others’ conversation out in the main room; it flowed over him like white noise.

“We can’t just–”

“Shh, he’ll hear.”

“He’s out of his damn gourd anyway.”

“Sasha smells like chemicals. They poisoned him.”

“We don’t know that.”

“I know that. I can smell it.”

“Would you two keep it down?”

“What about Val?”

“What about him?”

“He was loose, but he didn’t get out. I don’t think.”

Nikita scraped his blunt nails gently along Sasha’s scalp, slow pets, the way he’d always liked. Hedidsmell of chemicals: strong human medicines, and street narcotics, the kind of nasty stink he sometimes detected on bums and junkies.

Could Sasha detect him in his sleep, he wondered? Was Nikita’s familiar scent a comfort?

“Sashka.” He trailed his fingertips down behind Sasha’s ear, down the side of his throat, over the fluttering pulse there. “Can you hear me?”

Sasha murmured wordlessly and shifted on the bed, a tiny half-roll, wanting closer to Nikita, pushing into his hand.

“Sasha.”

His eyes opened to slits, that well-loved pale blue that should have been cold but had always been full of such youthful warmth. His gaze – glassy and unfocused – moved back and forth across Nikita’s face. He worked his jaw a moment, wet his lips. “Nik? Is it…are you real?” He made a pitiful attempt to lift one limp hand.

Nikita caught his hand with his free one, and squeezed it tight. “Yes,bratishka. I’m real. We’re going home.”

Sasha smiled faintly, rolled the rest of the way over, pressed his face into Nikita’s hip, and fell back to sleep.

~*~

“How’s she doing?” Deshawn asked, stopping to lean a shoulder against the wall beside Rooster, mirroring his posture.

When they’d walked into Lionheart – Rooster for the second time, and Red for the first – Much had met them with a bored, put-upon expression and walked them to a locker room. “No one else will come in,” he promised, sulky and teenagerish, and left them alone. Rooster sent Red in first, and now stood outside, letting the cool concrete wall hold his weight, breathing in and out in a slow, regular rhythm. Trying not to think too much about any one thing.

Red had been inside a long time.

“Okay,” he said, automatically. Then: “Quiet.” He cast a glance down the hall; once inside the main stone structure, the Lionheart facility was made smaller and more modern and usable by hallway, conference rooms, and bright electrical lighting. He could have been in a military facility anywhere in the world, its exposed ceiling pipes and its bleach-scented cleanliness a sort of comfort.

“She’s been through a lot,” Deshawn said.