Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Zenko became aware of pain before anything else.
It sat deep in the left side of his neck, a heavy, vicious throb that sharpened whenever he tried to swallow and seemed to spread down into his shoulder.
His mouth felt like somebody had packed it with sand, his tongue too thick against the roof of it, and something tugged uncomfortably at the back of his hand when he tried to move his fingers.
Hospital.
The conclusion came before he managed to open his eyes.
He could hear the soft electronic rhythm of a monitor somewhere close, another machine humming beyond it, and the muted movements of someone shifting around the room.
He tried to remember how the hell he had ended up there, but his brain offered disconnected images instead of answers.
Dirt.
Gunfire.
Someone screaming my name.
Shaun.
Fuck.
He forced his eyelids apart, immediately regretting the decision when fluorescent light stabbed through his skull. He closed them again, breathed carefully through his nose, and waited for the room to stop trying to spin around him.
“...telling you now, Zen, when you wake up, I’m going to kick your ass myself.”
He stopped fighting the darkness.
Shaun.
His voice came from somewhere to his right, low and rough with exhaustion, and something inside him unclenched before he had even worked out why. He concentrated on the sound, using it to drag himself farther toward consciousness while Shaun continued talking.
“You’re going to bitch that you got shot and therefore deserve sympathy, and I’m going to remind you that I gave you almost every drop of blood I have, so that shit isn’t going to work.”
You did?
Zenko tried to turn his head toward the voice. Pain ripped through his neck so brutally that his entire body jerked, and the monitor beside him immediately changed its steady rhythm as a strangled noise escaped his throat.
“Zen?” The chair scraped violently across the floor. “Zenko? Hey, babe, don’t fucking move. Jesus Christ, don’t move your head.”
A hand closed around his, warm fingers squeezing hard enough that Zenko managed to open his eyes again. Shaun appeared above him, blurry at first before his face slowly came into focus.
He looks like absolute shit.
There was dark bruising beneath both eyes, and several days’ worth of scruff covering his jaw.
His hair stuck up in different directions as though he had spent hours dragging his hands through it, while the hospital gown beneath the sweatshirt somebody had apparently found for him confirmed Shaun had been more than a visitor in this place.
Zenko tightened his fingers around Shaun’s. Or tried to, but barely anything happened.
Shaun felt it anyway.
“Oh, thank fuck.” His face crumpled for one terrifying second before he leaned over the bed, careful to avoid every line and wire between them. “Hey. There you are. Stay with me, okay? I need to get the nurse.”
Zenko tightened his fingers again when Shaun tried to pull away.
“I’m not leaving.” He immediately understood, settling back beside him while reaching behind himself for the call button. “I’m right fucking here. I’m getting somebody to check you, that’s all.”
The door opened less than a minute later, bringing a nurse who took one look at Zenko’s open eyes and moved quickly toward the bed.
Another nurse followed almost immediately, then a doctor, and suddenly Zenko had people touching him from every direction while asking questions he couldn’t fucking answer.
“Mr. Marks, can you hear me?”
Zenko blinked once.
“Do you know where you are?”
Hospital, genius.
He blinked again when the doctor apparently decided that counted as an answer.
“Good. Don’t try to speak yet. You were intubated after surgery, and we removed the tube several hours ago. Your throat is going to be extremely sore, and you have a significant injury to the left side of your neck.”
No shit.
His gaze found Shaun again beyond the doctor’s shoulder.
He stood close to the wall because the medical team had forced him out of the way, his arms folded tightly across his chest while his eyes remained fixed on him.
There was something in his expression Zenko had never seen before, something too close to fear for a man who had walked into firefights without blinking.
Memories shifted somewhere beneath the drugs still clouding Zenko’s head, and he could hear a voice telling him something.
I love you.
His heart kicked hard enough to change the monitor again.
“Easy, Mr. Marks.” The nurse touched his shoulder, her gaze flicking toward the screen. “Everything looks good. You’re safe.”
Zenko barely heard her.
You’re my person.
His eyes snapped back to Shaun’s as more fragments moved through his mind, strange and hazy around the edges, as if they belonged to a dream he had almost forgotten.
I want all of it, Zen.
Come back to me.
I’ll never make you wonder again.
I love you.
Jesus fucking Christ. Had that been real? He stared at Shaun until his man shifted under the scrutiny, unfolding his arms and stepping closer as soon as the doctor moved away from the bed.
“What?” Shaun glanced between him and the monitor. “Something hurt?”
Zenko wanted to laugh. He wanted to grab the idiot by the front of his sweatshirt and demand answers. Mostly, he wanted water badly enough that he was considering murdering somebody for it. He lifted his free hand and pointed toward his mouth.
“Thirsty?” Shaun looked toward the nurse for permission before reaching for the cup on the bedside table. “Can he have some?”
“A little.” She handed him a small sponge instead. “Start with this. His swallowing may still be difficult.”
Shaun dipped the sponge into the water and brought it carefully to Zenko’s lips. “Slowly, babe.”
Zenko sucked every fucking molecule of moisture out of it.
“More.” The single word scraped across his throat like broken glass, but the expression on Shaun’s face made the pain almost worthwhile.
“Holy shit.” Shaun’s smile arrived so fast Zenko felt it somewhere beneath his ribs. “Say something else.”
Zenko swallowed carefully. “Water.”
“Yeah, okay, apparently nearly dying hasn’t made you any more romantic.”
Nearly dying?
Shaun’s smile vanished. “Later.” He dipped the sponge again and touched it to Zenko’s mouth. “You can interrogate everybody later. Right now, you’re going to lie there and do exactly what the medical people tell you.”
Zenko stared at him while taking another mouthful.
Nearly dying.
More memories surfaced, of blood. Of Shaun’s hands at his neck, and Drax’s voice somewhere beyond him. Then no matter how hard he tried, there was nothing, except Shaun’s voice.
Zenko let his eyes close while the doctor continued checking him, answering what he could with small movements and ignoring the questions he couldn’t make sense of yet.
Exhaustion kept dragging at him, but he fought it because every time the darkness moved closer, some instinct inside him rebelled. He had shit to figure out first.
Eventually the doctor seemed satisfied enough to leave, taking one nurse with him while the other adjusted his IV and warned Shaun that their patient needed rest. Shaun nodded with an obedience Zenko had never once seen him offer anybody willingly, waiting until the door closed before dropping heavily into the chair beside the bed.
For several minutes neither of them spoke, then Shaun picked up his hand again and ran his thumb over his knuckles while Zenko studied him. Up close, the exhaustion was even worse. Shaun looked as though somebody had beaten the hell out of him and then denied him sleep for a week.
“You okay?” Zenko forced the words through his abused throat.
Shaun gave him a look. “You nearly bled out and then decided to fucking die for a minute, but sure, let’s talk about me.”
Zenko’s stomach dropped. “Died?”
Shaun’s thumb stopped moving. “For a minute.” His gaze fell to their joined hands. “Your heart stopped. They got you back.”
Zenko absorbed that slowly. He had been injured enough times to understand exactly what Shaun wasn’t saying. The haunted look in his eyes supplied the rest.
“How long?”
“Since you got shot?” Shaun leaned back slightly. “A couple of days. You’ve been sedated for most of it.”
“Drax?”
“Fine.”
“Team?”
“Fine.”
“You?”
Shaun sighed. “Also fine.”
His eyes were maybe more than a little blurry, but stupid wasn’t something he’d ever tried to be. He raised an eyebrow and glared at Shaun as best he could, silently daring him to tell the truth.
“Fine-ish.”
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place as he let his eyes close for several seconds, searching through the strange collection of voices and images floating around inside his head.
Shaun had been talking to him. He remembered that much.
Some of it could have been a dream, but there were details too specific for his drug-addled brain to have manufactured.
Fifty years.
Something about being miserable.
Old joints.
Zenko opened his eyes to find Shaun was watching him.
“You really planning...” Zenko stopped when his throat protested and waited until the pain eased. “Planning on making me miserable for fifty years?” Shaun went completely still, and Zenko felt his mouth curve despite the pull it created along his neck. “Thought so.”
“You heard that?”
Zenko gave him the smallest shrug he could manage without hurting himself. “Some.”
Shaun stared at him in horror. “How much is some?”
“Enough.”
“Fuck.”
Zenko would have laughed if he thought his neck could survive it. “Why?”
“Because you were unconscious.”
“Apparently not enough.”
“That was the fucking point.” Shaun scrubbed his free hand over his face, suddenly looking as if he would rather face an entire hostile force alone than continue this conversation. “You weren’t supposed to wake up and immediately start quoting my own shit back at me.”
Zenko’s amusement faded as he watched him. “Regret it?”
Shaun’s hand dropped. “No.” The answer came instantly. He leaned forward, elbows settling carefully against the edge of the mattress as his fingers tightened around Zenko’s hand. Whatever embarrassment had been there disappeared, leaving something much more serious behind. “Not one fucking word.”
Thank fuck.
Shaun held his gaze. “I meant it. All of it. You scared me so fucking badly I thought I was going to lose my mind, and apparently that knocked whatever sense I had left straight out of me because Noble, Cade, Reese and Castiel got to hear the whole fucking thing.”
“Noble?”
“Yep.”
Zenko’s mouth twitched. “Castiel?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Reese?”
“Would you stop enjoying this?”
“Never.”
Shaun shook his head, but the smile disappeared almost immediately.
“I love you, Zen.” This time Zenko heard it clearly without the filter of sedation.
There was no darkness and no machines swallowing pieces of the words before they reached him.
Shaun looked straight at him and said it again, “I love you.” he lifted their joined hands and pressed his mouth against Zenko’s fingers.
“I should’ve said it before you were lying here half fucking dead.
I should’ve told you when you could answer me. ”
Zenko tightened his fingers around Shaun’s as much as his weakened body allowed. “Can answer now?”
“Yeah.” Shaun’s eyes glistened. “You can.”
“Love you too.”
Shaun closed his eyes as the words hit him. His shoulders dropped as though he had been carrying a weight for months and had finally been given permission to put it down.
“I know.”
Zenko narrowed his eyes. “Arrogant fuck.”
A laugh escaped Shaun, rough enough to sound suspiciously close to something else.
“You’ve been awake twenty minutes, and you’re already insulting me.”
“Missed you.”
That stopped the laughter, and Shaun stood slowly and leaned over him, one hand braced against the mattress while he carefully avoided the injured side of Zenko’s neck. “I missed you too, babe.” His lips touched Zenko’s forehead.
Zenko closed his eyes and breathed him in, taking what he could get because anything more would probably bring half the hospital running. Shaun stayed there for several seconds before lowering himself back into the chair.
“Future,” Zenko murmured.
Shaun frowned. “What?”
“You said...” Zenko swallowed carefully. “Wanted a future.”
“I do.”
“Good.”
“That’s it?”
Zenko looked at him, wondering how somebody so smart could occasionally be such a fucking idiot. “Been waiting for you to catch up.”
Shaun stared at him for a second before muttering, “I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.” Shaun lifted Zenko’s hand and kissed his knuckles again. “I really fucking don’t.”
Zenko let his eyes drift closed as exhaustion finally began winning the battle he had been fighting since consciousness returned.
He could hear Shaun moving beside him, the chair creaking as he settled deeper into it, and for the first time since waking, the darkness no longer felt like something he needed to fight.
“Shaun?”
“I’m here.”
“Stay.”
The answer came with Shaun’s fingers tightening around his.
“Always.”