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🚶🏾♀️
It's been hours since the mission had gone rogue.
Hours since Price saw the rest of his team.
Hours since he heard Nik's voice lose control over the intercom, hours since he heard the choking of blood over his intercom.
The room was cold. The chair he was sitting on was poking into his skin. Price could feel the water dripping down his back, making it hard to dissociate. Not that he could anyways. The rope was digging into his skin, and the wound in his thigh would only render him useless if he decided to run.
The room was spinning from the blood loss, and he had nothing within reach to defend himself. And he couldn't see much without the lights, just vague shapes and figures, nothing to access the danger levels by.
They stripped him down hours ago, leaving only underwear to cover his bits. He had watched as the men forced Simon on the ground, tearing the mask off of him, if just for the ability to humiliate the great 'Ghost' by stripping down the only thing that protected him and his identity.
He didn't know where Gaz was, nor Soap or Simon. The last he heard of them were horrified screams from Simon after a bang.
He desperately hopes none of his team is dead.
The gods above him seem to disagree with him.
A few more hours of waiting, and a click. The room instantly filling with light. It blinded him, if anything. Though seeing the room he was in filled with medical supplies did nothing to calm his nerves. A voice flooded the intercom above him as a face too familiar was pushed into the room across from him.
"Mr Price, I must admit. Your team was... Most definitely trained, no? Like dogs on a leash."
Oh.
Oh.
His sweet beautiful Nik. Reduced to something sub human from torture. How did he end up looking like that?
He wants to reach out across the room, to hold the ruined body of his loved one close.
He could tell Nik was still alive, if the way he was still shouting slurs to the men was anything to go by.
But he looks so, so much worse. His hair was shaved off, a large ugly stamp on his head. Labeling him with a number rather than his name. Price noted that Nik too, was naked, though any relief from shared shame was replaced by the horror from the marks decorating Nik's body.
His body, covered in lashes and blisters. His fingernails were bloodied and worn out. Price could see Nik stumbling in the room, the wound on his knees made Price gagged.
Price wasn't too sure how Nik had survived all that and was still faring, still cursing and spitting on one of his captors foot as he watched across from him.
He watched as the men buckled Nik down, strapping him into a chair similar to his as they both stared at each other's.
And suddenly, any rage or disgust in Nik's eyes softened into something human, something akin to adoration, to love.
Although love might have just cost Nik his whole bloody world.
Because the men above saw this, took notice of this, saw how Nik calmed down upon seeing Price (mostly) unharmed.
It's been several hours, or days. Price really couldn't tell, fading in and out of consciousness before buckets of icy cold water were tossed on him.
He's been dehumanised, degraded, destroyed over and over again, before molded back into something vaguely human shaped by the hands of his captors.
He couldn't tell what was happening, not the time, not the place, not the faces in front of him.
All he really could make out was Nik's constant look of horror whenever he looked over to him, his face twisted into something akin to agony.
Price can't tell how he felt.
He felt numb, if anything.
The constant pain from being dehumanised was almost impossible to handle.
He knew he was covered in his own vomit, or blood. Or something that was human in nature. Perhaps shit. Perhaps pee. He can't tell.
He knew he stink, and that was it.
He knew the times when the men would leave him alone, giving him some moment to regain himself before dumping hot water on his back, worsening the wounds already there.
Price couldn't tell what the men wanted. Because they seemed to be torturing him for the fun of it. For the ability to see him crumble down like ash in their hands.
Despair was the only thing he could make out, the feeling of losing himself amidst the pain and tears. The feeling of hopelessness as he finally tore into the rotten raw meat in front of him.
He'd shared rooms with rats, with cockroaches, with bugs that nip at him any chance they got.
And what's worse, at some point, he stopped taking notice of Nik across from him.
Nik could only watch as he sees Price gets tortured in ways he had only dreamt of. A lash there, a little waterboarding there, a bit of isolation, and a little testing of drugs, along with the rodents in his room.
He watches as Price stares at him, helplessly as the bastards pump him full of something, and watches as Price wakes up, crying and sobbing before suddenly laughing manically, banging himself on the shit stained walls.
Nik watches as Price was made to eat something flesh like, raw meat. Before being told it was a rat from the sewers.
Nik who could only watch as his love turned into something...disturbing, something inhuman, something that's more animal than man at this point.
Nik who had to watch on, as Price loses himself.
Rage and fury gave way to desperate screams for them to stop, to do whatever they wanted to him instead.
However, the gods above are nothing but cruel and vile creatures, creatures who must have created the human race just to laugh at them, given them emotions and hopes and dreams just for shits and giggles.
Because Price hadn't moved for over a day since the last time they forced moldy bread down his throat.
Mhm, so when I tell my lawyer about this little post, what will your defense be?
The idea of Price going from fine in the morning, nothing wrong, perfect day, to dead by the evening from something no one could prevent is so gut wrenchingly horrific, it’s one of my favourite ideas to do with NikPrice.
The confusion Nik would be left in, the whirlwind he would go through. The funeral, the planning of said funeral. Having the team find out, Laswell too. His family, if he even had any. Everything descending into chaos within Nik, the questions that need answering, that he will never receive.
Those blue eyes closing for the final time in front of him fearful and guilt-filled, it’s a memory forever burned into his mind, the paleness of them, forever haunting him.
No because like imagine Nik and Price just went out the day prior.
Everything was amazing, with no signs of what was to come. Lovers falling into bed together, hands familiarising themselves with sun kissed skin.
Then the next morning, John wakes up throwing up blood. Too much blood. It paints the sheets red, staining the mattress below as Nik panics. A peaceful morning, turned into chaos as John falls over from his feet, unresponsive as Nik shakes him. He didn't wake up when the ambulance came, didn't wake up as Nik sees him wheeled into the emergency room.
Hours later, and Nik stands there in the lobby, desperately hoping for whatever it was to pass, for the doctors to come out and declare that it was just a wound that John could get over. (He would be fine, right? I mean, after everything he's been through, the fact that he's a captain in the SAS accounts for something, right? Nik assures himself, calming the ringing in his ears)
Everything seems too loud, the clocks, the chattering, it buzzed like wordless drilling into his ears. He hears people around him, sobbing, laughing, he wants nothing more than for them to shut up. The doctors are chattering now, something about losing too much blood. He stands there, helpless as he sees people rushing in and out. Nik wants to go home, to lay down on silk sheets with John in his arms. He wants John to be safe, he wants to cry, and he wants to yell. He wants a lot of things right now.
But maybe God is nothing but an unfeeling mass, capable enough to give humans hopes and dreams before crushing them down with malevolence in his fist. As the ringing in his ears comes to a stop, he could focus on the two way mirror in front of him. It has been an hour? Two? The clock was still faintly ticking in the background, though he could only focus on John in front of him. Broken, helpless, hooked up to far too many machines. John seems...wrong... Too pale. Too green, too... Everything. He didn't come back right, what went wrong?
He stood there, hands trying to reach into the room, to hold John against him, to ensure himself that he'll recover. The words of the doctors slips into his mind as mindless chatter. His brain barely processing the few details it could make out of.
Total organ failure. Spurred on by his drinking and smoking habits. Hereditary. Barely an hour to live.
No, no, this can't be right. John was healthy just days ago. He should be fine, should have been fine. Why is he dying? Why is he laying there on the bed, rotting in front of his eyes??
It took him an hour to process the news, and an hour for the machines to fall into a synchronized rhythm, a flat tone as doctors whizzed past him into the room, trying to fight the grim reaper for whatever time he had left.
When he comes to, he was sitting in John's apartment. Three things came to mind as he slowly sits up:
1) John was gone
2) His throat was dry
3) John was fucking gone. Not away on a mission, or somewhere in a pub. But gone. Gone forever, to be buried 6 feet underneath the dirt, to be remembered for however long people around him lived until he became nothing but another headstone in the cementary. His body rotting somewhere.
He didn't leave the apartment for days afterwards, his voice barely keeping it together as he breaks the news to people John was close to, Laswell, the 141, Farah, some relatives, his old captain... The phonecalls seems endless, the sounds of people crying over the phone and condolences merges into one entity in his mind, shoving themselves down his throat until he couldn't breathe.
The pain still vast, endless. With so many things to do on the way, funerals to be planned, people to meet. It had barely been a week and he's already tired. Like a child left without any answers, it hurts in parts so deep in him, impossible to reach, impossible to carve out.
John's pillow was still sitting there, stained with brown crusted up blood. The bedsheets that would never be warmed again sits haphazardly on the floor. He feels cold, empty in parts of his heart that he doesn't want to move. His limbs feels numb, and everything else seems so boring now that John wants beside him.
He misses the mornings with John, misses the smell of his cologne when it was still clung onto his pillows. He misses everything about John's from his scarred skin to the tattoos that decorated his body.
Nik doesn't stay in John's apartment now, with too much memories there waiting for him. The pain of a love lost, the pain of memories not yet made too much for him to bear. The pain that there was nothing else to remember John by now, nothing but the tattoo on his wrist and the home he had abandoned.
Months past, and Nik grows a little older. He refuses to think about how John would have gone grey now, how he would have pinched Nik for teasing him.
No, instead he reverts back into his old ways.
Nights spent in hotels with another person next to him, desperately trying to fill the void that John had left, clinging onto whatever remains of John in this world.
He gives up after one night, stands at the edge of a rooftop. The cars below him whizzed by, he could feel the wind on his face from up here. Blue eyes still haunting him from some crevices of his mind. He doesn't intend to jump, to just watch the skies above. Familiar cologne wraps around his body like a snake, the only remnants of John he could carry around with him.
The night sky seemed so inviting when he falls.
Personally, I'm like, pretty sure that Nikolai loves like a worshipper. To him, John is an ethereal being, someone that is above all laws of beauty. John is the closest thing Nik could devote to. Praises come to him naturally when they are about John, and he could map out John's body in his sleep.
He likes taking care of John, to know that his devotion is happy and well because of him personally. Nik likes grooming John in the bathroom, to have the Brit relax into his arms as he slowly trim his mutton chops (at least that's what I think it's called). He could only watch in silent adoration as John relaxes into the semi normal routine they have, his presence in Nik's kitchen seeming natural. Nik could barely fathom how he had gone so on without John next to him, for such times seem impossible now.
His devotion for John runs deeper than the ocean, and it seems like there is a never ending amount of things Nik could list off about John.
Laswell knows it, the rest of the team knows it, and it seems like only Price is the one oblivious to how much the other adores him. (He interacted with Alejandro for barely less than a day once, and even he knows how devoted Nik is to John). Something about waiting for so long for the man had translated into some form of utter adoration and devotion for him.
John, on the other hand, loves Nik to the point of creation and healing. I dunno how to put this into words, but I'm sure he cut down HEAVILY on drinking and smoking after knowing Nik. He loves the man, so much so that he wants to become a better person for Nik. To grow old and watch your partner grow old next to you seemed like some impossible dream almost a decade ago. And now he sits on the toilet as Nik helps him shave, the russian's movements almost graceful.
John has no doubts that Nik could be with anyone else in the world, with men better than him. But Nik is laying in John's bed, head tucked under John's chin and John finds himself hardly caring. Nik was with him, and that was more than enough.
He also writes little poems for Nik occasionally, words flowing onto the paper freely before he seals it with a kiss. He knows Nik has them hidden somewhere, the russian having said something about the letters being 'too precious for mortal's mind'. He likes tinkering with things, learning extremely useless and niche hobbies so that when winter rolls in, Price could make a sweater for Nik.