#caprimonth

After 30 minutes of shooting; and after most of the cartel members were face-down and dead in the hangar’s dust; and after Damen had radioed Comms in for extraction—

—someone shoots, and the bullet finds Auguste.

Auguste hears the shot fire from behind him, blinks, and feels in the next moment a pain in his abdomen so white that it forces him to his knees. He drops his gun to the floor, gasping for air.

As though in slow motion, he sees Damen react. Damen pivots around as though on a string and fires one, two, three furious shots in the direction of whoever hit him from behind. With his ears still ringing from the gunfire, Auguste hears the dying breaths of a man hitting the ground.

Then, Damen comes to Auguste’s side. He hoists him up and takes him to cover, settling him down behind a large sheet of scrap metal. It’s not much of a shield, but the hangar is mostly empty space. They don’t have better options. Damen kneels next to him, props him up, takes off his own jacket and places it behind Auguste’s back for support. It’s reckless, exposing his arms like that, and Damen has a lot of goddamn arm, but Auguste knows better than to argue.

He also knows that if anyone can keep him alive, it’s Damen. In the first moment, Damen applies pressure to his wound and forges a makeshift bandage for him. In the next, he’s radioing in the shots to Comms. In the next, he checks Auguste’s pulse, tests his alertness, checks for nausea, and repeats everything back to central control.

Damen says: It’s bad. The bullet made a clean exit through the vest. He’s losing blood. Damen says: hurry. He promises to do several terrible things to a lot of good people if Auguste dies waiting for extraction.

It doesn’t feel real, somehow. Auguste has one hand over the wound, his fingers slick with his own blood, and he can feel his temperature spike. But still—it doesn’t feel real.

They’re in the middle of the Nevada desert.  The hangar is cavernous and brimming with old planes, their frames and spare parts arranged in a loose ring around the centre of the space. In its very centre are sixteen tables, stacked so high with cocaine that the scoop will be news for weeks. It’s the biggest bust the Bureau’s made in a long time: a medal-awarding, promotion-getting, lifetime-anecdote kind of bust.

The hangar’s filthy, and the sunshine filtering through the ashen windows is grim. Auguste doesn’t want to die here, but he thinks he might.

He says it out loud for the first time. “I think I’m going to die.”

Damen’s hands, which are occupied rolling out another length of bandage, freeze in the middle of the act. His fury is sudden, and molten.

“No speaking.” He says, dangerously quiet. “And I won’t let you die.”

“That’s not how it works.” Auguste says. And then—finally—he has a thought that makes it real, that takes his fear and breathes life into it. He says: “Listen. Tell Laurent I’m proud of him.”

“Extraction arrives in two.” Damen says. A crackle of static comes through and Damen presses a hand to his ear, focusing intently on whatever Comms is telling him. He looks back up at Auguste, still raging quietly. “And I’m not telling Laurent anything. You can survive and tell him yourself.”

The thing is: Auguste already has. The last thing he does before he goes dark for each mission is to call his brother and say goodbye, and I love you, and I’m proud of you.

Laurent hates it. He hates every single ceremonious phone call, every single recitation of Auguste’s care—not because of what’s said, but just in case it is the last time. He weathers it anyway, for Auguste’s sake.

“If I don’t,” Auguste says, quietly, and stops. He shifts on the ground and the pain comes at him like a knifepoint. He winces through it. “I need you to take care of him for me.”

Damen doesn’t respond. Auguste watches as something like conflict plays out across his features. He looks down at the ground for a few moments, and exhales severely.

Or maybe Auguste is just imagining it. Maybe he’s just lost that much blood.

Damen doesn’t speak for a long while, vacillating towards and away from resolve. Eventually, he makes up his mind, expression setting in a loaded frown.

“God—shit. “ He says. “Shit. Okay.”

“—Damen?”

“Listen—I’m going to tell you something.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. And he’s going to kill me for doing it, because you’re not supposed to know yet.” He says roughly, more to himself than anything. “Laurent and I are—we’re together.”

Auguste blanks, and for once that afternoon, the whiteness has nothing to do with a bullet.

“You’re—together.”

“Together.” Damen confirms, grimly. “I’m banging your brother. I’m going to ask him to marry me this summer, and you need to be alive to walk him down the aisle.”

Before Auguste can respond—before Damen’s words have even sunk in, really—another round of artillery flies over them. Auguste feels the bullets shower into the metal behind him, feels them reverberate against his back, feels every one as though it had lodged directly in his spine.

Damen moves, fury over sense. He stands up—exposed, and entirely without cover, and tactically ruinous—and unleashes return fire. He fires four shots, and Auguste hears four cries of pain, and then, the surgical drop of four dead bodies.

Damen crouches down again and reloads his gun, breathing heavily. His brow is darkened with sweat, hair coming loose out of the tight bun in which he keeps it. Damen’s bloody-minded intensity in the field strikes a sharp chord against the easy charm he wears everywhere else. Auguste wonders which side of him had caught Laurent’s eye.

Or perhaps, he thinks gamely, it was both. Along with their packaging.

“You’re — you mean —“

“I do mean.” Damen confirms grimly. “And if you die, he kills me, and then he’ll have no-one.”

Auguste searches himself, and finds a reservoir of energy that he probably can’t afford to spend.

“And you tell me all this now?”

“He’s my boss. And your boss.” Damen says, grimacing as he clicks his weapon back into place. “It’s not exactly professional.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I’m asking for your blessing, Aug."

“There’s a bullet,” Auguste exclaims, “in my side.”

“The bullet made a clean exit.” Damen says, and then, almost more to himself: “He and I had a plan for telling you, you know. We talked about it. We had it all worked out. We were going to do it at my house, over brunch, and he was going to do all the talking.”

From a distance, they hear the sound of a helicopter coming into range. Both of them know better than to exhale. Until they sight the damn thing, it could well be coming for the other side.

But it’s been a long day. Auguste rests his head against the rusted metal. He’s tired, and his body’s hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff. He makes the mistake of closing his eyes, and once he does, he feels the rest of his muscles irresistibly give way, easing up and falling, one after the other like dominoes.

“You should have let him tell me,” Auguste says, listlessly. “He talks better than you do.”

“He does everything better than me. Why do you think I want him?”

Auguste thinks to himself, good answer. Using the last dregs of his energy, he manages a smile.

May 23: Identity

24: “Hello, lover.”

25: Point of view

26: Loyalty

27: Forgiveness

28: Power

29: Women

30: "A kingdom, or this."

31: Youth (without youth)

June 1: Parallels

2: Unity

3: Deceit

4: “I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.”

5: Complex

6: Vulnerable/Strong

7: Journey

8: “I know who you are, Damianos."

9: Loss

10: World - politics, culture, history, language, etc

11: Fall/Rise

12: Love

13: Fashion

14: Strategy

15: Truth

16: Equal

17: Touch

18: War

19: "I miss you. I miss our conversations"

20: Suffering/Recovery

21: Personal choice

So when Lazar walks into The Sex Den (Jord is the only one who politely calls it "Damianos' house"), he does not expect to be killed, which is what almost happens. One minute he's sending a message to Orlant, and the next moment there's a kitchen knife flying right past his head.

"Whoa, whoa," he says and drops the bag he's been carrying. The bag is an excellent distraction to earn him some needed seconds that he uses to get a gun. Then a porcelain dish hits him right in the chest and shatters into pieces on the ground. Lazar stares at it, completely frozen in shock because who the fuck throws plates at someone who is armed with a gun? And then Laurent laughs in the background as a cup of coffee follows, and Lazar barely avoids getting scalded.

"What the fucking-" he starts at the same time that Damianos appears behind him and begins to shout in Akielon frantically. He steps in front of Lazar as a human shield since apparently, more kitchenware is about to be thrown at Lazar.

"I am so sorry," Damianos says in Veretian, turning around, looking like a kicked puppy, a skill that, Lazar thinks, is what got him into Laurent's pants in the first place. He's blocking the view, so Lazar still has no idea what's happening. "Pallas was not informed you are coming. He didn't know you're a bodyguard."

"Who is Pallas?" Lazar asks.

"Laurent, please," Damianos says because Laurent's laughter is getting uncontrollable at the kitchen table, "he could have died."

"Makedon is fired," Laurent honest to god giggles (and Orlant is right, sex really has done wonders for Laurent). "Pallas is my new favorite."

"But who is Pallas?" Lazar asks again because nobody wants to explain why there is a puddle of hot coffee at his feet.

"Oh," Damen says and steps back, waves at a man standing opposite to Laurent, with a toaster in his hands. "That's Pallas; he works in my security team."

Lazar is about to comment on how Damianos should be worried about his security if he hires people who use toasters as weapons but then Pallas smiles sheepishly and Lazar freezes.