Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

    The first time Murray spaced out and came home with groceries, he didn’t think anything of it. He’d had a lot on his mind, new job, leads to hunt down, he’d gone out for groceries and he’d come home with them, and even if he didn’t remember picking them out, they were… basic. Bread, pasta, mushrooms, sour cream, a tomato, a bag of oranges… most of what he comes home with is what was on his list.

    And… after that, it’s the same– he more or less buys what he went out for. Came home with the wrong rye bread a couple of times, but it’s not like he came home with sourdough. Spaced out and bought one thing or another that he hadn’t planned for.

    The only time he realizes he’s buying groceries for someone else, it’s because he blinks and finds himself looking down at a package of frozen pork sausage. Which, his mother would have something to say about that, but he imagines she might also have something to say about his soulmate being a man, and he knows if there’s someone out there for him… well, that’s the option.

    He hadn’t thought he had a soulmate. He didn’t spend his teen years squirreling away little things, the way some of his peers had, never had that shoebox full of spare pencils and safety pins. And if you have one, you tend to find out in high school, if not high school, then college. 

    Either his soulmate mostly needs all the same shit Murray’s always needed, or… he’s a late bloomer, he guesses. He puts the sausage back, that’s not going to keep.

    And fine, his soulmate’s not kosher. Murray is… not strict about it, a thing his mother also does not need to know. College was a time for experimenting– with marijuana, sex with beautiful boys, and the occasional cheeseburger. 

    He always vaguely regretted them, the not-quite-melted nuclear orange cheese. Always assumed that there were cheeseburgers that cost more than twenty-one cents a pop which would not leave one feeling sorry they ate one, but… college. You couldn’t take a beautiful boy on a real date to a real restaurant with real cheese, and spending more than a quarter a burger cut into your budget for getting high, and getting high increased your desire for fast food you would inevitably regret consuming, but also your chances of scoring with that long-haired boy from your political science course…

    Granted, he’d also worked hard in college, but he mostly thinks back fondly on the experimenting. 

    Anyway, not judging his soulmate, but he’s also not buying the sausage, and that gets him thinking, really thinking. Really trying to take stock of things he buys. A package of pencils that he doesn’t remember buying but hadn’t thought twice about, he puts into a box, just because… because people keep boxes, and he never thought he was going to have that. He’s never… 

    He had liked to believe that there was as great a percentage of same-sex soulmates as there were opposite-sex soulmates. Not everyone has one, and he understands why some might be reluctant to talk about it… He’s even suspected as much, suspected he knew a pair once. But that it’s him, now…

    Most of what he gets is groceries, there’s not much that goes into the box over the years. A bookmark, once, a box of chalk… two pairs of socks, a stack of yellow legal pads, the kind Murray never uses. A razor. He tries to pay attention to the groceries– when he separates out the things he’s sure aren’t his, it’s not so worrying, his soulmate isn’t out there needing a week’s worth of food he doesn’t have. He simply– consistently– doesn’t have one or two things. A missing ingredient from a specific recipe, an item that someone else must have gotten the last of. He could live in a small town, where some things are more reliably stocked than others, or he could simply be forgetful. Murray wonders what he’s like, sometimes. Not a man who needs for very much. 

    But then, Murray never thinks of himself as a man who needs for very much. He wonders what kinds of things his soulmate could possibly have squirreled away– little spiral-bound notepads he won’t use? A toothbrush, from the time Murray had dropped his and had to wait and replace it the following afternoon? Ink ribbons? Lots and lots of coffee– or vodka?

    Maybe what they need the most isn’t something you can keep in a box. Time. Freedom. The ability to relax, or to focus. An introduction to the right person, a good word with the boss. A clean kitchen floor, a night out, a lead. 

    Maybe he doesn’t know what he needs.

    Mostly, though, Murray thinks there’s a difference, between what you need, what you could use, and what you might like. And some people categorize those three things differently.

    Murray has a bag that holds everything he needs. Everything that isn’t in his wallet or on his keychain, everything he hands down, without a doubt needs, is in that bag. If the building caught fire, if he made an enemy with enough sway that he needed to skip town, if…

    If, he would pick up his bag and he would go. And he’d have everything he needs. 

    He takes a pencil from the box of pencils in his soulmate’s box, and one of the legal pads, and he slips those down into his go bag. A pair of the socks. In a real, dire emergency, he could use those things himself, but… if he were to lose everything else, he would still have something.

    When he does move, he doesn’t have to leave anything behind– discovers, in fact, just how much he’s accumulated. Books, files, copies of things he’s written, which he perhaps ought to throw out. His box accumulates less.

    The years go by, he never meets the soulmate that’s out there, but he stops looking for love– or sex– elsewhere. In the end, he’s grateful that there’s someone out there stopping him.

    He loses his job, he moves again, to a converted warehouse in Sesser where the cost of living is a lot lower than in the city, where he can take a stab at a second career, where he can keep the world out and lick his wounds. 

    He keeps a lot of things he knows he’ll never need again. The bare handful of things he hopes that someone, somewhere, someday might.

    More socks go in the box. A scarf, hat, and mittens he knows he didn’t buy for himself. He wonders if there’s a man out there about to be unprepared for Chicago winters. If he’s only just missed him. A pack of three disposable lighters– one goes into the go bag, the others into the box.

    He still doesn’t go home with anyone, but once in a while he goes back just to find a club. To talk to whoever is still there. To say he’s looking for a soulmate with very simple needs. He doesn’t meet anyone he thinks is the one, but he likes being there. He likes being close to his people, when things are at their grimmest, it feels right. 

    He loses friends– the former colleagues who simply think he’s lost it are the easiest to bear. And maybe he does lose it, a little, because the world is what it is, and he sees so much of it.

    A year after the scarf, he buys a Russian-English dictionary, and allows himself a brief crisis over what this means.

    He brushes up on his grandmother’s native tongue and wonders, and aches.

    Alexei knows he has a soulmate, early enough on– he assumes that it kicked in at the age everyone’s does, though it took him a while to notice. With all his focus on his studies, it’s easy to ignore the little things, he's not sure what he might have collected before university and used or discarded without question, but now... A notepad he hadn’t recalled buying, which isn’t the right size, goes into a desk drawer, and he thinks nothing of it until one day he opens a drawer and sees it there, along with a teaspoon– the origins of which are shrouded in mystery– and a couple of shirt buttons, a length of thread, a package of batteries that don’t fit anything he thinks he owns… things someone else has needed.

    The drawer moves to a shoebox when he leaves university– there’s a little more, but not much. Sometimes he feels faint and fuzzy, and it comes to nothing. Whatever his soulmate really needs, he thinks he has little access to, but he picks up what he can. A handkerchief one winter, a glasses repair kit that spring. A shirt bought secondhand, though he has no idea where he’d bought it, and he wonders if the monogram on the pocket is the same or if it’s only the shirt itself. That, he throws into the back of his own closet.

    A soldier, perhaps, on an army base. Someone whose needs are well-met when it comes to the material. He never finds himself with clothing, with much of anything. He tries to picture himself loving a military man, and can’t, but then… it was a mistake, to give him a soulmate, when he can never speak of it, never look for him. If he found him, he would have to pretend… It was a mistake to begin keeping things, when he knew before that, that he wasn’t cut out to be loved. 

    When he is offered a job working for the government, he takes it, and tells himself it isn’t in hopes of finding him.

    He buys a dozen lilies in 1981, which is bad enough. 

    In ‘82, he buys them again. 

    He wakes up nearly twenty times between ‘82 and ‘83 with a bouquet in his hand. He wonders what kind of operation his soulmate has been sent on. If he was close to everyone who died, if he is even now in Afghanistan. The deaths are staggered, not an explosion taking out twenty men at once, and every time it happens he feels ill, but as long as he is buying the flowers, his soulmate is still alive, funeral bouquets are for the mourners, not the dead.

    He leaves them at a monument, he wouldn’t know where else to send them.

    Earplugs go in, the last thing he buys before they send him to a base he can’t speak a word about. It’s up north. They’re near the ocean, he thinks, but he doesn’t know, he exists in isolation. 

    He downsizes to a small leather case, more compact and less fragile than the shoebox had been. Like a jewelry box, which he supposes helps to give the right impression. Even if none of the things inside are particularly feminine, he hopes the presentation might make some difference, if someone ever came across it. He doesn’t bother to pack the batteries, or the toothbrush he’d picked up at some point, but he keeps the glasses repair kit there, the handkerchief, the buttons and thread, the earplugs. Laid diagonally, the teaspoon just fits. The fat little notebook does not, but he lays it on top. The shirt stays behind, where he hopes no one ever finds it. He thinks sometimes he ought to have torn just the pocket off, as if the embroidery there would make any real difference.

    And… he focuses on his work again, and doesn’t look into the little case, doesn’t have time. Doesn’t have anything he can add to it, certainly. Like he imagines is the case for his soulmate, his basic needs are met. And, he has no real opportunity to find anything which would meet someone else’s. 

    They would have very little to give each other if they met. 

    He’s not sure if he finds that funny, or sad.

    Murray goes to deliver the news to the Hollands in person. It might not be the truth, but it is the closest they will ever get, and they deserve to hear it… to hear it face to face, and not over the phone. They’re packing up the house, and he plans on camping out in a cheap motel to see the government goons clear out, as long as he’s here, but first he goes to them.

    They thank him, which feels undeserved. He doesn’t know what kind of response wouldn’t feel that way, though, in gratitude or in anger. He has the skills for the line of work he’s found himself in, but he doesn’t know if he has the constitution for the client-facing side. It’s rarely anything like this case, but it’s always sad. Even the seedy cases are just sad, in the end. 

    Still, he’s got to do something. The only thing he’s ever been suited for was investigative journalism, and with the ‘journalism’ part cut from the equation, here he is. Investigating. 

    He’d upped his already… some might say excessive security, when they’d sent the tapes out. Maybe staying to watch them pick up and pack out is insane. He’s taunting them, at this point, but they don’t… it’s not like they know him. By the time they do enough digging to figure out who he is, he’ll be gone, back home to his warehouse, which hardly looks like a home, and where he is free to look like a crazy person.

    He knows how it looks. Even friends– people who he more or less considered friends– think he’s lost it, and it’s hard to bristle at being lumped in with conspiracy theorists when what you’re seeing hints at… well, if the shoe fits. It’s not just one thing, or pieces of just one thing, and there’s no one bad guy. He’s not the kind of crazy drawing lines where they don’t exist. He’s just finding things, he’s good at finding things. It’s not always the things he’s looking for.

    On the way home from Hawkins, he finds himself in the parking lot of some place called The War Zone. 

    He doesn’t look in the bag.

    He does not look in the bag.

    He does not look in the bag.

    At home, he hangs up the bulletproof vest in the guest closet and does not cry. 

    The Russians buy up land in Hawkins, and whatever is happening will only happen faster with the lab gone, and he wonders, and he pours himself a drink, and he goes to bed.

    His new position is something of a gilded cage. As long as he never thinks about leaving, Alexei is afforded a certain level of privilege. There is scrutiny, of course– he never speaks or even looks at the soldiers assigned to the Hawkins base. He keeps himself largely to himself and he does what he’s told and he does little else. 

    But, because of that, he’s left alone to do his work. And there is a lot he thinks someone else might be questioned for. Walks when he can’t sleep or he can’t focus– he has unrestricted access to most of the base, and if he’s somewhere outside his routine positions at odd hours, it’s a harmless enough quirk, as long as he never goes near the elevator without specific orders, or an escort. He’s expected to do his own scrutinizing, after all, expected to want to keep an eye on a lot of moving parts. There are places where he might not have the authority to give the orders, but he has the authority to look in, to ask someone on a similar level to his own how things progress on their end. 

    It’s… not the life he might want, but it’s a better life than he might have had. 

    There’s an emptiness, always, a yearning, and he pushes it down and he ignores it. 

    The bulletproof vest isn’t the end of the world– proximity, he guesses, rather than immediacy. Whatever fate has in store, he’s been spurred into action because he could be, not because his soulmate needed that bulletproof vest tomorrow. 

    But, Murray has no idea when he will need it, where he is now and when their paths might cross, where he needs to be to make sure it happens well before the bullets start flying.

    He doesn’t know a lot of other things that he doesn’t let himself ask.

    The important thing is, it didn’t happen then, because Murray’s been steadily building up a wardrobe. It’s gone way past a pair of socks here and a scarf there, the guest room closet has jeans, slacks, a track suit, button-down shirts– with long and short sleeves. There are tee shirts and underwear and more socks still in the dresser now, it’s well beyond a box. It’s…

    It means he’s alive. And Murray knows what size he wears.

    It means wherever he is, if he gets through whatever is happening to him now, he’s about to lose everything.

    When routine emergency repairs from the maintenance crew fail to keep the power system functioning, someone finds him, frantically scribbling notes and pacing inside the south wing armory. With the Key functioning– functioning, provided the power stays stable– Alexei’s schedule is different. Less frantic, less all-hands-on-deck, but tenser. More aware that he’s become… a different kind of expendable. But, if he can fix the problems maintenance has not been able to, that’s a reason to keep him on, and to keep affording him the same level of indifference, which is as close to freedom as he could ask.

    Mikhail Vinogradov lets him onto the elevator, with a smile he’s careful not to think about. 

    Alexei learned his name by mistake– first and last, he has carefully avoided more than that. He doesn’t need to know more than that, because he rarely sees the guard, because he never approaches the elevator, so he never needs to address him at all, really. He doesn’t need to know more than that, because it’s Mikhail Vinogradov’s initials embroidered onto the pocket of a shirt hiding in the box in Alexei’s parents’ attic. 

    He doesn’t remember the shirt being Vinogradov’s size, but he bought it some time ago. These things sometimes change. Vinogradov is a big man. Alexei does not let himself look to see if he is handsome. 

    He smiles readily when one of the other guards jokes with him in passing, though, and it makes a year of weariness drop from his shoulders in an instant. And Alexei likes that he’s big, though he wouldn’t say he has a particular type in that regard– why bother wanting any particular kind of man, when you can never have any of them? He would look better if he were allowed to grow a beard, he thinks– it would suit him, bear of a man that he is. A friendly, shaved bear. 

    But even that is more thought than he needs to be giving him, or anyone else. Is perhaps too much thought, to what he can never have.

Chapter Text

    People don’t show up at his door– well, pretty much ever. He hasn’t had what he’d dub a visitor since moving. When people want to talk to him for work, he tends to set up meetings in coffee shops or diners, neutral ground. When Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers came to him, it was…

    Well, it wasn’t a social call.

    It was nice. If he’s honest, the idea of company isn’t abhorrent. He likes it, even– within reason. It’s just a long drive to ask any of his remaining Chicago friends to make, to see him and absolutely nothing else for miles– and that was before he made an enemy of the government. Right now, it’s better for them if they don’t know him, if they don’t know where he is. No one knows where he is– well, a very short list of people. 

    Jim Hopper is on that list. He’s pretty sure he recognizes him on stature alone– the big lunk standing on his doorstep isn’t either of the teens, must be the man who sent them. 

    “Look at the camera.” He instructs. “The camera, above you to the right.”

    Jim stops mistaking the damn buzzer for a camera, at least, he and the woman he’s with both turn, and…

    Oh.

    Okay, and he has a man in handcuffs. 

    Look, we’ve all been there, sure. But when Murray puts a man in handcuffs, that man is there voluntarily, and completely harmless, and when Jim puts a man in handcuffs, he’s at least suspected of a crime and whether or not he ever did anything wrong, how he proceeds once arrested may be… unpredictable. 

    So Murray’s not thrilled to see a man Jim has put in handcuffs. On his doorstep. Jim manhandles him into looking up.

    “Identify yourselves.” Murray prompts, because he knows Jim, but he doesn’t know either of the people he’s brought with him. 

    “Jim Hopper, Joyce Byers, Smirnoff.” Jim sighs, like he’s grudgingly going through this whole song and dance to amuse him. Like there aren’t people who want him silenced.

    “Alexei.” The woman– Joyce Byers… Byers-Byers? If she knows Jim, he assumes some relation– says it like a correction, not an addition.

    “Alexei.” 

    “Surname.” He presses. 

    “I don’t know.”

    “Family name!”

    “Yeah, I know, I told you– open the damn door!” He shouts. 

    Murray leaves his microphone and monitor, grabbing the shotgun on the way to the door. It’s not loaded– has never been loaded– but this handcuffed Alexei-no-last-name person doesn’t need to know that. Jim’s going to have to give him a damn good explanation for whatever this is. And this Alexei is going to give him a last name, even if Jim didn’t get one out of him. 

    “Name.” Murray demands, cocking the shotgun for show and swinging it up to point directly at the man in question. 

    “Get that out of my face, you bald American pig!” He sputters indignantly, in Russian, not remotely cowed. Which is… not what Murray expected. 

    “I may be bald, but you’re the one in handcuffs, Soviet scum.” He says– said Soviet scum reminds him of a wet cat, spitting mad but not especially threatening, at least not with a little distance between them. Cute, even, in a–

    Well, not cute. Obviously he’s not cute, and even if he was, Murray wouldn’t… He notices , when men are attractive– he has a soulmate, he’s not dead . But he doesn’t notice the enemy being attractive. Cute the way a wet cat might be cute, not the way a young man might be. And even that feels… like a betrayal of something, maybe. He’s already made an enemy of the government, and he doesn’t mind being critical of them, by any means, but this is…

    This is having a man in his home, who, no one has explained to him, what exactly is going on here. 

    “Hi, Jim.” He adds, and he lets them follow him in, though he stops Jim’s prisoner before he gets too far.

    He trades the shotgun for the metal detector, so he can scan him, gets the expected beep over the handcuffs– and another little flash of that spitfire defiance.

    “Watch it!” The man snaps, giving a little jerk.

    “Silence, scum.”

    “How long is this gonna take, because I–” Jim starts, and Murray wheels on him.

    “No.”

    “No?”

    “No. No, you do not get to question me. You have dragged an enemy of the state into my home, as carelessly as a child drags in shit on his shoe! I will search him until I am satisfied.”

    The fact that Jim’s lady friend wants his attention might have something to do with the way he caves, but he came to Murray, to Murray’s home, with… with all this, whatever it is, so Murray thinks he’s got the right. 

    Alexei is a little more compliant, when he turns back to him, submits to having the scanner run over him again, until something in his pocket sets it off, and he freezes. Which is, you know, highly suspicious. All the moreso, when he takes a half step back, hands moving to block him when Murray reaches to check.

    “Don’t you touch me.” He hisses, and yeah, they’re really going to need to see what he’s carrying.

    “Or what?” Murray blinks. “Fine– but empty your pockets, slowly.”

    He grabs for something he can use as a tray, to transfer over… whatever it is, watches him like a hawk. It’s an awkward move, to get one hand into his pants pocket while handcuffed, but he manages it. Murray sees the surprise flicker across his face when his hand closes over… well, over something. Sees him let go, hand empty when he withdraws it from his pocket. 

    “I can’t. No.”

    “No?”

    The prisoner squares his shoulders. “No.”

    “And why not?”

    “Unimportant.”

    “I think I’ll decide what’s important.” He shoves the file folder he’s grabbed for a makeshift tray into the man’s chest. “Give it here, please, so I can finish? Or, I can take it.”

    There’s another moment of hesitation, and then he dips back into his pocket, and hesitantly drops a pair of shotgun shells onto the file folder– Murray creases it in his hand before they can roll off onto the floor.

    “And what are you carrying these for?”

    “I don’t know.” He grits the words out, fire in his eyes, a set to his jaw which would… not be unattractive, perhaps, on someone else. Maybe. “And be careful with those!”

    “You don’t know?”

    “I don’t know. They’re not mine.”

    “Sure.” He runs the metal detector back over him, and this time it’s just the slight reaction to the cuffs. “Turn around. Turn around, please.”

    “Well, if you’re going to say ‘please’.” He sneers, but he does turn. Nothing more from the metal detector. 

    Murray puts it away, turning to Jim. “So, what’s all this? Care to explain why you brought a goddamn Russian, Jim? I know I warned you they were in your backyard, but I didn’t mean bring me one.”

    “Ask her–”

    “Yeah, I– I guess, somehow, you’re the closest person who speaks Russian?” She spreads her arm, giving him a look like that’s ludicrous to her. 

    And, honestly, maybe it is. But then, how would Jim know anyone else who spoke Russian? It’s not something the average person would advertise, it’s only by one of those odd coincidences Jim even knows Murray speaks it. Given he didn’t spend his time outside of Hawkins either living in an immigrant-heavy neighborhood or developing deep ties with CIA operatives, who’s he going to go to but Murray? And if they did try to find a translator closer to home, what would be the odds that anyone they found in Hawkins would be involved with… well, whatever. The land grab and whatever it’s a front for, which means they wouldn’t be forthcoming. And could bring a whole world of trouble to everyone’s doorsteps. Is Joyce Byers also a cop, don’t they have resources that aren’t Murray, and Murray’s house, and Murray’s tenuous personal safety and security?

    “And you want me to translate so you can, what, interrogate him? Sorry, do you… is this a work thing? And there was no one you could call on the phone?”

    “No, there’s no one I could call on the phone.” She looks at him like he’s crazy, which, yes, okay, it’s not remotely a new thing that no one’s ever done, but she’s the one who showed up on his doorstep with a strange Russian. “Look, it’s been a really long day, I’ve been shot at by a psychopath and then nearly blown up by this asshole, and I just need you to ask him what he’s doing that’s making my magnets fall off my damn fridge!”

    Well. That is a lot to process. 

    “You’ve been– And you want–” He pauses, and turns back to the Russian. “She says you were shot at, and… almost blown up?”

    “Yes, shot at– this man comes in, waving his gun around, like he thinks he is some kind of cowboy! I have done nothing wrong, I am only where I am supposed to be, when he handcuffs me, so I am sitting there, helpless, when he gets into a firefight. Bullets flying everywhere–”

    “And you… picked up two of them?” He raises an eyebrow, but… the shells from his pocket weren’t spent. So if this Alexei didn’t have a gun when Jim picked him up, why is he carrying ammo for one?

    “No, I don’t… As I said, they are not mine, it’s not– Those are not pertinent. After he gets me shot at and kidnaps me, he blows up his own car, and almost the woman with it, all because he cannot listen, even in English.”

    “... So you do speak English?” He narrows his eyes. God help him, if he has been dragged into some kind of international spy shit pissing contest and the damn Russian spoke English the whole time…

    “A handful of words only.” The man shrugs. “Enough to say ‘stop’ when someone is about to cause an explosion. Are all your friends stupid, or only this one?”

    “Well, she wants to know– hang on… You, sit.” He points to his armchair, motioning Jim and friend to one sofa and taking a seat on the other. “She wants to know what it is you’re doing that’s making the… magnets fall off of her fridge?”

    There’s a look of understanding that flashes across his face, which says that isn’t a completely insane question. But rather than answer the question, he settles back into his seat, expression going impassive.

    “I should tell you this… why?”

    “Telling this… would make the lady happy?”

    “I do not need to make the lady happy.”

    Murray pushes his glasses up with a sigh, palm sliding down his face. “Great. Well, what do you want?”

    “I want to have not been kidnapped and shot at. Oh, you cannot do that for me.” He gives him a challenging look. “Then maybe no one gets what he wants.”

    His stomach growls, which kind of weakens the whole effect, but he doesn’t lose his composure about it.

    “When did they pick you up?” He asks, and when the man just stares at him, he turns to Jim. “When did you pick him up?”

    “I don’t know, last night? I wasn’t exactly looking at my watch, seeing as how a gun-toting psycho showed up to the party.”

    “The way he tells it, there were two gun-toting psychos at the party.” Murray snorts. “How long have you been dragging him around? Has he eaten? Right now, he’s not in the mood to talk, can you think why that might be?”

    Jim rolls his eyes, and Murray turns back to their guest.

    Prisoner.

    “Hey. You. Let’s open the negotiations– hungry?”

    “No.” He lies. “I don’t want anything from you, pig.”

    “Look, neither of us is thrilled with you being here right now. I was having a very ordinary day, where no one dragged dangerous enemy agents into my home–” Here, the dangerous enemy agent in question snorts and rolls his eyes. He’s not even subtle about it. “Yes, fine, and I’m sure you were having a better day before–”

    “Before your stupid friend kidnapped me?”

    “... He’s more of an acquaintance. But like it or not, right now, you are in my house. I am not in the habit of letting people starve in my house.”

    “Really?” He makes a show of looking around, eyes narrowed– makes a whole damn production of it. “This looks like the kind of place people might go to starve to death.”

    “Oh! Well, excuse me, if I wasn’t ready for company–”

    “Okay, so what is he saying?” Jim breaks in.

    “Like I said, he’s not in the mood, and we are negotiating. So a little quiet, please!” Murray snaps at him. “Look, they’re very eager to know about the magnets, or whatever. So if you don’t want anything from me… what can I send my stupid friend out to get for you?”

    That gets a smile, though it’s quickly smothered. Gone, before Murray could even think about having an opinion on whether it might be a nice smile. Which, of course, he wouldn’t. 

    “He has to go and get it? Whatever I ask for?”

    “If you plan on talking, then yes.”

    “I… could eat.” He says, which is an obvious understatement, but Murray can allow him that. There’s something hesitant, belying the whole image he might want to project. “Burger King.”

    “... Yes, okay. We can do that.”

    “Two hamburgers.” He adds, before Murray can turn to relay where they are in negotiations to Jim. “I have had a very long day. I walked for miles and I was almost murdered and I was kidnapped, and now they want to question me, I think it is more than fair.”

    “More than fair.” Murray agrees. “Two hamburgers– fries, soft drink?”

    He’s not sure why he’s offering more. Just a whim. And they might as well butter him up, since clearly Jim’s growly act isn’t doing it.

    “Yes. When I found for us the store, the… ah, the sign is… a seven and eleven?”

    “Right. Wait, when you… found them a Seven-Eleven, earlier?”

    “After walking half the morning through the forest, I am the one who found the store, with the drinks and the telephone and where he had a civilian give him the car.” Alexei nods, and that leaves Murray with brand new questions. Like, did Jim steal somebody’s car? And– well, no, mostly just the car thing. And, does Alexei think Jim is just allowed to steal people’s cars? Or does it just not rate after being kidnapped, does he just think Jim goes around doing whatever the hell he wants because he has had a very skewed experience? “That is where they have the drink I would like. Cherry, it’s frozen. One of those also. And then I will explain about her magnets. Even if I think kidnapping me about it is unnecessary and what crazy people would do. She seems… nicer than him. But I eat first and I answer second.”

    “Did you get all that?” Murray jokes, turning to Jim– who just scowls, clearly Murray’s wit is unappreciated here. “He’ll talk to Joyce, but only after you go to Burger King, get him two whoppers and a large fry, and then a cherry slurpee from the Seven-Eleven.”

    “He wants… two whoppers, and another cherry slurpee?”

    “He hasn’t eaten, Jim.” Murray shrugs. And okay, specifying a large fry is an embellishment on his part, but the guy hasn’t eaten. “Why didn’t you feed him at the Seven-Eleven if you didn’t want to have to go back out and get him something?”

    “Why don’t you feed him? You have food here, right?”

    “Uh, because he’s your prisoner, and he very clearly requested it be Burger King, and a cherry slurpee. So if you want answers, you’ll scoot.” He waves him towards the door.

    “For the record, he should have picked food at the Seven-Eleven, and he didn’t. His choice.” He grumbles, heading for the door. “I didn’t tell him not to eat, I bought him the first damn slurpee, didn’t I? I’m supposed to tell him to pick up a hot dog?”

    “Seven-Eleven hot dogs aren’t food. Just, go. I’ll watch your kidnapping victim. Who is an enemy of the state, by the way, in my house! But no, next time, I’ll just open up my kitchen, I’ll bake the Russians a fucking cake next time, Jim, sounds great.” He turns to Joyce, once Jim has left. “So. You work for the Hawkins police department, or…?”

    “Me? Oh, no– just… It’s a long story.”

Chapter Text

    It has already been the longest, worst day of Alexei’s life, when they get to a building that does not make the top three least welcoming places Alexei has ever been, but does make the top ten.

    He bumps it up a couple of spots in the list when the man who opens the door does so with a shotgun, which he points directly at him, and it really is just the last straw, it really is. Any other day he thinks he might have cowered and simpered and done whatever he was told and promised to be good, oh please, as long as you don’t shoot me, but that version of Alexei is gone. That version of Alexei… he’s not sure where along the road from the first time this day that he had a gun pointed at him to now, but at some point that version of Alexei died and the him that he is now has absolutely no patience for it. The worst the man can do is shoot him. It no longer feels like much of a threat, if he’s honest.

    “Get that out of my face, you bald American pig!” He snaps, though he doesn’t expect to be understood any better now than he has been this whole time. 

    “I may be bald, but you’re the one in handcuffs, Soviet scum.” The man… surprises him. And there is a sudden… something. A weight, an awareness. The handcuffs have been an annoyance for so long but now they’re something more. Of course, from the camera, he would have seen– they would have marked Alexei as a prisoner.

    Hence the gun.

    But, the man doesn’t shoot, anyway. He lets them in, into what kind of place, Alexei doesn’t know– from what he can see from the entry hall, the place doesn’t know what it wants to be, either. A sort of lounge, a whole bank of television monitors… A lot of storage. It has the feeling of some kind of a hidden base, but there’s no one there, no sounds of life in any areas he doesn’t see, just this one man. Does he work here alone? And what kind of work? 

    Well, Alexei can guess. He would be brought here for a reason. This man will interrogate him on the others’ behalf, then. Out in the middle of nowhere, a place most people would drive past without looking… and far from where he was taken, too. That’s convenient.

    So, he probably will die here, but they will try to get whatever they want from him first. And… he will just try to draw out the inevitable.

    He submits to the metal detector, because it seems reasonable enough. It seems cobbled together, but not badly so. It’s only when it gets a little too close that he finds himself snapping at his newest captor again.

    “Watch it!” 

    “Silence, scum.” The man replies, and there is a very inconvenient flutter of a want Alexei doesn’t understand. This isn’t a position he’s ever been in, not exactly– it’s the kind of position he’s never wanted to find himself in, and he’s not looking forward to whatever happens when they finally have everything they want and they don’t need him anymore, but some… some crossed wire in his brain seems to think this is… not the worst position in the world to be in.

    The big idiot cop starts to interrupt him, and the man tears into him, and it’s a little entertaining. Maybe that’s petty, but he fully enjoys watching the man who put him in this position in the first place, who has been endangering his life since the very earliest pre-dawn hours of the morning, being dressed down and sent off to sulk like a recalcitrant child. 

    Because fuck him, that’s why.

    It almost makes him better behaved, until the metal detector beeps at the weight in his pocket. 

    Alexei has been aware of the weight in his pocket. But as he does not remember putting anything in his pocket, he hasn’t examined it. Privacy barely exists, for him– when he noticed it, he wasn’t in a position to check. He knew he wouldn’t be until after making repairs at the Hess property. Depending on what he had in his pocket, he wasn’t sure he could trust the man from maintenance with it. This was his soulmate, and suppose it was revealing? Suppose it said as much about Alexei as it did about the man who would need it? Even if it didn’t scream ‘this is something that another man needs’, suppose it said ‘this was stolen from a supply cupboard’, which is… the only way he could get anything, and suppose that was worth turning him in over, and suppose now that the damn Key is built, they decide they don’t need him to maintain it?

    There’s nothing he could have taken from a supply cupboard that would be worth killing him over, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be punished, if it’s something he can’t excuse having needed to take.

    And then instead of going back to base, instead of having the opportunity to check his pockets in an unoccupied bathroom, put it back where it belongs if it wasn’t something he could tuck into his case, everything happened, Grigori nearly killed him when the Americans didn’t… 

    And now this man, this friend of his captors, who might well end his life anyway, is reaching for his pocket and yet again, there’s a little skip in the record, a little disconnect in Alexei’s sense of self-preservation, or… a place where two needs rub up raw against each other and he chooses the one least likely to keep him safe.

    “Don’t you touch me.” He blocks the other man’s hand with his own, still cuffed together.

    “Or what?” He points out– Alexei can’t really stop him. Still, he settles back. “Fine– but empty your pockets, slowly.”

    He holds out a file folder, for Alexei to set his personal belongings on, but it’s not like he has keys, he has… what does he have?

    Shotgun shells?

    Well, if his soulmate– whether or not it is Mikhail Vinogradov– needs that… surely they’re being provided. He can only assume he picked them up just because there was nothing else he could get for them. Still, it feels a little disconcerting, and a little damning, and he can’t give this man something that’s for his soulmate. Even if Alexei never gets back to his little leather case, even if he never speaks two words to the man it’s all for…

    “I can’t. No.”

    “No?” The man’s eyebrows climb up his forehead.

    “No.” He holds firm. At this point, there may be no difference, he may be doomed either way, but whether he lives an hour or a day, it’s about what he can live with himself on.

    “And why not?”

    Well, he doesn’t know what to say to that, he wouldn’t tell the friendliest stranger in the world about his soulmate. This man shoved a gun in his face.

    “Unimportant.”

    “I think I’ll decide what’s important.” He jabs him in the chest with his little folder, demanding. “Give it here, please, so I can finish? Or, I can take it.”

    And the last think Alexei wants to do is to hand over something he collected for his soulmate, but there’s a sort of a tray… ish. If he’s the one to surrender them, then this man won’t touch them. He’s not quick about it, though. He can at least not be quick to comply.

    “And what are you carrying these for?” The man asks. It’s a good question.

    “I don’t know. And be careful with those!”

    “You don’t know?”

    “I don’t know. They’re not mine.” He says, which is as close to mentioning his soulmate as he thinks he can come. But, the man sets aside the folder and returns to using his metal detector, so it’s enough.

    “Sure. Turn around. Turn around, please.”

    “Well, if you’re going to say ‘please’.” Alexei turns, slowly. Feels how close the thing passes to his back, down the backs of his legs. Feels a prickle of some discomfort at not being able to see. As soon as the man isn’t right at his back, he turns back around, to watch him bicker with the other Americans again. Something about him, but he’s not sure what. 

    “She says you were shot at, and… almost blown up?” He asks, when he does finally turn back to Alexei and switch back to speaking Russian.

    “Yes, shot at– this man comes in, waving his gun around, like he thinks he is some kind of cowboy!” Alexei gestures to him, happy– relatively speaking– to be able to vent some of his frustrations to someone who might not be on his side, but who will at least understand what he’s saying. He hadn’t been able to explain before, that he actually belonged at the farm. “I have done nothing wrong, I am only where I am supposed to be, when he handcuffs me, so I am sitting there, helpless, when he gets into a firefight. Bullets flying everywhere–”

    “And you… picked up two of them?” He jokes.

    “No, I don’t… As I said, they are not mine, it’s not– Those are not pertinent.” Alexei shakes his head, flustered. Thrown off, by that, more than he thinks he would have been if it had just been open hostility. “After he gets me shot at and kidnaps me, he blows up his own car, and almost the woman with it, all because he cannot listen, even in English.”

    “... So you do speak English?” He narrows his eyes. 

    “A handful of words only. Enough to say ‘stop’ when someone is about to cause an explosion. Are all your friends stupid, or only this one?”

    “Well, she wants to know– hang on… You, sit.” He points to the chair in his lounge– and from there, Alexei can see work spaces, though the full nature of the work he does not know, something in intelligence, and also a large kitchen. At least one dormitory space, and he assumes a bathroom, but this man seems to be the only one here. Have they downsized, and he lives and works here alone? It’s such a lot of space to be alone in… “She wants to know what it is you’re doing that’s making the… magnets fall off of her fridge?”

    And… when Alexei answers all of their questions, they will be done with him. Whatever that will mean… he does not trust that they will simply let him go. But if he can draw it out, then he can maybe buy himself time to think. Maybe he can buy himself some time to find a solution, one where he makes it out of this alive.

    He sits back in his chair, and tries to project an air of confidence.

    “I should tell you this… why?”

    “Telling this… would make the lady happy?” The man tries. Which, even if the lady in question were not an accessory to Alexei’s kidnapping, would be laughable.

    “I do not need to make the lady happy.” He answers, taking a little pleasure in how it seems to frustrate the man.

    “Great. Well, what do you want?”

    “I want to have not been kidnapped and shot at. Oh, you cannot do that for me. Then maybe no one gets what he wants.”

    It might have been a stronger statement if his stomach hadn’t made the loudest noise imaginable. He hasn’t been hungry like this since the first base they installed him at. He’s gotten used to the guarantee of two well-rounded, good-sized meals a day. Spoiled by only having to wait in line for the canteen. He’d forgotten how to be hungry.

    But he can remember. 

    “When did they pick you up?” He asks, but Alexei doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. And, in fact, when he doesn’t, the man presumably asks the others the same thing.

    “Hey. You. Let’s open the negotiations– hungry?”

    He might think he has a foot in the door, but Alexei refuses to give him the satisfaction. He has gone as long on as much.

    “No. I don’t want anything from you, pig.”

    “Look, neither of us is thrilled with you being here right now. I was having a very ordinary day, where no one dragged dangerous enemy agents into my home–” He starts, though Alexei’s reaction gives him pause. Dangerous. If he’ s a threat to the Americans, then they are well and truly fucked. “Yes, fine, and I’m sure you were having a better day before–”

    “Before your stupid friend kidnapped me?”

    “... He’s more of an acquaintance.” He shrugs, and there’s something almost endearing about the look on his face, like he really means it. Like despite living here– and he does consider it a home as much as a workplace, apparently– he is only an ordinary man who normally doesn’t deal with this sort of thing. “But like it or not, right now, you are in my house. I am not in the habit of letting people starve in my house.”

    “Really?” Alexei gives the place a skeptical look. “This looks like the kind of place people might go to starve to death.”

    It’s not the place itself, so much as how much empty space is around it. Fields full of nothing… far from any city. Though, he has a vehicle. If he isn’t being provided with what he needs, he could just drive to the city while everyone else is working, and clear out the shelves like an asshole.

    Only… there had been that little store in the middle of nowhere. It hadn’t had much in the way of real groceries, but it had had an incredible variety of other things, mostly frivolous things, the shelves full. So, maybe he doesn’t have to go so far. 

    “Oh! Well, excuse me, if I wasn’t ready for company–”

    The policeman asks something, and this man snaps at him again, but when he turns back to Alexei, he’s less frustrated, more… conspiratorial? It’s not real, it’s an attempt to gain his trust so he’ll talk, but after being bullied all morning, he would be lying if he said he was unmoved by even the slightest glimmer of kindness. From the woman or from this man.

    “Look, they’re very eager to know about the magnets, or whatever. So if you don’t want anything from me… what can I send my stupid friend out to get for you?” He asks, eyes sparkling, and… and no, Alexei can’t trust him, but maybe it’s a nice smile, that accompanies that sparkle.

    “He has to go and get it? Whatever I ask for?” He tests, cautious. 

    “If you plan on talking, then yes.”

    And… why force himself to be hungry just because he can bear hunger? It may be his last meal, but why refuse a last meal? Why die hungry, if these Americans do decide he’s outlived his usefulness? Couldn’t he use this to buy him time to think of a way to get out?

    “I… could eat. Burger King.”

    He knows there had been a sign for it, before they turned to come here, so there is one. Two weeks ago, the boxes that came down were disguised as being from the restaurant upstairs, he’d overheard a brief conversation about it, before one of the guards had shut it down, and he had moved on to his own work, smothered any real curiosity about the shopping center overhead– that was before the last test, before firing the Key up for real. He’d had too much else on his mind.

    “... Yes, okay. We can do that.”

    “Two hamburgers. I have had a very long day. I walked for miles and I was almost murdered and I was kidnapped, and now they want to question me, I think it is more than fair.” He says– and that, too, is a test of what the limits are here. But, if this is his last meal, he wants a good one, and if it’s not his last meal, he’ll need his strength– and he won’t know how long before anything else, or… or what else is ahead of him.

    “More than fair. Two hamburgers– fries, soft drink?”

    And this consideration, again, is just to gain his confidence, but it’s a game two can play at. If he wants to offer, then Alexei will accept. It’ll buy him a little more time, and more importantly, he really does want another drink.

    “Yes. When I found for us the store, the… ah, the sign is… a seven and eleven?”

    “Right. Wait, when you… found them a Seven-Eleven, earlier?”

    “After walking half the morning through the forest, I am the one who found the store, with the drinks and the telephone and where he had a civilian give him the car.” Alexei nods. They’d been lost and that had been all him. “That is where they have the drink I  would like. Cherry, it’s frozen. One of those also. And then I will explain about her magnets. Even if I think kidnapping me about it is unnecessary and what crazy people would do. She seems… nicer than him. But I eat first and I answer second.”

    Yet again, he gives a little push, and this man treats it like he’s being entirely reasonable, turning to relay his request to the big idiot.

    And, somehow, it works. He goes. He might not be happy, he most certainly isn’t, but he goes.

    The two remaining Americans chat for a moment, before the man goes into the kitchen, returning with mugs of tea. He doesn’t uncuff Alexei, but he does give him one of the mugs, dark green like the chair he’s sitting in. 

    “Murray Bauman.” He says. “Any chance I can get the rest of your name?”

    “I believe I said I would answer any questions after my food arrives.” Alexei says. 

     Murray laughs.

Chapter Text

    For an enemy of the state, Alexei is… 

    Murray isn’t quite sure, actually. He’s not exactly meeting him under normal circumstances. He’s… bitingly funny, in little moments, though he seems to flinch back from it. There’s something fearful underneath the pushback that he gives, but he gives it anyway. Moments where he’s delightfully bitchy. There’s this push and pull going on in him, it seems like, the struggle between how fed up he is with everything, to the point of not being afraid of anything, and then remembering that he still has something to lose, however little. Murray’s not exactly sure which is the real Alexei– is he normally kind of bitchy and acerbic but cowed after his experiences, or is he normally a meek, mild-mannered little comrade, who just happens to be pushed past his limit?

    Both, maybe.

    He’s hard to read, but the circumstances are so outside of normal. Murray normally considers himself very good at reading people. It’s easy with Jim, they’ve been acquainted long enough. He’s seen a few of his moods. Knows enough about him to build off of. New people, it takes a little time to observe, but he still prides himself on it not taking too much time. It depends on the person, on what they’re trying to hide, if they’re trying to hide. On whether they know they’re trying to hide it. 

    The problem with reading Alexei is that he’s had to learn to be very good at hiding. He doesn’t need to spend any time observing him to know that, he can infer as much. He doesn’t know which parts of him he should pay attention to. All of it, he supposes, even if there are bits and pieces that aren’t normal. They’re still all natural, they’re still all him. Or, if not natural, familiar– the repression he has to assume is learned, of course, is part of surviving, but it’s second nature at least, it’s…

    He wants to understand what’s under it.

    Joyce… not so difficult to get. She and Jim have something, a little sexual tension and a little regular tension, some kind of history. Whatever’s under their skin with each other, she trusts him around her kids, so that’s deep. That’s not something this current spat is likely to shake up too badly.

    At least, he assumes. She seems like she cares about her children. Like… this whole magnet thing that may or may not be insane– but is looking more like it’s something real– is something she’s going after because she’s worried about something that might not be safe for her kids. 

    He kind of wants to ask how Jonathan and Nancy are doing, but he’s not sure how to ask. He’s not sure what she even knows about her oldest fucking off to Illinois with a girl to ask Sesser’s local crackpot for help taking on the United States government, and he doesn’t want to be the one to break that story for her right now.

    For an American, Murray is…

    Alexei isn’t quite sure, actually. He’s not exactly meeting him under normal circumstances. He’s… thoughtful, even solicitous, in little moments, though he’s quick to cover for it with an almost theatrical grouchiness. He is still playing ‘good cop’ with regards to Alexei, but he had been quick to put up that facade with his friend– or, acquaintance. He is kind enough to the woman, Joyce, but not nice, he doesn’t let himself be nice. He makes cups of tea and puts her at ease, and then he’ll say something in tones which suggest he is complaining– but, that seems to put her at ease as much as anything else, honestly. The two of them go back and forth a bit, both grumbling and rolling their eyes about… what? The policeman, Jim? The situation they’re all in? For all he knows, the weather. 

    He puts on the TV at some point, and Alexei lets himself be drawn in immediately. The cartoon bird is clearly the hero, but seems as much a menace as the menaced, not just a cute creature that something else wants to eat. But, it’s heavy slapstick– he doesn’t need to understand any of what’s being said to understand what’s going on. And… the art and animation itself is charming enough. Sure, it’s clearly not on par with Atamanov, but he wouldn’t expect it to be if it’s a serial– it’s certainly on par with Well, Just You Wait!, in terms of art. Whether he likes it more… debatable. 

    But… debatable.

    Honestly, all things considered, he… is having not as bad a time as he could be? Cutting this deal is maybe his only real choice, so he might as well get something out of it, before… whatever happens to him when it’s over. Nothing good, but he no longer thinks he’s going to die here.

    He amends that thought, when there’s a negotiations breakdown over the matter of his slurpee not being as requested– he’s not asking for much, is he?-- and he finds himself assaulted and thrown out of the building.

    … Thrown out of the building?

    A lot of things almost happen. 

    Jim almost kills their Soviet houseguest. Well, Murray’s houseguest, Jim’s prisoner. Alexei, the point being, Jim practically pulverizes him before he kicks him out.

    Murray almost jumps in to physically defend him, that’s the part that leaves him feeling like he’s been cut down at the knees. Murray almost hits Jim.

    Murray almost dives out the door after Alexei, too, almost tries to get to the keys first, though he doesn’t. 

    He feels dizzy, though. Sick. Feels a slight phantom ache and a sense of the world tilting wrong, and he thinks he should have gotten to the keys first. 

    Not the car keys, only the keys to the handcuffs. 

    That’s the part that has him leaning heavily against the wall and willing himself not to throw up or scream. He was going to grab for the keys to the handcuffs. But it wasn’t a choice he’d made, it was an action he interrupted himself from carrying out. And he knows it was only the one set.

    It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t have to mean anything.

    “Jim, that man–” He starts, but the words won’t come the way he’d planned them. “How could you let him go like that?”

    “Oh, how could I let him go? The guy who’s been jerking us around for a full day?” He snaps back, mercifully unaware of how close Murray had come to smashing an encyclopedia across the back of his skull just a moment ago. “I get him his cherry slurpee, then what? He wants a helicopter to charter him to his own private island. I have dealt with assholes like this my entire life–”

    “No, Jim, you fucking haven’t. You think Alexei was going to ask you for a helicopter?” He thwacks him in the arm, which next to an encyclopedia to the brainpan, is kind of like not hitting him at all, but it satisfies… something. “Alexei was excited about a second fucking hamburger. Alexei wasn’t even going to ask you for french fries at first! A helicopter, are you listening to yourself? To a private island? The fucking stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me– that man thinks the Seven-Eleven is the height of luxury. That man… oh, god… and you just, you let him go. They’re gonna kill him, Jim.”

    “Yeah, and he’s smart enough to know it. Yesterday in the woods, he could have escaped, but he didn’t. He stuck with us. He’s scared– not of us, of them. He’s scared of that seven foot tall Russian freak who could have killed him just as easily as us.”

    “Oh god…” Murray groans. He’s definitely going to be sick. He was shot at, he said so, it was just… luck, that he wasn’t killed last night, it…

    No. 

    No, maybe he’s blowing this out of proportion, maybe he’s being crazy right now. None of this has to mean anything. Coincidence.

    “Smirnoff knows–”

    “Alexei.” He snaps.

    “He knows that if he runs back to his comrades without a scratch on him, they’re gonna think that he spilled his guts.” Jim continues, unperturbed. “So, whether he likes it or not, we… are the best chance he’s got. I give him thirty seconds before he comes knocking on that door, right back into our arms, with a new sense of humility.”

    Okay, unhelpful mental image. 

    But this doesn’t mean anything, because it can’t mean anything, because

    The shotgun shells were

    No, that would be… a particularly cruel little twist, wouldn’t it? So no, it’s all just coincidence. Simple as that.

    He still feels a stab of dread when he hears the car start up outside.

    “Jim… I, uh, believe he has started the car.”

    “Hopper…” Joyce frets, if not with quite the same level of personal panic.

    Misguided panic. Because it’s not him, it wouldn’t be, it can’t be.

    “You know, testing us. He’s just calling my bluff.”

    “I believe he is now driving away.” Murray can hear the crunch of gravel under tire travel off towards the gap in the fence.

    Jim holds firm about letting Joyce open the door, at first, at which point Murray elbows him sharply in the ribs, because it’s his goddamn door and it opens or stays shut at his discretion, not Jim’s.

    And it’s still nothing compared to the Encyclopedia he would have hit him with. Volume C for Concussion.

    He doesn’t get very far before he finds himself in park. 

    And okay, yes, it’s… there’s nowhere else for him to go, nowhere safe, that’s not the problem.

    The problem is, he doesn’t remember putting the car in park. 

    He just feels… sick, all over. Some of it makes sense, who wouldn’t be terrified in his position? He’s been made into an enemy of the state, it will be reported that he has been taken by the Americans, and the question of whether they turned him will be raised. There’s no going back.

    But that isn’t it, or isn’t it entirely.

    The shotgun shells? He clings to the hope, for a moment, that there’s some piece of him that wants to go back for those, which is stupid and unnecessary, but he can make sense of it. 

    How do you know, when you’ve met your soulmate?

    That’s the part no one has such easy answers for. No bolt of lightning or blaring trumpets. You still have to get to know someone, to know what it is they need. That’s how you know. Fate doesn’t do the hard work for you with these things. You take a gamble and you find out after the fact, it’s why he was never going to know.

    In another world, maybe it matters to Mikhail Vinogradov, if he never comes back. In another world, maybe there’s a soldier in Afghanistan whose name he’ll never know, who wakes up with a start and knows without knowing what’s become of him.

    In this world, Alexei doesn’t know, and can’t know.

    He pictures himself, small– miniscule, like a fairy, small enough to curl up in the palm of his own hand. That he could lower himself into the little leather case which he will never see again and never give the contents of to anyone. Nothing in that case will ever be so vitally important to any man as befits that kind of keeping of them… would he be? There’s nothing he can truly offer, in any world would he be enough?

    Not that it matters. He never will. Alexei, like the teaspoon and the handkerchief and the earplugs, is just another thing which he will never give his soulmate.

Chapter Text

    He wants to fuss and he can’t. If he starts now, it’s real, and if it’s real… he doesn’t know. He has no idea what.

    “Your, um… your shirt.” Murray says dumbly.

    “I was thrown on the ground.” Alexei points out, his tone withering. “Forgive me if I am not pristine. What, you do not want me sitting on your chair? I shouldn’t track dirt in?”

    He steels himself, for the possibility that this… answers things, which might best be left unanswered. 

    “In the guest bedroom, there are some things. Clothes. If anything in there… if anything in there is the right size, you can… Just, borrow whatever you want. It’s been a long day. You might feel better.”

    He stares at him, a long moment. “You have a bedroom for guests… and you keep clothes for guests in there? How many guests do you get?”

    “Not very many. And… it’s complicated. But… if there’s anything you need in there, you should take it.”

    “... Thank you.”

    “Through there. And, there’s a bathroom, there. Just… if it would help. Long talk ahead, you might as well get cleaned up, comfortable.” 

    Will he know? Alexei looks like he’d fit the clothes there, yes, but… a lot of men could fit them. Will it feel wrong to see him wearing the things he’s collected, if he’s not the One? Will it feel right if he is? Or will it just feel like this, creeping unease at the possibility?

    Alexei takes advantage of being un-cuffed, uses the bathroom or just freshens up a little, then changes in the guest bedroom. He steps out wearing jeans and a plain short-sleeved button-down, collar open enough to see he has an undershirt with it. He looks comfortable. It doesn’t answer any questions, but…

    He looks happy. He looks good.

    Alexei had been cowed, at first, coming in after all that-- with Jim if not with Murray himself-- but cleaned up and changed, he comes back into himself. Comes more and more alive the more he sketches out diagrams, and eats. Answers questions, sitting knee to knee with Murray now on the couch. It’s fascinating stuff. Horrifying, unreal, but… fascinating. 

    Alexei is fascinating. Too bright, too sharp. In turns meek and remarkably full of himself, forever navigating what his boundaries are. Unafraid of Murray, or he wouldn’t have pushed back with him so soon after being thrown around by Jim, but… after being offered a change of clothes, he’s less of a smartass. 

    “Whose clothes are these?” He asks, when both Jim and Joyce break away, post-explanation. “Someone who lived here and worked with you before left these behind?”

    “No. No, just me. It’s always been just me here, the… the clothes aren’t really anyone’s.”

    “Is it customary here to keep an entire closet full of clothes that do not belong to anyone, in a room for guests? You didn’t offer your friends the same.”

    “Because I do not have anything that would fit Jim. Or Joyce, who I met today, by the way.” He shrugs. “But you… they fit?”

    “Yes.”

    “I thought they might.” Murray sighs. 

    “Well… thank you. Maybe… actually, I don’t… I don’t know what I can do later.” Alexei suddenly sounds about as dismal as Murray does. “Wash my things so I can give yours back, but… from there…”

    “You don’t have to do that.”

    “These pants alone would have cost me a month’s salary, back home. That’s if I could have arranged to buy them under the table.”

    “Well, they didn’t cost me a month’s salary. It’s fine, really.”

    “Well… thank you. I… don’t know a lot of things, right now. Which is new for me. So… at least, I am not facing the unknown naked, or filthy.”

    “Facing the unknown naked and filthy is the best way to do it.” Murray jokes, or tries to. “I spent my university years hoping for the chance to face the unknown naked and filthy.”

    “I spent my university years studying.” Alexei chuckles. “Clothed. And clean.”

    “Not a lot of free love in Mother Russia?”

    “Not a lot of privacy for any kind of love.”

    “We considered privacy optional in the sixties.”

    “I was a child during the sixties.” He shrugs. 

    Ouch.

    Well… that would explain why Murray hadn’t had a soulmate in college, let alone high school, when a couple classmates had gotten one. He never considered that the delay was because he had a much younger soulmate.

    Younger. 

    Not… not much, surely.

    “How old are you? If you don’t mind me asking?”

    “Thirty-three.”

    Ouch.

    Hey, no, nine years is… that’s nothing. That’s fine. Reasonable. If Alexei is his soulmate, then… Which, maybe he’s not! But if he was, that’s not so bad. Alexei is… well, a very weird combination of well-traveled and sheltered, given his circumstances, but– but he’s highly educated. Intelligent, easy to talk to. Funny, a little. 

    Weird, in little ways that Murray think are just him and not a cultural thing– though, admittedly, the cultural touchstones he knows were out of date back when he was born. Either way, he’s… not averse to weird. 

    “What’s that face?” Alexei nudges him.

    “Just… feeling old, all of a sudden.”

    “Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds cute, and Murray doesn’t dare look over at him to check. “How old?”

    “Ancient.” He groans. “I’m forty-two.”

    “That’s not ancient.”

    “It’s ancient next to thirty-three. When I was your age, I still had hair.”

    “You still have hair now. It’s just… retreating.”

    “You’re such a comfort.” He does look over at him, which is a mistake, because the smile Alexei has turned on him is impish and adorable, and at Murray’s own flat, unimpressed look, he only gets moreso. “Tell me, are they all so sweet and thoughtful back home as you?”

    “No.”

    Murray laughs. 

    It is… too easy, to laugh with Alexei.

    “Get some rest, boy genius. You’ve been at it long enough.” He pushes himself up to his feet. “I’m going to… try and rein those two in before someone does something I’m going to regret.”

    “Genius, yes. Boy, no, thank you.” He rolls his eyes. And, though Murray has pointed him to the guest bedroom, he lies down on the couch, knees tucked up so he can fit despite his height. Despite it being the shorter of the two couches. “Tell them they’ve put you through enough already.”

    He should… agree, or something. Laugh again. Say something glib about bringing the soviet scum to his doorstep. But it’s too late for that.

    Maybe Alexei is his soulmate and maybe he isn’t– ‘is’ is looking more likely– but Murray is glad he met him, either way. Wants to get to know him either way. He doesn’t even know if Alexei likes men, and it’s not the kind of thing he can ask him. That… that was one thing he never took into consideration, with the whole soulmate business. What if he finds someone who lines up at every point, and puts himself out there, and gets smacked in the face with a very confused heterosexual.

    What if not all soulmates are romantic, or sexual, even? He never thought about that, he just assumed once he knew he had one, that this man would fall into his lap one day and they’d…

    Well, at first, he’d imagined things being… physically vigorous, in a way which might be behind him. His expectations shifted over time, anyway. He always imagined someone who was at least on the same page in terms of how many times a day he could go and what positions he could work himself into, it never occurred to him he could have this. Thirty-three.

    It’s not so bad. Sure, his youth is long gone, but he has experience. That’s a trade-off he doesn’t regret. There are plenty of very enjoyable ways to deal with any mismatch when it comes to libido, or stamina, or general level of interest. Alexei being this young might be a surprise, it’s not a problem. The only problem with the sex they might have is, suppose Alexei doesn’t want it at all? Suppose he fucks up what could at the very least be a promising friendship by saying hey, I think we might be soulmates, I want to fuck you, I want you to fuck me, I want to do a variety of things with hands and mouths and toys, and I hope somewhere in among all of that, we discover that we’ve fallen in love?

    And anyway, Alexei hadn’t needed the vest, he… he’d been shot near, and he hadn’t been hit, and…

    When they wind up dragged along on the drive back to Hawkins, he considers slapping the vest on Alexei anyway, just in case.

    It no longer feels like being the good cop, when Murray is nice to him now. After his getting roughed up and thrown out, Murray feels… wrong-footed, but genuine. Solicitous, but subdued. He lets him get cleaned up, now that he’s not handcuffed, and also offers him a change of clothes from the guest bedroom.

    Guest bedroom. 

    There’s only one bed, this isn’t an unused dormitory– whatever this place was before it was Murray’s home, he doesn’t really know, but it’s not really a base of operations for his government, so… it maybe makes sense that he isn’t set up to house a bunch of people. Why he lives like this… well, nothing about him is what Alexei first expected.

    He wonders who might have left these things behind. A relative, a coworker? But some of the clothes are brand new. 

    He doesn’t poke around, despite his curiosity, not beyond finding something he can wear. The shirt he pulls on fits him perfectly, and after a long, breathless moment, he pulls a pair of jeans– likewise, as if they had been his own. Not that he’s ever owned a pair. 

    He doesn’t know what to make of just being given them. 

    He’s grateful, of course, how could he not be? He’s lost everything, he’d be grateful for anything. And… Murray isn’t to blame for that, for the loss of his old life. He just got dragged into this, really.

    There’s… there’s something, that he doesn’t understand. Something Murray doesn’t say, but which is clearly weighing on him. Though, when Alexei asks, he just admits to suddenly feeling old.

    “Sorry.” He smiles, unrepentant. There’s more, he should have asked before age came up… but then, they hardly know each other. It’s something, that Murray has confided this, even if it isn’t the problem. “How old?”

    “Ancient. I’m forty-two.”

    “That’s not ancient.” He thinks about nudging at him, he doesn’t.

    “It’s ancient next to thirty-three.” He points out. “When I was your age, I still had hair.”

    “You still have hair now. It’s just… retreating.” Alexei laughs gently. He thinks about reaching up, tugging gently at one curl to tease, and he doesn’t do that, either. They hardly know each other.

    “You’re such a comfort.” Murray attempts a withering look, Alexei feels un-withered. He feels… the opposite of withered. “Tell me, are they all so sweet and thoughtful back home as you?”

    “No.” He leans in just slightly, smiling still. 

    Murray laughs. 

    It is… a very nice laugh.

    “Get some rest, boy genius.” He shakes his head. “You’ve been at it long enough. I’m going to… try and rein those two in before someone does something I’m going to regret.”

    “Genius, yes. Boy, no, thank you.” He rolls his eyes. When Murray rises, Alexei curls himself up right there on the couch, though, content to do what he’s told– he could use the rest. “Tell them they’ve put you through enough already.”

    He drops off pretty much instantly. He doesn’t check the clock to see how long he actually got to sleep, when Joyce shakes him awake. He’s not sure he wants to know. 

    “When this is all over, maybe I sleep for a week.” He says, as he and Murray pile into the back of the car. He’s not sure why they do, but he’s too tired to argue the point. “... I think, I might as well. I won’t have a job anymore. Although, my job is where my bed was, and I don’t think I can ever go back home, so… maybe not.”

    “You can sleep for a week in my guest bedroom.” Murray offers. 

    “I would like that. Thank you.”

    “My pleasure. We’ll figure it out. Once we hand all this over… maybe we can fast track American citizenship for you.” He waves the diagrams. “The least they could do. And… hopefully, they’ll leave us alone, beyond that.”

    It’s a nice thought. If he can’t go back… why not? His life could be good here. He could go to the Seven-Eleven sometimes, and sleep in a room with privacy… and learn English, he’ll have to learn more English. Actual sentences instead of a handful of rarely-useful words. 

    “I know it’s not much.” He adds, when Alexei doesn’t say anything more. “But you’re welcome to it.”

    “No, it… it’s much. Really. I’m just…” He trails off. Tired. Overwhelmed. Take your pick. 

    “Leaving a lot behind.” Murray nods, reaching out to squeeze his arm gently. “Of course.”

    “Much of it bad. But yes. Also… leaving a lot behind.”

    “Is there a… special lady, or…?”

    “Nothing at all like that.” He snorts. “No. But… I won’t be able to see my family again. Or the places I once knew. I… will miss a lot. It was my home. All the things I hated, they were still my home, too.”

    “Of course.”

    “I used to think… I thought I might know my soulmate’s initials, but… then I thought, maybe that’s not so.” He offers, just to say something. It occurs to him, in all his careful attempts to notice very little about Mikhail Vinogradov, he’d ignored the fact that he doesn’t wear glasses. Which means he could not have used the glasses repair kit. “Maybe I know nothing.”

    “You do have a soulmate, then.”

    “Yes. But… no one I have ever met. I guess now I’ve lost the things I had saved, but they were never much.”

    “How could you know the initials?”

    “I picked up something with a monogram once. But… it was secondhand, maybe that didn’t matter. You don’t get that kind of clue, do you?”

    “Rarely. I… I bought groceries.”

    “Groceries?”

    “One or two things when I went out shopping. Mostly.” Murray’s smile is twitchy. But, then, it’s a very private kind of conversation, to have with a new acquaintance. “I would come home with an ingredient for something I wasn’t going to make, that kind of thing.”

    “I bought flowers. Mostly.” Alexei admits, his voice soft. 

    “Flowers?” Murray’s brow furrows. Alexei doesn’t blame him– who needs flowers, after all? It’s supposed to be the things you need.

    “If you spaced it out evenly, every five weeks. But it wasn’t even, really. It might be… none for a few months, and then… suddenly I am buying another dozen flowers, two, three times in one week. It was how I knew… it was how I knew my soulmate was someplace dangerous. And that we probably wouldn’t ever meet.”

    “Ah.”

    “And yours… still a mystery?”

    “Still a mystery.” He nods, looking down at the pages of diagrams in his hands. “I have a lead. I don’t know… I don’t know. Finally here, and I don’t know what I want to do about it. Imagine being wrong.”

    “Imagine being right. I’m not sure which idea would scare me more.” He huffs out a bitter little laugh.

Chapter Text

    In the back of the car, Alexei draws out a map, by the bare light they get, while Murray holds onto the other pages. They go over everything that they can, everything that Murray will be able to give to whoever might show up after Jim’s call.

    And he wants, and he can’t want. Shouldn’t want. Even if they’re not enemies at this point, you don’t get to stick a gun in a man’s face and then tell him you think he’s it for you, and not expect him to laugh in your face– at best. 

    But sometimes, Alexei pauses, in the middle of the explanation, and smiles up at him, the pair of them doing their best to keep all his notes from blowing away. He’d complain about the top being down, but they’d have even less light with it up, and they’re counting on everything the moon and stars and street lamps can give them. 

    “Do you think there is really help coming?”

    “Who knows? I don’t trust the government very far.” He sighs. “But I hope so. If this place is as well-designed as you say…”

    “For its singular purpose, I think.” He nods, with a little sigh of his own. “Only one entry point, heavily guarded always… Maybe your friend could get past the guards up top, take the key card for the elevator, and make his way into the base, but he would be met with more guards down below, soldiers… and the further in you get, the more dangerous, because now your way back out is easily cut off, there is no other way.”

    “What if you needed to evacuate?”

    “We are expendable.”

    “I think you are… the least expendable man I have ever met.”

    “Kind of you to say.”

    “I don’t say things to be kind, ask anyone.”

    “Oh no.” Alexei shakes his head, smiling merrily. “If I ask him, oh, does Murray ever say something, just to be kind? And you are translating for me… You see my dilemma. You could tell me anything you liked.”

    “Then you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

    “Well… I would like to be, certainly. For a brief time, I was on the short list, for who might be evacuated in an emergency, given time and opportunity. I am guessing… not anymore.”

    “Ah, well, I’m guessing these two didn’t help with that, exactly.”

    “No. But… I was off the list before this. Once the key was… operational, I am not so indispensable.”

    “You’re indispensable to someone.” Murray swallows. “Someone out there. You must be.”

    “My family will either be told I was killed by the Americans or became a traitor… or both.” He sighs. “My soulmate, I will never meet…”

    “Unless… this soulmate… is an American?”

    Alexei goes very still for a moment, turns the idea over in his head, gaze fixed on his map.

    “Unless my soulmate… is American… You think this is possible?”

    “I think if anything can be said to be fate, and fate brought you here, then it has to be within the realm of possibility.” He shrugs, aims for something lighter than he feels. He feels like his heart is about to beat itself right out of his chest. What might have been an almost pleasant tension back when he himself was thirty-three feels, at forty-two, the precursor to a genuine cardiac incident. “And, if your soulmate is an American, then… to him, you would be more ‘hero’ than ‘traitor’.”

    “Why would you say that?” Alexei’s focus snaps from the pages in his hand up to Murray, and he’s sheer panic, and Murray’s thinking seriously about throwing himself out of the car, except he thinks he might survive it long enough to really regret doing so.

    “Because… to shut down the key, to stop the gate from opening all the way, to stop the things on the other side from getting out into Hawkins… is heroic?”

    There’s a tremor in Alexei’s jaw. He can’t quite look at Murray and he can’t quite look away. He shakes his head so slightly Murray might be imagining the movement. 

    “He.” The wind almost swallows the word whole. “You… you said ‘he’.”

    “Ah.” And the phrase is feminine, he might be rusty but he’s not so inept as to claim the gendering was anything other than intentional. “I did. But… that is my own bias.”

    “Your own…?”

    “Mine is ‘he’. But… I shouldn’t have– of course, my apologies…”

    “No.” He relaxes considerably. “You… you know this? This lead you have?”

    “I knew without having a lead. This is… for me, the only option. But, for most…” He shrugs. Here’s where Alexei can tell him he was wrong, can put him out of his misery before he can start picturing some kind of life together. God, but what kind of life can he even give him?

    But… it would be a life.

    “What do you think he is like?”

    Not what Murray expected. Not what he had been formulating a reply to. 

    “I think he’s perfect. I think… for a long time, he didn’t need much. Or if he did, it wasn’t anything I could get. Little things. And for a while, he didn’t need anything at all, and I didn’t know whether I should be happy for him or worry something had happened. Usually I worried. And then… he started needing things again. More things.”

    “Mine… I told you about the flowers.”

    “Yes. And that there was a monogram once, but you weren’t sure if it counted.”

    “At this point whether or not it does hardly matters. All the things I saved are lost to me now. I can hardly send you to go and get…” He glances back at his map, then up to Murray again, then back to the map. “Unimportant. I haven’t added anything in so long, there can’t be anything there that my soulmate still needs. I know one thing.”

    “What is that?”

    “He wears glasses.” He tenses a little saying it, but only a little, giving Murray a sidelong glance. “I… was a little afraid somehow I was obvious. Not that you needed any further compromising material, where I am concerned.”

    “No. I had the feeling you had some secret, but that could have been anything. With everything… you could have been guarded for a million reasons.”

    “Well. This is one of them.”

    “And it is safe with me.”

    “Thank you. Of course, likewise.”

    “Ah, for me… it is not so much a secret.” Murray waves a hand.

    “Yes, but who could I tell?” Alexei snorts.

    “Ah ah ah, you’ll lower my guard so I tell you all my real secrets, then when I teach you English, where does that leave me?”

    “You will do that?” His smile is suddenly soft, almost awed.

    “Of course, after you have slept a week in my guest room, I will teach you everything you need to know about life in America.” He gestures grandly, setting Alexei off laughing again– not as hard as they had at the state line, but it is a beautiful little laugh. 

    “Well, I will still keep your secrets. Poor repayment, otherwise.”

    “This soulmate… supposing he is American?”

    “Supposing he is.” Alexei nods, something careful in the way he regards Murray, waiting for whatever highly personal question is coming, no doubt.

    “Beyond that he has glasses… there must be something you hope he is like.”

    “I have never let myself hope anything.” He shakes his head. 

    “A wise man. Maybe he won’t disappoint you.”

    “I think… he could not. This is the point of a soulmate, yes? To me, he will be perfect.”

    “I hope that’s the case. Still… if you could choose, what would he be like? Tall, handsome? Some… some other brilliant scientist?”

    “He is not another scientist.” Alexei dismisses the idea immediately, with an almost casual wave of the hand, with a brief sneer. “No, this I was always certain of. He must be brilliant in his own field, not in mine.”

    “Competitive, are you?”

    “Hardly.” He shrugs. “But if we are both physicists, and he is not as smart as me? How could I want such a man? Perhaps here and there our skills or our interests may overlap, but he must be brilliant in an arena where I am, at best, a novice. But… he may be tall.”

    “It couldn’t hurt if he was.”

    “And yours? It is not fair to ask me what I hope for and to only say you think he is ‘perfect’. What was it you always hoped for?”

    “I didn’t start collecting things until late, later than most. I’ve always just been amazed that he should exist. I think… he would have to be a man who makes me smile. All the rest… I don’t know. I’m glad he exists.”

    Murray.

    It suddenly feels like the only thing that makes sense. It isn’t only that Murray is the only other man he’s met for whom it isn’t even a matter of preferring the company of men, but an inability to find love or attraction with a woman– or, the only man to admit as much to him. He would have to ask him about the flowers, of course, he has to reassess so much that he’d once taken for granted, but… but Murray mentioned it coming to him late, which a nine year difference in ages would account for. And of course he would find his purchasing habits drying up during the time Alexei was on base– the past couple of years, everything he’s needed has been provided for him by the state.

    The clothes in the guest bedroom that fit like they were his own? The bulletproof vest hiding in the closet, he had very nearly needed that once Grigori showed up… but he certainly needs things like clothes, now.

    It’s a relief to think it could be. That he isn’t losing any hope of ever laying eyes on his soulmate, far from it. That he might be destined to love a man he finds it all too easy to get along with– one he would find it impossible not to be attracted to.

    He rubs at his wrist, and thinks about the handcuffs, and the swooping feeling in his stomach, when he was in Murray’s custody rather than the policeman’s. The difference it made just because he does find him attractive– or was it the difference in some part of him recognizing his soulmate? Did that part of him always know he was safe with Murray?

    Finding his soulmate was always a prospect that filled him with as much fear as curiosity. Even now, he has no idea how to voice the suspicion. Does Murray feel it? On some level, mustn’t he have, to offer the clothes in his guest bedroom? Did he realize they had only been waiting for Alexei to need them?

    It used to frighten him, but with Murray, he feels less frightened than he thinks he’s felt in a long time. At least the past couple of years, when dread seemed his constant, closest companion… 

    Even before he understood the terrible power of what he’d been tasked with, the dangers that must be lurking beyond the Gate, even before the disastrous test and being forced to witness the… the execution of a man who had taken Alexei under his wing, even before the tacit promise he could yet meet the same fate, his life on base, the first base, had been an exercise in fear.

    Now, he has every reason to be terrified. Being back in Hawkins should terrify him, let alone returning to Starcourt and the base.

    He wants it to be Murray. Not only because he finds him attractive– though he does, and knowing Murray might not be put off by the idea makes the desire to do something about it so much more– but because of that sense of security he gets from him. The sense that if he gave himself to Murray, maybe that would be enough. Maybe he alone could be what Murray most needs.

    The lights of the carnival distract him from the question of just how to proceed, as they get close– he cranes around in his seat to try and get a look at everything. When they pull into a spot between a couple other cars, he figures this must be where the children are, but the car is faced away, and apparently he and Murray are not supposed to leave the car…

    “Sorry about him.” Murray sighs. 

    “It’s fair, I doubt I would be any help. Possibly I would only get lost…”

    “No, I poked the bear. I pissed him off earlier by pointing out their whole… thing.” He flaps a hand. “Not that it would be a bad idea to look over the map again with a light source that isn’t constantly moving, when it’s not cutting out completely… With any luck, I’ll be explaining it to a sizable group of well-armed, well-armored, well-trained soldiers…”

    Alexei’s stomach feels small, cold. “And without that luck? You can’t think…”

    “That I’ll be going there myself? It’s not my first choice, but… this thing… when it opened here before, something came out of the Gate. And it killed a teenage girl. Bright girl, bright future… parents who– who just wanted to know what happened.”

    “Something… like an animal?”

    “Like a creature. Joyce’s youngest was taken, they got him back, but the girl… Her friend told me about all the things I didn’t know. The world on the other side of the Gate, and what our government was doing. I taught her how to– Unimportant, now. To deal with it, with all the information she had. If I’m really lucky, being able to hand this over to the government… maybe they forget my role in shutting down some of their operation.” Murray shrugs.

    “And you would go yourself? If they don’t come?” He can’t even think about what the creature might be or how big a problem it could become.

    “I might need to. You can’t– there are two keys, right? So… me and Jim.”

    “When we left your place, you didn’t think of this? You didn’t even bring your gun.”

    “Even if it was loaded, which I guess I don’t mind telling you now it wasn’t, it would have gotten me one shot, one very loud shot. And then nothing.” He shakes his head, and Alexei desperately tries to hold back some hysterical noise. He doesn’t want to find out if it would come out more ‘laugh’ or ‘sob’. “More trouble than it’s worth, it would draw attention, there would be… either a very messy corpse for anyone who heard it to find, or I’d be facing off against a very angry guard. Not sure which is worse, but either way, I’m much better off talking my way out of trouble than shooting my way out.”

    “Murray…”

    “No, really. I’m an artist. My tongue is a deadlier weapon than that shotgun.”

    Alexei pushes all thoughts of Murray’s tongue aside for later. It’s a very interesting avenue of thought that he can’t waste his time on right now. 

    “It’s like I told your friend, it is impossible. It’s too dangerous.”

    “And so are the consequences if we can’t.” He shrugs. “I don’t have enough light to see this map… shitty parking spot. Here– come on, get out of the car a minute.”

    “Are you sure we’re allowed?”

    “Yeah, just– come around the back where we can see a little better. Hey– and maybe backup is coming, and I just need to be able to explain to them, what you show me on the map.”

    Alexei nods, and gets out of the car to go sit on the trunk– somehow they wind up trading sides along the way– but the fear is back. If Murray wasn’t going to be going into danger, why would Alexei have gravitated to the shotgun shells? Not just for the gun to be held on him. Because there was no way to get him a sidearm, to pocket anything bigger than the ammo he had, he just grabbed the closest possible thing, but there’s no way now to send him in armed…

Chapter Text

    He had found Murray charming enough before– with this new possibility, he feels breathless. Giddy at being even half the reason for his smile, too aware of the warmth and weight of the hand on his shoulder. 

    He’s impressed upon him the danger of everything that has to happen, to dismantle the key, to let the gate continue to heal– to hopefully reclose itself, as it had once before. That’s all he really can do, if no one comes. Give him all the information he needs and beg him to come back. But right now…

    Right now, he wants, and he’s never let himself want. Not like this, not so close, not so much. He always wondered how he was ever supposed to love the kind of man he thought his soulmate must be, imagined someone with too many hard edges, but Murray?

    There is a dizzying air of possibility, with Murray. He’s a little frightened, at just how possible, but he’s been frightened for too long, and Murray… Murray says it’s not a secret, for him. If it’s not a secret for him, then that means… surely, yes, some discretion is involved, but even so, it means things are possible. 

    As they weave between cars, Murray’s hand just ghosts over the small of his back, and Alexei hardly knows what it is he wants, but he knows he wants that, more of it. It falls away all too quickly, before they reach the crowds, and he’s grateful… and he’s sorry. 

    There’s a lot, all of it distracting. It’s not as if he’s never been to anything similar, back home– in spirit, anyway, maybe not in makeup. There seems to be… more, to this. Some carnival things are familiar, others not, but after spending the past two years– a little over– living underground, one base to another, and before that had been a few months at a remote think tank… he hasn’t even seen familiar festivities in a long time. He’s glad to come to a stop at last where he can actually look around, without worrying about losing Murray.

    “They are rigged, these games?”

    “Yes.” Murray says, like it ought to be obvious– not like Alexei ought to feel foolish for asking, exactly, but it’s a fine distinction.

    “They do not look rigged.” He frowns, concentrating. Trying to see whatever method of cheating may be obvious to Murray, in the game set up across the way. Some will certainly be more difficult than others, and in games of chance, the odds may be… played with. A game of chance, he could understand not being totally fair. Possible to win, seeing one person win is how you convince another to play, but not probable. This makes sense to him– otherwise, you give away all your prizes too quickly, and it won’t look right to have one game shut down early in the night. And there can only be so many prizes to go around– though of course from where he stands now, it seems near enough to endless.

    But a game of skill? Those are rigged as well? It seems harder to do– harder to do well. If it’s obvious, then surely people get angry. And people who know they are good at throwing a ball– or a dart– will know if the difficulty has been artificially inflated. You can’t rely only on people who are trying a thing they’ve never done before.

    “That’s just it, my dear Alexei.” Murray says, and Murray can call him ‘dear’ as much as he likes. If you had asked Alexei yesterday if his soulmate would ever call him ‘dear’, he would say no– too old-fashioned, if not downright sarcastic. Tonight the word is new. “They have been designed to present the illusion of fairness! But it’s all a scam, a trick, to put your money in the rich man’s pocket. That, my dear friend, is… America.”

    He’s really not sure if he should balk at being lectured on the status of the carnival games– Certainly there’s a part of him that chafes at the idea that he couldn’t win. He’s genuinely good at darts– the base does not have much, in the way of a recreation room, and he has never had much time in which to avail himself, time where he didn’t have to be babysitting something, or reporting to someone, or being reported to by someone else… but they had a dartboard, and the principles of the game are simple. Getting good had been a matter of learning what it feels like to exert the correct force, at the correct angle, of course, but it seems impossible that game should be rigged.

    On the other hand, right on the heels of being ‘dear Alexei’, Murray hits him with an informal ‘your’. Not that their acquaintance has been built on formality anyway, but… still. Before, informality might have been a slight, and now it is a kind of intimacy. And on top of that, ‘my dear friend’, which…

    ‘My dear friend’ is different from ‘my dear Alexei’, in a way he would be hard-pressed to explain. It has a softer edge. Not quite so teasing, though certainly Murray is teasing him, a little. It keeps him feeling off-balance, unable to really mount an argument. Especially not when Murray smiles at him like that, hands over the entire strand of tickets he had just purchased… 

    That changes things. That unbalances him completely. He has no idea what was spent on them, he wasn’t paying attention– maybe not so much, but still, that it was all spent on Alexei. He catches maybe half of what Murray says– ‘let’s’, he thinks, or maybe not, because Murray is moving off in an entirely different direction while leaving Alexei with all the tickets, and Alexei feels a sudden stab of anxiety at the idea of being left alone.

    “Where are you going?” He takes a step after him, and his tone must be anxious enough that Murray turns, demeanor reassuring rather than teasing now.

    “To get us the closest thing to food I can find.” He says, and… well, it has been a while since the hamburgers. And it’s still a long night ahead, whether or not they have backup. Murray should certainly eat, if he plans on going in… They should both eat something even if he doesn’t.

    Knowing is enough, to ease that anxiety– yes, he is being left alone in an overwhelming, busy place in a strange country where he does not speak the language… but only for a minute. Murray will find him again soon. And with food. And… to get us, to be treated to that as well. Well, maybe he has little choice. His options are to feed Alexei or let him starve, and he’s not going to let him starve. But still. That little flutter of something is back at the thought of it. Of letting Murray… take care of him, a little? Just a little while, before they have to face the base beneath Starcourt, just a little chance to be free, to be…

    To be a man that someone wants to take care of?

    Murray has to be entertaining the question. If he wasn’t entertaining the question, he wouldn’t have offered Alexei the clothes– would he have? Again… possible he didn’t feel he had a choice, and a shirt is a shirt, but… 

    Alexei thinks if it were him, if he had a second closet full of things for his soulmate, and a man in his home was in desperate need of a clean shirt, that Alexei would have offered one of his own before he ever let a stranger take one he had set aside. Before letting anyone so much as touch. Unless, of course, he wanted to know if the shirt would fit, before he worked out how to suggest the possibility…

    Either way, does it harm anything, if he lets himself enjoy this? If, for the first time in his life, he lets himself just be giddy to have a man’s attention, to be given things, even little things?

    If he lets himself think about the feel of that man’s hand at the small of his back in a private moment, if he lets himself be charmed by his theatrics? If he considers how warmly he can thank him, here?

    He wins the game easily enough– which is not to say there’s no thrill in it, of course. It’s hard to think of a more thrilling night, between his victory and Murray. Certainly… certainly not in a long time. Well, now he can say he was right after all, about the nature of the games here. Maybe some are rigged, maybe not… but this one certainly didn’t seem to be. 

    He spots Murray at another little stand– from this distance, he can’t tell what makes it any different from the one nearer the ticket booth, which Murray had passed up as not being close enough to real food.

    There’s a moment where he’s too focused on Murray, on the enormous smile, the cartoon bird laugh, on the little victory dance, and then everything around him is fuzzy. There’s a feeling in him, like a hook has been looped around one of his ribs, like someone has yanked him back hard, his body jerking and twisting to the side in the moment before the fog lifts.

    He sees Grigori. There’s a line of white hot pain, as he struggles to process that he’s seen Grigori, that he’s seeing Grigori, that Grigori has a gun– although, of course, why wouldn’t he?

    … That Grigori isn’t here for him.

    If he was, he’d have to be psychic, but more than that… if he was, he would put a second bullet in him to be sure. 

    “Alexei!” Murray’s voice is distant. Everything is distant. Everything is moving at the wrong speed.

    Everything is slightly warped and slightly terrifying.

    Alexei stumbles, and it’s by some miracle that no one sees he’s been shot in all the excitement, that there’s no panic. Would a general panic be better, worse? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know things now.

    Suppose he and Grigori had spotted each other with no real advantage at play… he doesn’t know that, either. But, in the brief time it takes him to stagger forward, to lose hold of his prize, to fully appreciate what’s happened and what’s happening, he envisions being chased from one ride to another, and past funhouse mirrors, and if it wasn’t for the gun, he supposes he would be fine. He supposes he’d be safe and free. He can just imagine Grigori, shaking his fist, the shout of Alexei! Alexei! Well, just you wait!

    Murray catches him, before he can hit the ground. They both have to know, now– that bulletproof vest…

    Alexei has never bled this much. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in this much pain, either, but it’s hard to remember. His name is the only thing he catches, in whatever Murray is saying, but he goes with him, barely able to keep himself moving… Murray steering and supporting him is enough, though.

    It could be worse, he knows that. If he hadn’t moved, in that moment, and if the woodpecker doll hadn’t been obscuring that movement, it could have easily been fatal. What it is is a graze. As far as he knows, the bullet was at least slowed down enough that it didn’t continue on into someone behind him… but then, he might not have heard if it did. In that moment, someone could have screamed and he wouldn’t have registered it.

    Murray gets him out of the crowd, lowers him to the ground as gently as possible, which does not feel gentle at all, but what would? Some small, childish part of him wants to cry over having dropped his woodpecker. Over the shirt Murray set aside for him being ruined like this. The rest of him is crying a little bit about having been shot, which at least is inarguably a good reason to cry. 

    “Keep pressure on it.” Murray instructs, whipping his shirt off and pressing it to the spreading stain, the jagged tear. 

    Alexei’s hands feel weak when he tries, but he tries. He wants to say it looks worse than it is, but he isn’t sure that’s so. He wants to say the bullet didn’t go in, it’s only shallow, but he’s not sure how shallow, either. Suppose he’s wrong about that? Probably he needs stitches, and in the meantime, Grigori is going after Joyce and her policeman… and Alexei can’t even string the words together to tell Murray it’s him, he knows… 

    He promises to get help, his voice shaky, and Alexei wants to beg him to stay, even though he needs the help, and Murray also needs to warn the others. But he just wants Murray to hold him now. As if that could be enough.

    He’d be dead already if something hadn’t yanked him just that little bit back. Some force…

    Maybe he is enough. Maybe he is the only thing Murray needs , that he doesn’t have and can’t get for himself. Maybe he always was. Maybe it’s all right if he never gets his little leather case back so he can give him the handful of things he had saved, as long as he can just give him himself. If that wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t have moved when he did, that same fuzzing out of the senses in the moment, before he had even registered Grigori there.

    Murray manages to get back to Alexei with Joyce and a recovered Woody Woodpecker in tow. He doesn’t remember picking up Woody, but he assumes that’s down to shock, a little trauma– the plush prize might be a want, yes, but a need?-- in the end, it doesn’t matter. 

    “Alexei…” He steps over his legs, as Joyce crouches down and helps to put pressure over the wound. Positions himself at Alexei’s other side, passing a hand over his sweat-dotted brow. “Hang on, Alexei… we’re gonna get you to the car. Please– just– for me.”

    “For you.” Alexei nods, his voice faint, very pained, but… lucid. “Murray– I am for you, I think.”

    “You are for me.” Murray laughs a little. It sounds suspiciously wet and snotty, and he chooses to ignore that. “You are it for me. Get ready, okay? Brace yourself… Joyce and I are going to get you up on your feet, all you have to do is let us help you, and once we’re up, we’re going to the car, you just… keep moving, we– we’ve got you.”

    “Murray?” Joyce prompts.

    “I need you to help me get him up. We’ll go to the car. Then we’ll get Jim, then… hospital. Little detour. I’m going to count to three in Russian, but it’s going to be very easy for you to follow along, we’re going to lift on three. Tri. Got it?”

    “Got it.” She nods, tight-lipped, white-faced. But… resolute. 

    Murray thinks he likes her, really.

    “Okay…” Murray turns his attentions back to Alexei. “I’m counting us in. Just focus on trying to get your feet up under you, push up with whatever strength you can. Don’t worry about anything else, you have us for that. One… two… three!”

    He gives him ample time on the slow count, to get his legs folded up, to try and get his feet planted. Even if Murray and Joyce need to do most of the work, Alexei’s able to help. 

    They make it to the car– Murray is doing his best to get Alexei settled when he loses Joyce. Which– dammit– she can’t have gone far! She was just helping him a second ago.

    He looks around, spotting her delivering a knee to the groin of a man who looks very much like Hawkins’ mayor. A somewhat tipsy local cheers her on. Which under other circumstances, Murray would love, but he has more on his mind.

    “JOYCE! You have the keys!” He shouts.

    “Jesus, Murray, keep your pants on!” She hurries back over. 

    Considering he’s already lost his shirt, he feels like there’s a joke in there somewhere that he’s just too frazzled to make well right now.

    “We need a hospital!” He snaps instead.

    “Hop first, then hospital.” She guns the engine.

    Murray can’t really argue with that. He cradles Alexei in his arms, his shirt and Woody Woodpecker staunching the flow of blood, and he presses his lips to a sweaty temple. 

    “Soon.” He promises. “We’ll get you real help soon.”

Chapter Text

    The kids are at the mall. Okay. A snag, to be certain, but one they can deal with, Murray will figure out how to deal with it.

    “Okay. Okay.” Murray feels like he’s on overload, his brain’s not firing at the right speed. “Hospital, we say… we say Alexei is a– a visiting chess player! I am his translator, we were… carjacked on our way from Chicago to… doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. He was injured, chief of police drops us off, I… God! He gets a fake last name, he’ll be safe in the hospital, I… have to leave with Jim to file the police report, we go to the mall and explain everything to hopefully the National Guard–”

    “There’s not time for that.” Jim grits the words out. “Mall first.”

    “Excuse me, mall first?”

    “Our kids are right on top of this damn thing–”

    “Oh, now you’re worried about the kids.” 

    “Yes, Joyce, because now I know the kids are right on top of the goddamn gate and the goddamn russkies are hunting them down! Yes, I’m worried about our kids!”

    “What about Alexei, Jim?”

    “Look… Joyce and I will get out at the mall, then you can take Alexei to the hospital.”

    Murray sighs heavily, can’t seem to put all the problems with this plan and the holes in it in order. He lowers his head back down to rest against Alexei’s. It’s a much worse plan, but what can he say?

    “What?” Alexei asks, one hand leaving Woody Woodpecker to grasp weakly at Murray’s wrist. 

    “Their kids are at the mall.”

    “Their kids?”

    “That’s what they think, and… based on what I do know, I think it’s more likely than not. They… Jim says we can drop them off there and then I can take you to the hospital.”

    “No… not possible.” Alexei shakes his head.

    “You’ll last that long. If I have to lay you down on the floor back here with Woody Woodpecker wedged against your wound and drive like a maniac right up to the front door of the hospital, I’ll do it, you’ll make it.”

    “Not possible.” He grits out, as they hit a pothole. “Murray… if there is not help there, you cannot leave– only you can understand my notes. Only you can even hope to talk your way past the guards. Jim and Joyce will get killed down there and there will be no one to get the children to safety. You can’t leave them to take me to the hospital.”

    “Alexei…”

    “I’ll live. I will have to… wait in the car. When Joyce comes with the children, then she can take me to the hospital.”

    “I don’t like it, but… if you’re sure.”

    “I don’t like it either, but you can’t… you can’t leave them there, and the children.” He shakes his head. “I’ll be… I’ll be all right. It’s not bad, just… just the shock.”

    “It seems like a lot of blood to me.”

    “It’s slowing down.” He promises, though the squeeze he gives Murray’s wrist is still weak. “You can’t get rid of me so easily now we’ve met.”

    “When did you suspect?”

    “In the car, I… hoped.” It’s a soft-spoken admission, but Alexei’s voice is steady through it. “And I hoped you thought… maybe me. You asked if my soulmate could be American and I thought… maybe you hoped, too. But it wasn’t enough to go forward on until…”

    He groans, hand leaving Murray’s wrist to motion to Woody– rather, the gunshot wound beneath.

    “I thought about the bulletproof vest, of course, but I thought… I made it through without being shot already. And then… When did you suspect?”

    “All along.” He admits, pressing his nose into Alexei’s curls, ignoring the sweat. “I’ve had a Russian-English dictionary for… maybe a year. Then you show up on my doorstep. Maybe not, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t just– Sorry, about the welcome. I was trying not to think it was possible.”

    “It’s fine. It turns out, it was unloaded.”

    “I can’t believe you brought me ammo.”

    “I can’t believe you didn’t bring it for this.”

    “I told you, safer if I don’t.” He kisses Alexei’s temple. Alexei sighs, and squeezes his wrist again. 

    “When did you suspect?” Murray asks, his voice gentle. Alexei still feels like he’s in hell, a concept he didn’t believe in up until… well, he’s not sure how long ago. He doubts he could focus to look at his watch, not in the dark, and he certainly hadn’t been able to check it when he was busy getting shot. But… Murray provides a very welcome distraction.

    “In the car, I… hoped. And I hoped you thought… maybe me.” He admits. “You asked if my soulmate could be American and I thought… maybe you hoped, too. But it wasn’t enough to go forward on until…”

    He gestures to his torso with a thready little ugh. He can feel when Murray nods very slightly against him.

    “I thought about the bulletproof vest, of course, but I thought… I made it through without being shot already.” Alexei continues. “And then… When did you suspect?”

    “All along.” Murray presses closer, and while Alexei doesn’t think he can physically relax, his soul relaxes. “I’ve had a Russian-English dictionary for… maybe a year. Then you show up on my doorstep. Maybe not, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t just– Sorry, about the welcome. I was trying not to think it was possible.”

    “It’s fine. It turns out, it was unloaded.” He teases.

    “I can’t believe you brought me ammo.”

    “I can’t believe you didn’t bring it for this.”

    “I told you, safer if I don’t.”

    Maybe it’s not a proper first kiss, but it’s unmistakably a kiss, and Alexei is glad to have it. When he’s not in agony, when he’s not gritting his teeth and sweating and bleeding– he is sorry about ruining the bird, Woody Woodpecker. Maybe as a grown man, he doesn’t need a plush toy nearly as much as he needs to stop himself from bleeding out in the back of a car, but still… it was his prize, he won it, and it’s the only thing he even owns now…

    Oh.

    Well, he owns all the things in Murray’s guest bedroom, doesn’t he? Now that they’ve found each other, that room and what’s in it is his. At least… for now. Eventually, he’ll be in Murray’s room, Murray’s bed will become their bed, but while they get to know each other– and certainly while he’s recovering– he’ll sleep for a week (or more) in that guest bedroom, with the things that Murray has saved for him.

    Even so…

    “Do you think we can wash the blood out of him?”

    “Woody?” He feels Murray nod a little. “He might always have a stain. And he’ll need his own stitches. But when this is all over, we’ll give it a shot. You did win him…”

    “And you said the games were rigged.”

    “Well, and maybe they are. But you still won.” Murray kisses his temple again. Alexei hums.

    Murray gets Alexei settled, when they park the car, kissing his forehead this time.

    “Okay.” He cups his face in his hands, making sure Alexei is at least reasonably focused on him. “You’re going to be all right. Joyce… Joyce will be right back with the children, ah… hopefully her oldest can drive the car and she can ride with you and help you… help you keep that pressure, and her family will take you to the hospital. She’ll explain that you don’t speak English and your interpreter will be there as soon as he can. You’re going to be okay. Wait– wait, what blood type?”

    “Does not matter.” He shakes his head. “Universal receiver. Don’t worry.”

    Murray does relax considerably. He’s still wound tighter than he thinks he’s been in his life, of course, but that’s one thing.

    “Okay.” He kisses his forehead again. “I’ll come and find you soon as I can. I– I know we… we barely know each other, but– but I will love you. I just need half the chance.”

    “And I will love you. Given only half a chance.” He smiles weakly. It’s more of a grimace, but… Murray knows what he means.

    “Okay.” He turns to Joyce. “Alexei says he’s a universal receiver, can you remember that for the hospital? He can take whatever blood they’ve got.”

    “Right. And, ah… is the forehead kissing a… Russian thing?” She bites back a smile, sticking close to him as they head into the mall after Jim. 

    “Let’s say for the sake of argument it is.” He shrugs. 

    “All right, all right. Well, if it’s not, that’s fine, too.” She nudges him.

    “You’re all right.”

    “Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

    They fall quiet, as they get to the lower level, where there are… several guards who are at best unconscious, and way more kids than Murray had been expecting. More than will fit in the car, that’s for sure, Jonathan and Nancy among them. The other teens have been through hell, as has Jim’s little girl, but it’s not like any of them look like they’ve been having a good time.

    “Okay… okay.” Murray takes a deep breath. “Well… Joyce, Joyce can take any kids who need the hospital with–”

    “No!” Several of the kids shout– though at least a few of them, including the incredibly injured older boy, look confused by that.

    Nancy fills everyone who was not at the hospital in on just why it’s off the board, and Murray might just scream. And if that doesn’t help, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

    “You… are telling me… it is impossible to take anyone to the hospital?”

    “The one in town’s been smashed, I’m not sure they could take on anyone new even if it was safe to stick around with El..” Jonathan winces. “What El really needs is to get to a secure location way outside of Hawkins, where this thing won’t be able to track her once it does… pull itself back together. Otherwise… There’s nowhere in Hawkins that’s safe and hidden enough for her to recover. Hi, Murray.”

    “Wait, ‘hi, Murray’?” Joyce looks at him. “You know Murray?”

    He shrugs uneasily, and considering everything the fuck else going on, Joyce lets it drop for the time being.

    “Alexei needs to get to a hospital.” Murray tugs at two handfuls of what hair he has left, pacing.

    “Alexei?” Nancy shakes her head slightly.

    “We’ve got some first aid stuff.” Jonathan offers. 

    “Okay. Okay, okay. He– he still needs an actual hospital, but… You, you, with me.” He motions to the pair of them. “And then… I’m hoping you drove here?”

    “Yeah.” Jonathan gathers up an armload of said ‘first aid stuff’, and he and Nancy hurry after him, making for the exit.

    “In a car that can accommodate all of the children?”

    “Nancy’s, yeah.”

    “All right, all right… good. That’s good. You remember the way to my place?” He asks, glancing back to see Jonathan nod. “Good. I’m going to give you my keys, I’m going to walk you through the security system– the only alarms are internal, so there’s nothing to worry about there, you just need to get the locks… What’s the closest hospital that hasn’t been smashed to pieces by a horrifying sounding flesh… thing?”

    “There’s one outside town.”

    “Good. Good. Okay. We… we can do this. Alexei! Alexei, hey… Awake?”

    “I would love not to be.” He groans.

    “He’s Russian?”

    “Yes. He’s the reason we know anything about how to take down this key.”

    “What key?”

    “The– the key is what’s opening their gate. Alexei’s told us how to get to it and how to shut it down for good, and one of these assholes shot him for it.” He gets the car doors open. “Shit, we don’t have enough light… Alexei? Come on, honey, I need to get you inside.”

    “Inside the mall?” He blinks.

    “That’s right. We’re going to do an emergency patch up job on you here, the closest hospital is… not safe. Then they’ll take you to one further away. So we need to do what we can now, inside where there’s a light.” He nods, briefly turning back to Nancy and Jonathan. “Ah… could you kids run ahead and send Jim out to help? He’s going to need to be carried this time. Set up a… surgery area, we’ll see how bad this is.”

    “Got it.” Jonathan nods, and they take off again. 

    Murray takes advantage of the temporary privacy, kissing Alexei’s forehead again, his cheeks. 

    “You’re going to be all right. We’ll carry you in, all you have to do is hold on a while longer, can you do that for me?”

    “Well… if it’s for you.” Alexei says, in an attempt at casual which Murray appreciates.

Chapter Text

    Jim and Murray carry Alexei in, Jonathan moving alongside them to help hold Woody Woodpecker in place. They lay him out on a service counter in the mall food court, where Nancy is apparently scrubbing in. 

    “You’re in luck, when El got hurt, we grabbed pretty much every first aid supply in the store, before we came here.” She says. “Stitches?”

    “I think so. I never got a good look at it. He says it’s not deep, the– the bullet isn’t in him, he thinks it just grazed him, but– there was a lot of blood.” Murray nods, looking at all the supplies they have laid out. The other teenage girl is gingerly dealing with the other teenage boy, dabbing at his cuts with damp paper towels and disinfectant-daubed gauze– now that he’s less covered in blood, Murray thinks it’s Steve Harrington, he of the pool where Barb Holland was last seen. That, though, brings up a lot more questions than answers, none of which Murray is remotely interested in at the moment. “You don’t have any alcohol, do you?”

    “Bottle’s right here.” Nancy nods, picking it up.

    “The kind that you can drink.”

    “Well, we picked up all our medical supplies for a thirteen year old girl, so no.” She levels him with a look. “Just… give him something to bite and hold him.”

    Murray rolls his eyes a little, but he moves so that he can hold Alexei’s hand and block his view of anything that’s about to happen. 

    “They’re going to clean you up and give you some stitches, bandage everything. Do you want to bite down on my wallet?”

    Alexei shakes his head. “I’m not sure it can get worse than being shot. I can take it.”

    “You’re sure?”

    “If I pass out… you can say ‘I told you so’ later.”

    “All right. You can squeeze my hand as hard as you need to.”

    “I already am.” Alexei says. He’s not squeezing very hard. 

    “We’re just going to get this blood cleaned up if we can.” Jonathan says. “Enough to see what we’re doing. I’ll let you know before any actual… stitching, uh, starts.”

    “Just hold on for me. They’re going to see how much they can clean you up and disinfect you first, it’s not going to be pleasant, but– just hold on for me. Alexei– honey, sunshine?” Murray tries out a couple of endearments– not that he knows a long list, and there’s a strong possibility that any he does know sound more like something someone’s grandmother would say… “Just look at me, focus on me.”

    “Maybe, if you keep talking sweet to me.” He chuckles weakly, and then hisses, hand spasming where it holds Murray’s, as the wound is disinfected. “I didn’t think it could get worse…”

    “It’s gonna get worse than that. But you’re going to be okay. It– it’ll be better soon… The safe hospital is outside of town, that’s all, uh… kitten?”

    “I don’t think I am kitten.” Another weak chuckle and a pained wince– though he assumes the wince is for the burn, not the nickname. “... Maybe… little bunny? Bunny... just, little.”

    “Oh? My little bunny?” Murray laughs, free hand taking Alexei’s glasses and then resting on his forehead. “And why is that?”

    “Because… tonight I escaped the wolf. And… because you think I am cute.” He tries to smile. “And… when I have blood in my body again and it does not hurt even to breathe, one more reason I will tell you.”

    “My little bunny, then.” Murray nods. “Just focus on me. Stay with me.”

    “I can’t believe… I am upstairs in the mall… can’t even enjoy it.”

    “All right, we’re gonna start getting him stitched up– it’s, uh… it could be worse. He was right, most of it is pretty shallow. There’s just one bad spot.” Jonathan reports. “The needle’s sanitary, everything’s as good as it’s gonna get until we can get to a hospital.”

    “They’re going to start with the stitches.” Murray translates. “He says you were right–”

    “Of course.”

    “Yes, yes, clever boy. You sure you don’t need to bite down on my wallet? It’s going to pull a lot.”

    A whimper chokes out whatever reply Alexei might have made, fresh tears filling his eyes, and he nods, grip on Murray’s hand a little tighter. He gives him his wallet, and just holds his hand and strokes his forehead. He about half remembers a song his grandmother used to sing, which is about the best he can do, his brain is not working to provide a better distraction. It’s hard to think when Alexei hurts. The whimpering only becomes a heaving, keening thing a couple of times, muffled by the wallet, but it’s awful, and all Murray can do is just… be there, and that doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

    He finally goes completely limp, when it’s all over, just breathes, wallet falling when his jaw unclenches. Relaxes– if it can really be called that– through the process of bandaging him up. 

    “Alexei?”

    Alexei makes a barely audible noise, pained and exhausted. It’s almost swallowed up by the sound of the sink, Nancy and Jonathan washing their hands of Alexei’s blood.

    “You did good. It’s all done now. I’m going to try and get some blood out of your prize, you just… rest a moment. We’ve got to plan out who goes in what car, and how to get you to the hospital. You don’t have to worry about that right now. If you aren’t with Joyce, you’ll be with her son, Jonathan, who just helped get you patched up. Hm? Someone is going to be taking care of you. If… if our military doesn’t come, then… then I’m going to stop the key, everything that you told me. But I’ll come for you, I’ll find you.”

    This time, the soft hum is a little more audible, a little less agonized. 

    “I will always find you.” He adds, giving Alexei’s hand one last squeeze before gently setting it down, and looking around for Woody.

    He finds it on the floor behind the counter, easy enough to take it over to the sink and run some cold water, go through a hell of a lot of paper towels. He also gets as much blood as he can out of his shirt, while he’s at it, hanging it up over another section of counter once he’s wrung it out. It can stay with Alexei… he’ll try a real stain treatment at home, but it looks like the blood has mostly come out. 

    “What’s with the…?” Nancy motions to Woody Woodpecker, her voice soft.

    “He won it, at the fourth of July fun fair.” Murray laughs. It sounds suspiciously like it would rather be a sob. “Right before he got shot. I think… I don’t know, maybe being behind it is why it wasn’t a clear shot? And then we… we wound up using it to try and stop the blood, he had trouble putting pressure on it with my shirt.”

    “Here.” She holds out her hand, reaching for a clean needle and thread from the assembled first aid supplies. It’s black thread. “It’ll leave a scar, but your woodpecker was very lucky he got to this hospital in time.”

    “Oh.” Murray surrenders it, not entirely sure what to do with himself. Not entirely sure what to do with a Nancy Wheeler who is… who is used to dealing with emergencies that most adults couldn’t handle. And who is still so much a girl. Who’s jumping between saving a man’s life and running a teddy bear hospital. Who’s brittle and spiky and kind. Who’s learned to weaponize the way people underestimate her, he knows, and who he suspects will never be anything but blisteringly furious at the fact that they do. “Thank you. He’ll appreciate that. His, uh… his first July fourth isn’t exactly a great introduction to American freedom. It was supposed to be his Independence Day. Turning over all that information… hoping to trade it for citizenship now, and… It’s my fault.”

    “It’s their fault.” 

    “I turned my back on him. Turned him loose at this big… thing, this completely brand new thing, where he doesn’t even speak the language, what was I thinking?”

    “You were thinking it would be fun.” Her voice is soft, and sad, and distant. “You were thinking that it would be fun. And that nothing bad would happen, because it was a party. Fun fair. But you didn’t shoot him.”

    “I just went to get a corn dog. Which he didn’t even get to try.”

    “This is all their fault, not ours. His government… and ours, starting all this Upside Down shit.”

    “How have you been, Nancy?”

    “Mostly… better than this.” She shrugs. “Not ‘normal’, but… more normal. I’m working at the Hawkins Post. I mean… I probably am. Most of the staff got… eaten. So they can’t really fire me. But I’m not sure who’s really going to be in charge. It can’t exactly get any worse than the boys’ club. Going by seniority, Tom’s secretary could be editor now.”

    “Well… figure out what lie you’re going to tell, because it sounds like you’re the new star reporter.” He smiles, tired, but genuine. “You’ll be writing for bigger and better papers before too long. But you might as well enjoy being a big fish in a small pond.”

    “I don’t know if I can.”

    Murray nods slowly. “I get it. You hated them– and they gave you every reason. But you didn’t want them to get…”

    “Zombified and eaten and merged into a monster.” She finishes. “They didn’t deserve that . Tom’s family… I went to school with his daughter. She was nice. Mostly, at least. And they all got… absorbed.”

    “I used to share a desk with someone, my first real newspaper job… His name was Richard, but that wasn’t why everybody called him ‘dick’. I am not going to repeat the things he used to say to me. Kind of a little sport around the office to try and get a rise out of the new guys, but… between us, it was different.” He shrugs. “But you know exactly why you have to grit your teeth and smile instead of filing a complaint. I don’t remember now what kind of car he drove, but I knew it at the time… I know one morning, on the radio, there’s a report about a train plowing through that exact model and color, though, and for one blissful moment, I felt free. And then… I felt bad for feeling free. And then I got to work, half sick, half elated. Ready to dance one moment and throw up the next. Until Dick walks in. Wasn’t even his car. And you know what? I was even happy to see him. Months later I got drunk, called him on the phone, and apologized for being briefly glad he was dead.”

    “What did he say to that?”

    “He said he thought I had the wrong number. And I still hated him, every day that we shared that desk. But… during the couple of hours that he was dead to me, it wasn’t… easy, or uncomplicated. I just mean, it’s normal, if you go back and forth on how you feel about it. It’s damn normal if you don’t sleep easy at night because you had to see it. But what happened to them isn’t your fault either. And if you get ahead because of it, and your life is easier, because of it, that does not make it any more your fault than if you were total strangers. I would like to see you get ahead, Nancy Wheeler. I would like to see your life and your career be easier. I think this town is lucky to have you for a reporter.”

    “Here.” She hands him Woody Woodpecker, lips twitching towards a smile. “Do you ever think about getting back into it?”

    “Sometimes… sure. There are only so many things I think I’m cut out for. Being a private detective… keeps the lights on. But nine times out of ten it’s just taking photographs of cheating spouses. I’d say having a byline would make it too easy for the government to find me, but after the stunt Jim pulled, I am… back on their radar no matter what I do.”

    Nancy just nods. Murray takes Woody Woodpecker back to Alexei, tucks it carefully into his arm, there at his good side.

    “I’m going to confer with the others, make sure we have a plan… I got most of the blood off and Nancy stitched both of you up.” He says, although he’s not actually sure who, between Nancy and Jonathan, had mostly been responsible for Alexei’s stitches. “Just hold onto him right here, dear little bunny… rest. Get better.”

    Alexei mumbles something indistinct, arm tightening just a little around Woody.

    “My Alexei… I am going to love you so much.”

Chapter Text

    “Alexei?” Murray wakes him gently with a hand on his cheek, after a lot of general arguing and plan making and re-making, and more looting than anticipated. 

    Some of said looting was for the kids– he’s not sure exactly how long a lot of people are going to need to lay low at his place, but he knows how much he has in the fridge, and some of those kids haven’t eaten for a day or two. They raided the sandwich place, and bagged up a bunch of fruit from the Orange Julius, and sort of generally agreed that the mall is going to have much bigger problems in the morning. Snagged a couple of giant cookies and soft pretzels. Kids giggling nervously about being encouraged to steal by the chief of police, but you know, only because he might be blowing up the whole building in a minute.

    … Some of the looting was for Alexei. Murray can’t go get his belongings while they’re on this mission, and Alexei certainly isn’t receiving any back pay, and one of the few shirts he has to his name had to be partially cut off of him. Some more clothing basics that Murray had picked out in one of the stores that they managed to get into, while Jonathan and Nancy had made a run to pick up some extra towels and linens and pillows, whatever they can find in the home goods section of the J.C. Penney so they can find places for a bunch of children to sleep, and make places when they run out. 

    “Murray.” Alexei doesn’t open his eyes, but his hand comes up clumsily to hold onto Murray’s arm.

    “We’re going to get you into the car with the kids. Jonathan and Nancy are going to drop you off at a hospital, then they’re taking the kids out to my place to lie low where it’s safe. When we finish here, I’m going to come to the hospital, and I’m going to take you home, and then we’ll send the kids back to Hawkins, when it’s safe.”

    “Promise me? You’ll be safe, you’ll come?”

    “I will be safe. I will come for you.” He promises. They both know there are a lot of factors at play outside of his hands, but… he wants to believe himself, as much as he thinks Alexei wants to believe him. And Alexei wouldn’t have asked him to promise, if he didn’t need some reassurance, or some hope.

    “Murray… maybe, I already love you. A little bit. So come back to me.”

    “I will come back to you.” He nods, closing his eyes a moment, just holding onto this, to the warmth of Alexei’s cheek under his palm, and the slight rasp of stubble on his jaw, just against the heel of Murray’s hand. “Now, Nancy and Jonathan have a cover story to give at the hospital, so you don’t have to worry about anything–”

    “I am worrying about you.”

    “Well… fair. They’re going to back the car up as close as they can possibly get, the kids are putting together a stretcher and they said they’ll be able to move you just fine. So…”

    “So.”

    “Maybe I already love you, too.” He chuckles weakly. “I don’t like letting you out of sight again after last time, but the sooner you get away from here and to that hospital the better, and we should be taking advantage of the chaos those kids caused… But we’ll hurry. I’ll come and find you as soon as I can.”

    “Okay.”

    “Okay?”

    “I believe you.”

    “Good.” He bends and kisses Alexei’s forehead– everyone else is wrapped up enough in their own preparations. The Harrington kid’s… new girlfriend? Coworker? He doesn't have a read on their vibe, he wasn't paying that much attention, but she had looked at them pretty fixedly, earlier, maybe an understandable reaction to hearing Russian after their experience down there. But she and Harrington left with the bratty half-pint and the younger curly-haired know-it-all. No one is watching they say goodbye while they have their own.

    He manages to tear himself away, to join Jim and Joyce and head for the entrance, absolutely no patience for another round of bickering.

    “We have two options here, Jim. We can turn the machine off or we can explode it.” He jumps in, relieved that she’d asked him to, before he hit the point of breaking down and screaming over the both of them.

    “Oh yeah, says who?”

    “Says the man who built it!” He screams a little.

    “Yeah, and we wanna explode it!” Joyce adds. He likes her, he really does.

    “Or else our heroic efforts will be for naught! This is a three-man operation, Jim, not two.”

    “Yeah, three.”

    Jim grumbles, of course. Jim grumbles the rest of the way to the elevator and through Murray’s explanation, everything Alexei had told him. 

    “Just because it wasn’t your plan doesn’t mean it’s a bad plan.” Joyce groans, when Jim does not display any further faith in them.

    “I didn’t say it was a bad plan.”

    “You made a noise.”

    That, of course, is not the end of it. Murray waits for that to be the end of it, he really does, but then they’re talking over each other and he’s stuck in an elevator with them and he is not a man of infinite patience.

    “Children! Children!” He shouts, until they stop. “It is a good plan. A solid B, which is laudable, given the situation and time constraints. Dare I say, if it all goes right… they’ll never even know we were here.”

    It would be ideal. Just a day ago he would not have called himself a man of unbounded optimism, either, but finding your soulmate must have that effect on a guy. Suddenly he feels like best case scenarios can come true. Like it’s possible for some part of this whole affair to go right. Is he too old for fairy tales, for the belief that the world owes him? That there’s some bargain to be struck where because Alexei was shot, now he’s not allowed to be?

    Maybe so. But tonight, he feels lucky.

    The elevator judders to its stop, the door slides open, and there are armed guards. There are armed guards. Okay, there are… armed guards, pointing their guns at them, not part of the plan, but Murray is nothing if not flexible. Hadn’t he promised Alexei he could talk his way out of anything if he was caught?

    “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” He raises his hands, brain spinning through possibilities. Most can be discarded out of hand– these people are in bed with Hawkins’ mayor, but as far as he knows, the mayor has absolutely no authority to send anyone to check in– not here. Sleeper agents previously planted in the area? Sure, but what orders could possibly have brought them? He still has the papers in hand, Alexei’s notes and diagrams. He seizes on that– it won’t hold water for long, but if he can keep all eyes on him, if he’s big and loud and clearly crazy but they can’t shoot him until they know how crazy… how quietly could Jim slide around and knock three people out? Not quickly enough, but what else has he got? “Documents, important documents– for the Lieutenant-Comrade!”

    Oh god, where is he going from here and what the hell else are they going to do when it doesn’t work? For now, the whole thing is so confusing that no one has shot them yet, but it’s a strictly short-term solution and he doesn’t have something better to pivot to, he’s already gone in on this. If they look at the papers, will these guards recognize what’s on them? Would it be good or bad if they did?

    “He called us, last minute.” Murray continues, because he has to continue. Until one of them says or does something he can work with, all he’s got is the ability to continue to bullshit loudly. “Pardon our sloppy appearance.”

    Can he still use the sleeper agents line? That’s the best angle to follow this with, it’s the only angle.

    “Lieutenant? What lieutenant?”

    Murray’s brain takes a lightning round run through every Russian surname he knows and discards all the ones that are famous writers and composers.

    “Lieutenant… Molotov?”

    Fuck, that wasn’t better. That was… the former Minister of Foreign Affairs? More importantly, it was one of those made up names, which means there’s definitely not a Lieutenant Molotov, he’s an idiot. He should have just said Bulgakov, they might at least have to look that one up.

    Jim pushes him– practically throws him– aside before the shooting can start, though he still braces himself for it. He can hear the rapidfire gunshots, but he doesn’t feel any. Is he in shock? Was it like this for Alexei? God, Alexei… he couldn’t even make it to the wires, let alone back up top, and Alexei is going to be waiting in that hospital, unable to communicate…

    And Jonathan’s going to be solely responsible for raising his brother– and what about Jim’s kid?-- and…

    And…

    He hasn’t been shot.

    The guards have, though. A lot.

    “Jim…” He straightens up, and isn’t sure how he doesn’t fall over. He might not have witnessed it, exactly, but still, at no point had he been prepared for a friend to kill three people in front of him… “This is crazy. Jim, I… This… I had it under control.”

    He hadn’t, he blew it with ‘Molotov’, but… he clings to the idea anyway, can’t pry himself off of the idea, that they could have avoided this somehow.

    “Yeah, sure you did.” Jim kneels down and starts peeling a uniform off a still-warm body. Murray thinks he’s going to be sick.

    “What are you doing?” Joyce demands, even though it’s… well, it’s obvious, and it’s admittedly a much better plan, except for the bloodstains and bullet holes. It gives them half a chance they wouldn’t have had otherwise, he just hates it.

    “I’m improvising.”

    “Jim…”

    “What, Murray? You feel bad for the Russians now? What happened to enemies of the state?”

    “I– I don’t know. I mean, they’re…”

    Dead. And it’s not as if they wouldn’t have fired first, given the chance, he knows that, he does, but Murray is used to seeing death as a slow slide. It had seemed fast, sometimes, but it wasn’t sudden. He’s never reported from a war zone, he’s never… He’s seen some shit before, just not like this. And prior to Jim ventilating three people, his experience with violence has been at something of a remove. He’s seen the aftermath, he’s even seen the planning phase, or seen some pushing around, some bricks and punches thrown, but the only time he’d seen someone shot it was his soulmate.

    Maybe it’s made him more sensitive. Or maybe he’s having the only sane response.

    “Come on, get dressed.”

    “Jim.” Murray protests.

    “You’re not talking your way past the dumbest guard they’ve got wearing your daisy dukes, Murray, now put on a uniform.”

    “Yeah, yeah, I’m– I follow. Just– holy moses, Jim, you killed them.”

    “Yeah, you’re welcome. And hey, mister high and mighty, I seem to remember somebody answering the door with a shotgun.”

    “It wasn’t loaded.” He mumbles, pulling a bloodied uniform jacket off of its unfortunate owner. 

    “What’s that?”

    “I said it wasn’t loaded! Happy?”

    “Ecstatic.” Jim rolls his eyes, which feels unwarranted. 

    “I mean, and that was different.” Joyce points out, struggling with her own uniform, expression screwed up with distaste at the task. “That was Alexei.”

    “Right. Alexei, who’s helping us. One of the good guys.” Jim nods. “These people, who were about to shoot you, Murray? They’re the bad guys.”

    “I wish my worldview could be so simple.”

    “You’re the most anti-commie guy I know–”

    “I’m not the most anti-commie guy you know–”

    “Well, not today, you’re not.”

    “I’m literally a socialist.”

    “What? Since when?”

    “Since the sixties, sorry, why are we having this conversation?” He snaps, struggling with the pants and the boots that he has to strip off of his guard. At least he can just… wear them over his shorts, but he’ll have to abandon his own shoes for the boots, which means he’s going to have to steal a dead man’s socks.

    “You are not a socialist, you’re the guy who came to my office with all the–”

    “All the hysterical conspiracy theory bullshit about how there were Russians in Hawkins?” He raises an eyebrow. “Was I wrong?”

    “You were not wrong.”

    “Well, I am a socialist. I mean, I had to re-register as a democrat. To vote in the primaries, and also because I didn’t like being unemployed, and bosses get real twitchy about politics, but the point still stands.”

    “Okay, so you’re an American socialist and you still hate Russian commies more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

    “Yeah, it doesn’t mean I want to watch you shoot them fifty times.” He snaps, finally getting the boots wrangled off the dead man’s feet. He doesn’t have the stomach to take his socks. He’ll live with the blisters. “I don’t hate the Soviet Union because of rah-rah jingoism, I have a complex, generations-old beef with a country my grandparents had to flee. It’s different.”

    “Jeez, okay. You can have whatever kind of beef you want as long as you’re not the one getting shot. That’s all I care about. The three of us are not getting shot. We’re shutting this thing down–”

    “Blowing it up.”

    “Blowing it up, and we’re getting out and going home.”

    “Yeah. Yeah, no, you’re right. That’s what matters here.” Murray shakes his head. As long as they can put this thing to bed for good, as long as he can get back to Alexei, pick him up at the hospital outside town… he can deal with anything else that happens along the way.

    When the teenagers come back in, it’s as a group, all talking over each other. No one comes to collect him onto a stretcher. Alexei doesn’t know what’s happened, but it’s clear the plans have changed. 

    He hasn’t got the energy to do anything about it. He can’t ask anyone. He can’t even really watch whatever they’re doing to make so much noise, because trying to sit up even a little hurts too much. At some point, Murray or possibly Joyce gave him what feels like a folded towel for a pillow, but he doesn’t think he was conscious when it happened.

    A boy comes over, after quite a lot of noise, his hand gentle on Alexei’s shoulder as he explains what’s happening, but no matter how slow he speaks, it’s not as if Alexei understands english. He appreciates it, though– the gesture of it. And a child shouldn’t have to take care of him… but with the other adults downstairs, braving graver dangers, what choice is there but to rely on them? Jonathan and Nancy at least are… older. Still kids, but kids who can drive a car, perhaps work a job when not in school, or take care of their younger siblings… but the others seem awfully young to be saddled with, well… him.

    The boy rejoins the others for another round of whatever they’re doing that involves banging, warping metal. Trying to get something in the mall to open? He can’t imagine what it is they need that isn’t getting into the car and driving. 

    And then there’s a banging and a warping that doesn’t come from the children– it comes from above. Alexei flinches as the skylight shatters– he’s at least set back enough to be protected from that– and the frame around the panes is bent, broken through, and something lands that shakes the counter. He turns his head to see, and immediately regrets it.

Chapter Text

    The adrenaline, at least, is such that Alexei isn’t really thinking about the pain. When the kids haul him up, they don’t have time to carry him out on a stretcher– they get him from the countertop onto a janitor’s cart, and holding onto Woody Woodpecker and Murray’s shirt, still wearing the tattered remnants of his own, he’s wheeled back into the dark, away from the hideous thing…

    Something so large didn’t come through his gate, the rate at which it is opening wouldn’t allow for such a thing… but it is related. Somehow in his bones, he knows it, this is a part of that other world, the one he worked so hard to breach. His own life depended on it, but they couldn’t have known…

    So has it been waiting, lurking, hibernating until this summer, from the time before that a similar gate was opened in Hawkins? He doesn’t know that knowing more would make it less terrifying, but it could hardly make it worse. They scatter, looking for cover as the horrible thing gets its bearings, thrashing about– looking for prey? Alexei stays as dead silent as he can– one of the boys is with him still, now in a different food court restaurant, the other stuck back on the wrong side of the counter with Nancy and Jonathan, the three of them sheltering behind a… car? That’s what they were making so much noise with, a car inside the mall? All of them stuck here they are, afraid to make another move, afraid to make any noise. Alexei can’t see the creature, he has partial cover, between kitchen equipment and a strategically positioned Woody Woodpecker. He can see Jonathan, but only barely. There’s another boy and two girls who had been too far off, who had to scatter in another direction entirely. For a long time, he can’t see them, and then there’s a flash of movement and color, the three of them taking shelter in one of the stores… 

    How they’re going to get them out, he doesn’t know. Possibly, this thing can be killed, but how? When Murray and the others destroy the key, how long before the gate heals, this time? How much will it have to, for this thing to be cut off from its world? Will that weaken it enough, kill it?

    God, but he doesn’t know. This thing, whatever it is, was never a part of Alexei’s expertise. Will the American military ever come? Can they wait the monster out until backup arrives or it senses itself weakening and retreats? Dies? What is it and how does it sense the things around it? 

    It barrels towards the store… one of the letters on the sign is something he doesn’t know, so he couldn’t be sure how to pronounce it even if it was safe to speak, to tell the boy nearest to him where to find the other children. Something-ar. It has a red storefront, he can point it out if there’s ever a moment– the monster reaches through the broken storefront, swings an awful appendage around, but there are no horrible screams, it never comes back out with a child in its grip, so they must be safe still…

    But how long can any of them last?

    There’s only one guard at this junction, which is a relief. He doesn’t look too keen– despite whatever else has happened tonight to raise the alarms, he’s no different from most American security guards in one respect. He’d rather be taking a smoke break than dealing with actual work. He has the unfortunate combination of prematurely gray hair– what Murray can see of it– and lingering adult acne, or possibly it’s just some irritation from shaving, a couple ingrown hairs, but other than that, he looks… perfectly nice, if unimpressed. Nothing sinister about him, no sense that he’d love for today to be the day he gets to shoot someone. 

    “Picking up.” Murray smiles pleasantly, and can’t remember if he should or not. He knows his grandfather was of the opinion, even after decades in the country, that Americans smiled too much for no reason, but he has no idea if that’s a prevailing cultural attitude or just his grandfather’s opinion. Jim should be fine either way, he smiles like he has a toothache, but Murray’s already committed to being a guy who smiles pleasantly.

    But as long as he doesn’t notice the bloody bullet hole, then the smile is fine.

    “Do I know you?” The guard asks.

    “New arrivals.” Murray says smoothly– he’d at least been prepared for that. “Landed last night.”

    “Say goodbye to sunlight.” The man intones, suspicion fading quickly back to ‘unimpressed’.

    “Who needs sunlight when we have one another, comrade?” The words definitely spill out before Murray can think better of them. But if he’s committed himself to being a guy who smiles pleasantly, then isn’t that guy probably just a little overly-friendly?

    Except… it works. The guard is definitely receptive to his charms here. Under the lighting, he couldn’t say as he sees a blush, but it’s there in the jerk of his head, the little chuckle, an uncertain something dancing in his eyes. He likes New Guy Who Smiles Pleasantly, he’s not remotely suspicious.

    “Indeed, comrade!” He says, voice considerably warmer.

    “And a bottle of Stolichnaya.” Murray adds, getting a genuine belly laugh out of the guy.

    It’s nice– he wouldn’t call it flirting, exactly. Not when he’s been rapidly falling for his soulmate after all this time not knowing if he ever would, and anyway, he hadn’t expected the guard to be so friendly, but it’s… whatever the platonic version of flirting is, he guesses. He’s got way less experience with sounding out a stranger to have a drink and maybe become sort of friends with than he does with actual flirting, his pre-soulmate track record with that wasn’t bad, and though it’s been a while since a man has felt the full force of his charm, he does consider himself charming enough. He didn’t really get the chance to give Alexei the full charm experience, he was working up to it when…

    Anyway, whatever it is, it works, and they’re waved through, door thunking shut behind them.

    “Why are you talking so much?” Joyce hisses, the moment he opens up the back.

    “He was nice.” Murray says, offering her a hand– there’s more than that, of course. That talking his way through it meant they weren’t shooting their way through, that he was… relieved, to hit it off with the guy, to get through unexamined, to feel… Well, he doesn’t have the words for it, which is not a problem he has often but it’s a problem he keeps having tonight.

    It had been flirt-ish.

    “He was nice?”

    “He was a nice guard.” He says, because he really doesn’t know how to explain that part, the flirt-ish part. The part where he was not seducing the man in earnest, obviously, but he did definitely charm him, and he’s not sure the guard wasn’t… interested. Murray’s a good judge of that, normally, but he’d been alone long enough before Alexei, and now… Alexei, maybe his judgment there is clouded, he just… he saw potential. 

    There are worse ways to get through the base than by seducing a guard, anyway, and he gets it. This guy has been underground for a while, he’s repressed as hell just to get by, there’s nothing about him that’s so unappealing, but he never gets the chance to feel attractive. If he’s ever taken a risk on another man, it was before coming here, surely. And he can’t help but hope this guy makes it out alive, even if it’s not to anything good… it’s still being alive. 

    “Yeah, I mean, we should probably invite him over after all this is done.” Jim snarks, ever helpful. Well, he doesn’t have to like it, but he was a nice guard, and Murray talked them through a checkpoint without anyone having to get riddled with bullets, so ha. 

    He and Joyce yuk it up, trailing after Murray, who is not in the mood. He finds the spot the children directed him to, easy enough. He’s not thrilled with having to go through the air vents, he’s not thrilled with anything here.

    He is doing this for a reason. They are saving the world, or at least a chunk of the state of Indiana. Probably the world. He is doing this because he promised Alexei, he promised him atonement he can’t pursue any further than he’s already come. Promised to finish this for him, as much as for them.

    Still, the air vent…

    “Ugh… Anyone wanna trade jobs?” He offers. It’s… hollow, he knows. Joyce could navigate the vents just as well as he could, and would probably be far less irritated by the children on the radio, he and Jim could no doubt retrieve and turn a pair of keys, but… Murray’s the only one who Alexei has explained this part of the job to– and explaining it well enough for Joyce to carry it out, even if he could, would take precious time. No, he needs to be the one to yank the wires, it’s delicate work to blow up a machine like this one. 

    He doesn’t have to like it.

    “Bald Eagle, do you copy?” The radio on his shoulder crackles to annoying, annoying life. Murray hasn’t wanted to strangle a child this badly since he was one. “Bald Eagle, I repeat, this is Scoops Troop, do you copy?”

    “Yes, I copy.”

    “Call sign?”

    If it was possible to strangle a child over the radio, Murray would be doing it. Joyce would probably complain, but it’s not like it’s her child. Jim… would feel duty-bound to stop him, but perhaps not strongly motivated in any personal sense, not his child either.

    “Bald Eagle.”

    “Please repeat.”

    Oh, the little shit is enjoying this.

    “Bald Eagle, this is Bald Eagle!” He snaps.

    “Copy that. Good to hear your voice, Bald Eagle. What’s your twenty?”

    He genuinely doesn’t know how the species has continued past the invention of reliable prophylactics, he really can’t fathom it. They’re so… ugh. Children, who keeps wanting them? Sure, sometimes it still happens accidentally, and he guesses you can’t discount the people who are in cults that are big on being fruitful and multiplying. But it’s not just freaks and the careless, normal, sensible people keep having children, often on purpose. And for what? So they can bully a man about his receding hairline in the very moments he is putting his life on the line to save the world?

    Or at least a chunk of the state of Indiana?

    “We reached the vent.” He reports, understandably testy. “I’ll contact you when I need you. Until then, silence.”

    “Roger that, Bald Eagle.” Says the not-silent child. “This is Scoops Troop, going radio silent. Ten-ten, over.”

    “I hate children.” 

    He lowers himself into the vent with a grunt, turning back to Jim and Joyce. 

    “Remember, if anyone says anything, just–”

    “Smile and nod.” Joyce finishes. He’s not sure if ‘smile’ should be a part of it, but Jim’s terrible at smiling and Joyce is– as far as he can really judge– an attractive enough woman, which changes the rules.

    And ‘smile and nod’ is better than ‘salute’, if Jim snaps off a salute first and it’s wrong? So… ‘smile and nod’ is what they’re sticking with. It’s all they’ve got . They won’t have Murray with them to bluff their way past the next guard, but… 

    “Good luck.” Jim nods. 

    They’ll all need it…

    The crawling is murder on his knees, but he guesses it lowers the rate at which he’s got to worry about blisters from the boots, so that’s… something. The vents are reflective enough that a little flashlight goes a long way. That’s something, too. 

    He tries to look on the bright side. 

    Alexei is on the way to the hospital… maybe there by now, he’s not sure how far it is… Nancy and Jonathan know he’s a universal receiver, he’ll be taken care of. They have the cover story, interpreter talking to the local chief of police about the carjacking, that he’ll get escorted to the hospital as soon as possible, until then… all they have to do is keep him alive, get him hydrated, put some blood back into him, maybe redo some stitches… Painkillers, they’ll be able to give him those, at least. He’ll have a bed, and compared to his bunk here, it’ll be comfortable enough. They might see fit to getting the man some jello, that would be… that would be good.

    He can make it through all the crawling if he can just picture Alexei, safe and reasonably comfortable. He should have told them to say, to make sure not to give him strawberry jello, he’ll hate it. But it would… it would probably be orange or lime, wouldn’t it? It seems like it’s usually orange or lime, in hospitals… Alexei, safe and reasonably comfortable. His Woody Woodpecker sitting in the hard plastic chair that Murray will come and occupy as soon as he can, and stay in until it’s time to go home. A little tray with orange jello, which he hopes he likes. Is there anything they can put on the TV for him, this late? Maybe not. Still… he pictures Alexei okay, and he crawls on.

Chapter Text

    “Bald Eagle, this is Scoops Troop, what’s your twenty?”

    It feels both like he just heard from the horrible children, and also like he’s been crawling forever, silence broken only by his own unavoidable banging echoing through the vents.

    “I told you, radio silence!”

    “Yeah, but we have a problem.” The boy says.

    “What kind of problem?” Jim’s voice comes over the line.

    “I can’t get Griswold Family on the radio.”

    “Well maybe they’re out of range.” Murray says, though there’s a clenching feeling somewhere in his gut just the same.

    “They’re not out of range, I built this radio tower to talk to Suzie in Utah.”

    “But does it work?” The little girl’s voice is fainter, but still audible.

    “They’re not out of range.” The boy snaps. “And the lights in the mall are going crazy, so if that’s not something you guys are doing, then– then they might be in trouble. Steve and Robin are taking the car to do recon, but…”

    If he says anything else, Murray doesn’t hear it. They can’t possibly still be at the mall, it’s been too long, they’re on the road. The flashing lights at the mall can’t hurt them because they’re on the road, Alexei is approaching the hospital, the thing that attacked Jim’s little girl, that she got hurt fighting off once already, if it’s at the mall, it’s shit out of luck because they are on the road to the hospital and they’re safe.

    They need to be.

    If anything, the lights going haywire up top means they need to focus and get their job done now before it can get any worse, that’s all. Murray pushes down against the fear that somehow, somewhere, something’s gone off the rails, and he keeps going.

    The fact that he’s crawling and not walking doesn’t feel like it’s saving him from blisters entirely, but he has to believe it could be worse. Has to, because his knees are killing him, his shoulders aren’t doing much better, the heels of his hands are sore, his neck is stiff, and he’s got a hell of a headache coming on, but the blisters could definitely be worse. He clings to that.

    There is a real sense of triumph, in finally emerging from the endless fucking vents. What he’s emerged into may not be beautiful, but it’s not a vent and that’s enough. And all right, yes, the real job is still ahead of him, but he’s ready. He can shake off the weariness just for the sheer pleasure of not crawling anymore.

    “Bald Eagle has landed.” Murray says into the radio, for once not even finding the call sign so irritating. “I repeat, Bald Eagle has landed.”

    He pulls himself out of the vent, which is a lot harder than lowering himself in had been, and has him considering whether or not he should expand on his workout routine. Karate’s great, but it’s really more just… keeping active, and having a couple of days a week that he can count on leaving the house, getting his heart rate up a little in a nice, mostly-predictable way… but it’s not like it does shit for upper body strength. Should he be doing pull-ups? Push-ups? Granted, he very much hopes to not have to crawl through any more man-sized vents after this, but there are a lot of things it could come in handy for.

    He barely has time to get Alexei’s notes back out before Jim is barking at him over the radio, go figure.

    “Come on, how much longer?”

    “I don’t know, I’ve never done this before!” He snaps. 

    Alexei is fine, Alexei is on his way to the hospital, or he’s already there. Alexei is safe. Alexei is not in the mall and the light show upstairs has nothing to do with him, and they’re out of radio range, or the battery went dead, and he’s fine. 

    He finds the wires he needs, as indicated by Alexei’s diagrams and notes. Alexei is fine, of course he’s fine, and Murray is about to do him proud on this. And then he’s going to get the hell out of Dodge before the thing blows.

    “Get ready, lovebirds, you’re almost up to bat!” He radios back.

    It doesn’t take long to get results– flashing lights, the first alarm to indicate that a problem needs to be fixed quickly, a second one someone must have set off after a few wires have been yanked. 

    There’s a circled number on the page that doesn’t seem to correspond to the panel, that Murray doesn’t remember from any of Alexei’s instructions, so he ignores it and focuses on what they went through. Alexei is safe, and when Murray tells him about this, he’ll smile, that one that spreads across his face like the sun, that swallows up his eyes, that makes the world beautiful… he’ll say Murray did a good job, maybe, or… or that he thinks yes, he loves him already. Murray will tease him that he’s only saying that because they’ve given him the good drugs, but he’ll tell him he loves him, too, that already he can’t imagine a life without him…

    A better life, he needs to provide Alexei with a much better life than the one he’s been living. Something not so dismal, something… God, he didn’t come all the way to America and betray his country and save the world– or at least, a small chunk of Indiana– just to live in a warehouse. Which Murray might as well leave behind, anyway, now that it’s been compromised. Might as well find an apartment, or maybe a house– one in the middle of nowhere, he might be able to swing, but it would help if he could go back to having a real job, one that he could support another person on. The way he lives… has worked, for him, because he’s always been prepared for even worse, but Alexei’s had enough of worse in his life. For Alexei… he needs to do better. 

    Do you ever think about getting back into it? He’s thinking about it right now.

    “Murray?” Jim interrupts that thought. “Your goddamn code… is wrong.”

    “What? Are you sure?”

    “Yeah. I’m sure.”

    “Well, I– I suppose it could be wrong.” He admits, feeling more than a little adrift. He’d torn off part of a diagram they no longer needed and written down Planck’s constant during that last planning phase, with everyone organizing and stealing shit from the mall and hugging their children goodbye, he hadn’t double-checked with Alexei because he’d been resting, he’d needed that rest… 

    “How could it be wrong?”

    “The code is a number, a famous number. Planck’s constant, I– I thought I knew it.” He shrugs, as much as he can shrug when he’s speaking into a radio attached to his shoulder, and every part of his body hurts. 

    Maybe he and Alexei can both sleep for a week. Maybe

    “Wait. Wait…” Murray looks back at the page, the circled number that hadn’t been part of his instructions. Alexei wrote it down for him. He can’t even be pissy about the lack of faith in his having said he knew it, because… well, clearly he didn’t. “Okay, try six six two, six oh seven, oh oh four.”

    He doesn’t think he breathes until Jim reports back that he’s got it. At which point he continues on with the instructions Alexei left for him, ensuring the thing is going to be well and truly done. 

    Definitely going to sleep for a week after this… and after that, he can worry about a fresh start, something better for him and Alexei.

    There’s pounding on the door, shouting outside, which means they know there’s a problem in this room that needs fixing, but as long as they can’t get in… just a couple more things and it’ll be too late for them to do anything to fix it, just one more thing and it’ll all be over…

    “Murray, you all set down there?” Jim radios back again.

    “All set, but I’ve got some company which I’d love you to obliterate.” He says. ‘Love’ is perhaps not the word, but… maybe he has to bow to Jim’s previous wisdom– anything that gets the three of them back out of here alive. And… killing the angry, armed guards who will very much kill Murray if they catch him committing an act of sabotage is perhaps actually quite necessary.

    “Will do. Hang tight.”

    He might have to take the vents again after all… his knees are already protesting, but how long is that door going to hold?

    He can hear whatever’s going on with the key outside– feels a little sorry he never actually got the chance to look at it. To see Alexei’s work in action, even if it’s a work they agreed needed to be destroyed. To see what the gate looked like, just out of sheer curiosity, which he guesses has always been at least half his problem. But, when the pounding and the screaming all stops, he ventures forth, makes his way past the smoldering, sparking hulk of the thing Alexei built– Jim finds him, grabs him and yanks him the rest of the way up the stairs where Joyce meets them, and then…

    Fuck.

    Murray’s never seen the man’s face before, but he knows exactly who he’s looking at. The man who just burst onto the observation deck is the man who shot Alexei. 

    The thing is still rooting around in the store– Alexei can see when Jonathan dares moving to get a look at it. He might be able to work out, from how fixated it is on that space, where the missing three children are, then. What he and Nancy are going to do about it is still beyond him, it’s massive, and if the landing it made coming through the roof didn’t faze it, no hit they can land is going to do much… even if the car they’re hiding behind was operational instead of turned onto its side, ramming it might do more damage to the car than to the creature. And one of those awful arms could smash straight through the windshield like that.

    Alexei turns to check in on the boy currently hiding out with him in the food service area, and he sees him pulling out a slingshot. Alexei shakes his head, wide-eyed, but it’s not like he can say ‘what are you thinking, crazy child? That will never work, we’ll all be killed’, and it’s not like he can understand whatever the boy whispers. It’s too brief to be the outlining of a plan– something in the vein of ‘it’s okay’, though… it’s not. How can it be? He watches him creep from the cover of the counter to the cover of the car with the others, feeling even more desperately afraid than he thinks he’s ever felt. Getting shot had happened so quickly there was no time for dread, the worst he could fear was whether he’d survive once it already happened. Now he has time to imagine all the possible ways he could fail to survive what happens next, not to mention the children he’d be in no state to protect even if he weren’t injured…

    But he doesn’t take aim at the thing– he pops a balloon, over by another store, and the noise draws the monster that way, taking its attention off of the other children, off of all of them. 

    The kids vault over the counter and grab Alexei and the janitor’s cart, moving deeper into the kitchen, through a back door and onto the corridors used for employees, for moving deliveries in and out… 

    “Shit.” Alexei groans, when they come to a stop at a staircase. But Jonathan and Nancy heft him up and get him onto his feet, and he manages. He’s slower and shakier than he’d like to be, but he just keeps taking one step and then another, grits his teeth and clings to Woody Woodpecker in one hand and Murray’s shirt in the other, his arms around their shoulders, and he manages.

    The cart clatters up behind them, between the two boys, and once they’re at the top of the stairs, Nancy and Jonathan get him back up onto it and the boys keep him from falling off as they zoom down the hallway, stopping just short of slamming him into a door before Nancy can get it open, and they’re back out in the mall and heading for the exit, their car parked up by the upper level– maybe there was no parking down by the lower level, and that was why they all came back in, or maybe they had seen that thing outside and thought they could lay low until it passed them by, he’s not sure… but, well, either way.

    The boys get him into the back of the car this time, lying down with his knees up, he’s on a sleeping bag, he has a pillow… he has Murray’s shirt and Woody Woodpecker held tight in his arms, and he can hear the slam of the back, and then the doors up front, he can hear the sputtering of the engine and a lot of shouting from the boys, and then a crash, and all he can do is trust that if there’s anything he’s going to need to know, they will tell Murray later, and when Murray comes to get him from the hospital, he’ll fill him in. 

    The back opens, and he expects to see the other three children, since the boys are up in the backseat and there’s not enough room to squeeze five kids in one row– plus one girl is injured, so at least she would probably need to lie down with him amid all the towels and pillows and blankets and such. 

    Instead, it’s a boy and a girl Nancy and Jonathan’s age, and the car peels off with them instead, the creature shaking the ground and screeching after them as they speed away.

    “Who…?” He starts, but he lets himself trail off. What’s the point?”

    “I’m Robin.” The girl says, and points to the boy, who might not have been shot but still manages to look like he’s in worse shape than Alexei. “Steve.”

    “Alexei.” He waves. “Hello.”

    “Hello. Ice cream.” She says, which… is entirely nonsensical, despite at least being in Russian. She points to the little ice cream cone on her shirt, and the boy asks her something in English, which she answers in kind. 

    “What about ice cream?”

    She just nods, and gestures to the patch again, the nametag.

    “Work… ice cream, Starcourt.” She manages, clearly casting about for any other words she knows that might be useful. “There is now… short trip? Uh…”

    She throws in an English word, pointing between Alexei and Steve.

    “Hospital?” He suggests. 

    “Hospital!” She nods, pointing to the bruising on Steve’s face specifically, and then miming being sick to her stomach, and then miming… maybe a broken arm? “Hospital?”

    “Yes, hospital.” Alexei nods, relaxing. “Short trip to the hospital, good. You are… learning to speak Russian?”

    She shrugs helplessly at that, and the back of the car falls silent, until it’s too silent, too smooth. So the creature can tire, at least, if it’s not following them so closely. Except whatever Steve says is concerned, not relieved.

    Jonathan turns the car around, and Alexei slides a little, hissing in pain as he collides with the two teens in the back– nothing comes into contact with his gunshot wound, at least, but still.

    “Why are we going back?” He groans, but that’s more than Robin is able to answer.

    The hospital is beginning to feel like some kind of joke, at this point, a promise unlikely to be fulfilled. 

    It seems like they really are just going back to the mall. Of course– they left three kids there, they… they do have to go back. 

    When they come to a stop, everyone piles out, leaving Alexei there in the back. All he can really do is wait, and he’s not sure how all of them are going to squeeze into this car– surely they all have to be in the car?-- with the shape he’s in and the injured girl besides. They can fit one more kid on the bench seat, with the other sleeping bags and towels and such wedged under it. But that still leaves Robin, Steve, the injured girl, and one more child in the back with him, which means some of them are going to be piled up into each other…

    Maybe he can lose consciousness, and the trip to the hospital will feel quicker?

    Jim fires, which would be great if he hadn’t already shot off so many rounds that he empties the damn gun without putting the giant assassin down. Murray pulls his stolen sidearm, and does not do much better– so sue him, he’s never had to shoot a man before, he’s never carried a gun with actual bullets in it before, and he feels very weird about shooting a man now, though after what happened to Alexei, it wouldn’t have kept him up at night if it had dropped him. 

    It slows him down, though, and that’s enough. He’s off-balance when he lunges at Jim. Jim grapples him, Murray hits him from behind– a few times, in fact.

    They’re still struggling with him when the room floods with soldiers– American soldiers.

    “Don’t shoot!” Murray throws his hands up. “We’re Americans! Except for this asshole.” He kicks the guy for good measure.

    Giant assassin gives up, when it’s a room full of soldiers with guns, instead of a cop, a reporter, and a single mother who are all out of ammo, and Murray sags with relief as the man is cuffed and escorted out at gunpoint.

    The man who sweeps past them, leaving the observation deck for the catwalk around the key below, he’s not dressed like a soldier, or even a suit. He’s a scientist.

    “Hey.” Murray takes a couple of unsteady steps after him, feels himself growing steadier. “Hey, you.”

    “Mister Bauman.” The man does not turn, from his contemplation of the thin, glowing line of the closing gate. “I see you’ve been busy. I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

    “Yeah, well.” He pushes down his unease at the fact that this man knows his name. This man who is with the government, who had to have been with Hawkins Lab… 

    “Looks like we missed the party.” He chuckles dryly. “Of course… I guess we would have been here faster, if we hadn’t had to close up shop in Hawkins.”

    “No.” Murray shakes his head.

    “No?” He does turn, at that.

    “No, you do not get to guilt me. Okay, so you know who I am. You know what I had a hand in. Maybe you wanna cry about it. But I am not sorry. We did this ourselves, we were fully prepared to do this ourselves, we shut this whole thing down without your help, so no, I’m not sorry. I have no reason to be sorry. And if I had to shut your operation down all over again knowing what I know today I would do it in a heartbeat.”

    “Mister Bauman…”

    He was ready to at the time, because of Barb, because of Nancy and Jonathan, because of the truth. And that was all before he really saw Jim’s little girl, the one who escaped from that lab. The photo he’d had at the time was… not enough information. 

    “No. I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

    “It may not seem like it to you, but trust me, the US government has its reasons–”

    “You tattooed children!” He shouts, gets up in the man’s face before he can even think about the possibility of other armed soldiers and the consequences of his actions. “And you performed experiments on them!”

    “Well, that was…”

    “You. tattooed. children. And. performed. experiments. on. them.” He jabs a finger in the man’s chest. “You are not the good guys here.”

    “That was… something Doctor Brenner did, yes.”

    “Did you work with Doctor Brenner?” Murray demands. “Did you know, did you find out? And when you found out, did you do anything other than kill him with your bare hands?”

    “Mister Bauman–”

    “Doctor Owens–” Joyce starts, from somewhere behind Murray and in another world entirely.

    “Doctor Owens?”

    “Yes, that’s me.” He smiles, some awful parody of pleasant. “And no, I did not, ah, kill Doctor Brenner with my bare hands. They frown on that–”

    “But not on the experiments on children? Those are okay?”

    “I wouldn’t say ‘okay’--”

    “But you didn’t stop it.” He shakes his head. 

    “These weren’t ordinary children.”

    “Were you an ordinary child, Doc? See, see, I wasn’t. I wasn’t an ‘ordinary’ child, I mean, depending on who you asked.” Murray does not smile, there is nothing even parodically pleasant, but he bares his teeth just the same. He sees something tighten across Dr. Owens’ face. An understanding that comes close to guilt and can never come close enough. 

    “Depending on who you asked.” He nods. “I didn’t have psychic powers. I’d wager neither did you.”

    “Right. That would have made it okay.” He sneers. 

    “I don’t need you to like me–”

    “Ha!”

    “Or any of the programs run by Hawkins Lab– and it was a lot more than psychic children.”

    “Who you tattooed. And performed experiments on.”

    “My work was more–”

    “You were complicit. There is nothing you can say to justify that.” He takes a step back. “There is nothing you could do, with the rest of your life, however long that may be, to fix it, to atone for it. Nothing. And if I thought the world would believe me, I’d tell them the whole story.”

    “I am… doing what I can.” Owens says. “Whether or not it’s enough. And I don’t think you will. Not for my sake, and not because it sounds crazy… but because on the way in, my men loaded a Russian national into a helicopter, to be evacuated to the nearest… intact hospital. And he mentioned your name. Right.” This smile is small, tight, and somehow even worse than the one trying and failing to be warm and personable. “I see he sounds familiar.”

    “He should have been in the hospital by now– where, where did you–?”

    “In the parking lot. I’m guessing you three may have promised something, in exchange for… all this.” He waves a hand at the smoking wreckage, the closing gate. “I’m guessing you like being able to keep your promises.”

    “Are you threatening him? After everything he’s been through and everything he’s lost to save this town, save all of us?”

    “No, Mister Bauman. I’m not threatening him. He is going to be given quality medical care on Uncle Sam’s dime. He’s certainly not going to be sent back to the Soviet Union.”

    “But?”

    “But… where things go from there, that’s either in my hands or it’s out of them. I can promise that whoever might take my place if I was forced out of my position in disgrace won’t hand him over to his former comrades, but beyond that? I am only in a position to help him, if I am in a position to help him. I think we understand each other.”

    "You’re banking a lot on Murray caring what happens to the guy.” Jim says, from that other universe beyond Murray’s shoulder, somewhere next to Joyce. 

    “I’m banking a lot on his being a man of principles, and the man we evacuated to the hospital certainly seems to think he can count on him.” He shrugs. “Hopper, Joyce. You’re familiar with the paperwork, I’ll get you both set up. And Mister Bauman, let’s talk about what it’ll take to get you to sign an NDA.”