Hehe, the last part made me giggleđ¤
Something something about John telling Nik to pick up some alcohol at the store, something like a bud light and all. Nothing too fancy, something to chase down peanuts during game season.
Nik comes back with a crate of red wine from France. Same day delivery apparently.
John face palms, and wonders if it'll be too late to argue with Nik.
Football night has now turned into a mix of watching the telly and swatting Niks hands away from his tits.
Mmm, immortal Nik losing his world while still living in a world he no longer wants to be in. Delicious.
WIP cause I've finally accepted I'm never finishing this
I'm back with more immortal Nik and mortal price guys. It's actually so fun. I have so many ideas.
Bitterness.
This is the only word that Nik could use to describe everything in his life.
There's a bitterness in watching the man you've spent an eternity with rot and waste away.
A reminder that time, no matter how fragile it is, still existed.
There have always been a few people, people who find themselves unfortunate enough to be forgotten by time and death themselves. Immortal beings, where reality wraps around them, creating an illusion of an ageless, timeless being. Lost to time, lost to humanity.
For a man who had seen empires rise and fall in centuries, who have survived through senseless times of cruelty, where the only thing that mattered was the chance to survive, Nikolai still certainly hasn't gotten the immortality act down to a T.
He slips out sometimes, reveals some secrets from tongues long forgotten, talks about people long dead and gone, their body returning back into mother nature's loving embrace. He still is human at the end of the day, and he still needs someone in his life.
He chugs down the bitterness in the back of his throat and drives on anyways.
It's a 5 hour drive to Manchester from London, but the exhaustion seems nothing compared to the end goal. Nik carries on, letting the DJ on the radio wash over his thoughts, a picture of a love now dead hanging over the windows.
LOL WHAT?? TS GOT ME DEADđ¤Łđ¤Ł
John, who snuck out to the patch of forest behind base to smoke a cig and take a swing of the Guinness he was not supposed to have, seeing how he had just gotten discharged.
Nikolai, who was hiding out behind a tree, with the sole express purpose of making sure a certain John Price doesn't sign his life (and liver) away so close to his retirement.
Laswell who was in the forest to video call with her wife, because she can't do it in base. (Least the rest of 141 starts calling her wife their other mother)
John stumbles over his footsteps, half drunk, causing Laswell to throw a rock in John's direction. Nikolai ends up tackling Laswell to the ground.
They both watched as John tripped over the rock Laswell threw, face planted himself on the floor and promptly started snoring.
The video Laswell had on file contains the maniacal laughter of Laswell as Nikolai grows red and stands up, tending to his very passed out husband instead.
Youâre good at this âLetâs make Goober cry todayâ thing, keep it up stinkerđđž
On another note though, itâs refreshing to see someone write about the ups and (crashing) downs of aging and the troubles that come with it, especially how bad it is for those whoâve served or been through something traumatic.
Some wouldâve never thought theyâd see the day where big, strong, capable Captain Price would be reduced to a fragile old man, and yet here we are. I think it shows that life is as unpredictable as it is unfair, and anything can happen to anyone, even the strongest of people.
Itâll break you down like that, and yet the world keeps spinning.
There's a certain kind of pain from watching your loved one rot away in front of your eyes.
Watching the man you've spent 50 years together with grow old and waste away, bits and parts of his brain eventually devoured by age, whilst you stay immortal, standing still in the sands of time, your skin flawless and perfect.
How could you grief a man that's still alive anyways? How could you celebrate life when the man you've sworn to heaven and hell is actively degrading in front of you? Sitting in a wheelchair with a ventilator following him around?
The pain seems bone wrecking when Nik stands in front of Price, and watches the man's milky eyes take him in fully first before finally recognising him. The way John stutters over his name, how his chest heaves with even the most simplest of words. (Like muttering a loved one's name) He watches as John stays quiet, allowing Nik to push him around the garden, occasionally stopping down to watch the flowers and ducks.
John's time on Earth was most definitely limited. Unlike Nik, who had seen the face of several wars and great empires rise and fall, John will soon vanish with time, left as another body for Nik to mourn six feet under dirt. His body will eventually decompose, and serve as fertilizer for the land around him.
Nik watches as John slowly gets up, only to nearly damn collapse from the lack of use of his muscles, saved by Nik hastily holding him. It reminds him of how little time he has left, how eventually he would have to remember John's face from a photo instead, how he already needs videos to remember how John had sounded.
The next time he visits, John takes a little more time to recognise the face of his lover, still never questioning how Nik looked no older. He stays for the whole day, wheeling John around before letting him walk around with a walker.
The next time he sees John, it was in the picture of a younger face smiling at him, etched in stone. Bundles of snowdrops flower (the favourite flowers of a man he'll never see again) spread around his grave.
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It's been hours since the mission had gone rogue.
Hours since Price saw the rest of his team.
Hours since he heard Nik's voice lose control over the intercom, hours since he heard the choking of blood over his intercom.
The room was cold. The chair he was sitting on was poking into his skin. Price could feel the water dripping down his back, making it hard to dissociate. Not that he could anyways. The rope was digging into his skin, and the wound in his thigh would only render him useless if he decided to run.
The room was spinning from the blood loss, and he had nothing within reach to defend himself. And he couldn't see much without the lights, just vague shapes and figures, nothing to access the danger levels by.
They stripped him down hours ago, leaving only underwear to cover his bits. He had watched as the men forced Simon on the ground, tearing the mask off of him, if just for the ability to humiliate the great 'Ghost' by stripping down the only thing that protected him and his identity.
He didn't know where Gaz was, nor Soap or Simon. The last he heard of them were horrified screams from Simon after a bang.
He desperately hopes none of his team is dead.
The gods above him seem to disagree with him.
A few more hours of waiting, and a click. The room instantly filling with light. It blinded him, if anything. Though seeing the room he was in filled with medical supplies did nothing to calm his nerves. A voice flooded the intercom above him as a face too familiar was pushed into the room across from him.
"Mr Price, I must admit. Your team was... Most definitely trained, no? Like dogs on a leash."
Oh.
Oh.
His sweet beautiful Nik. Reduced to something sub human from torture. How did he end up looking like that?
He wants to reach out across the room, to hold the ruined body of his loved one close.
He could tell Nik was still alive, if the way he was still shouting slurs to the men was anything to go by.
But he looks so, so much worse. His hair was shaved off, a large ugly stamp on his head. Labeling him with a number rather than his name. Price noted that Nik too, was naked, though any relief from shared shame was replaced by the horror from the marks decorating Nik's body.
His body, covered in lashes and blisters. His fingernails were bloodied and worn out. Price could see Nik stumbling in the room, the wound on his knees made Price gagged.
Price wasn't too sure how Nik had survived all that and was still faring, still cursing and spitting on one of his captors foot as he watched across from him.
He watched as the men buckled Nik down, strapping him into a chair similar to his as they both stared at each other's.
And suddenly, any rage or disgust in Nik's eyes softened into something human, something akin to adoration, to love.
Although love might have just cost Nik his whole bloody world.
Because the men above saw this, took notice of this, saw how Nik calmed down upon seeing Price (mostly) unharmed.
It's been several hours, or days. Price really couldn't tell, fading in and out of consciousness before buckets of icy cold water were tossed on him.
He's been dehumanised, degraded, destroyed over and over again, before molded back into something vaguely human shaped by the hands of his captors.
He couldn't tell what was happening, not the time, not the place, not the faces in front of him.
All he really could make out was Nik's constant look of horror whenever he looked over to him, his face twisted into something akin to agony.
Price can't tell how he felt.
He felt numb, if anything.
The constant pain from being dehumanised was almost impossible to handle.
He knew he was covered in his own vomit, or blood. Or something that was human in nature. Perhaps shit. Perhaps pee. He can't tell.
He knew he stink, and that was it.
He knew the times when the men would leave him alone, giving him some moment to regain himself before dumping hot water on his back, worsening the wounds already there.
Price couldn't tell what the men wanted. Because they seemed to be torturing him for the fun of it. For the ability to see him crumble down like ash in their hands.
Despair was the only thing he could make out, the feeling of losing himself amidst the pain and tears. The feeling of hopelessness as he finally tore into the rotten raw meat in front of him.
He'd shared rooms with rats, with cockroaches, with bugs that nip at him any chance they got.
And what's worse, at some point, he stopped taking notice of Nik across from him.
Nik could only watch as he sees Price gets tortured in ways he had only dreamt of. A lash there, a little waterboarding there, a bit of isolation, and a little testing of drugs, along with the rodents in his room.
He watches as Price stares at him, helplessly as the bastards pump him full of something, and watches as Price wakes up, crying and sobbing before suddenly laughing manically, banging himself on the shit stained walls.
Nik watches as Price was made to eat something flesh like, raw meat. Before being told it was a rat from the sewers.
Nik who could only watch as his love turned into something...disturbing, something inhuman, something that's more animal than man at this point.
Nik who had to watch on, as Price loses himself.
Rage and fury gave way to desperate screams for them to stop, to do whatever they wanted to him instead.
However, the gods above are nothing but cruel and vile creatures, creatures who must have created the human race just to laugh at them, given them emotions and hopes and dreams just for shits and giggles.
Because Price hadn't moved for over a day since the last time they forced moldy bread down his throat.
Mhm, so when I tell my lawyer about this little post, what will your defense be?
The idea of Price going from fine in the morning, nothing wrong, perfect day, to dead by the evening from something no one could prevent is so gut wrenchingly horrific, itâs one of my favourite ideas to do with NikPrice.
The confusion Nik would be left in, the whirlwind he would go through. The funeral, the planning of said funeral. Having the team find out, Laswell too. His family, if he even had any. Everything descending into chaos within Nik, the questions that need answering, that he will never receive.
Those blue eyes closing for the final time in front of him fearful and guilt-filled, itâs a memory forever burned into his mind, the paleness of them, forever haunting him.
No because like imagine Nik and Price just went out the day prior.
Everything was amazing, with no signs of what was to come. Lovers falling into bed together, hands familiarising themselves with sun kissed skin.
Then the next morning, John wakes up throwing up blood. Too much blood. It paints the sheets red, staining the mattress below as Nik panics. A peaceful morning, turned into chaos as John falls over from his feet, unresponsive as Nik shakes him. He didn't wake up when the ambulance came, didn't wake up as Nik sees him wheeled into the emergency room.
Hours later, and Nik stands there in the lobby, desperately hoping for whatever it was to pass, for the doctors to come out and declare that it was just a wound that John could get over. (He would be fine, right? I mean, after everything he's been through, the fact that he's a captain in the SAS accounts for something, right? Nik assures himself, calming the ringing in his ears)
Everything seems too loud, the clocks, the chattering, it buzzed like wordless drilling into his ears. He hears people around him, sobbing, laughing, he wants nothing more than for them to shut up. The doctors are chattering now, something about losing too much blood. He stands there, helpless as he sees people rushing in and out. Nik wants to go home, to lay down on silk sheets with John in his arms. He wants John to be safe, he wants to cry, and he wants to yell. He wants a lot of things right now.
But maybe God is nothing but an unfeeling mass, capable enough to give humans hopes and dreams before crushing them down with malevolence in his fist. As the ringing in his ears comes to a stop, he could focus on the two way mirror in front of him. It has been an hour? Two? The clock was still faintly ticking in the background, though he could only focus on John in front of him. Broken, helpless, hooked up to far too many machines. John seems...wrong... Too pale. Too green, too... Everything. He didn't come back right, what went wrong?
He stood there, hands trying to reach into the room, to hold John against him, to ensure himself that he'll recover. The words of the doctors slips into his mind as mindless chatter. His brain barely processing the few details it could make out of.
Total organ failure. Spurred on by his drinking and smoking habits. Hereditary. Barely an hour to live.
No, no, this can't be right. John was healthy just days ago. He should be fine, should have been fine. Why is he dying? Why is he laying there on the bed, rotting in front of his eyes??
It took him an hour to process the news, and an hour for the machines to fall into a synchronized rhythm, a flat tone as doctors whizzed past him into the room, trying to fight the grim reaper for whatever time he had left.
When he comes to, he was sitting in John's apartment. Three things came to mind as he slowly sits up:
1) John was gone
2) His throat was dry
3) John was fucking gone. Not away on a mission, or somewhere in a pub. But gone. Gone forever, to be buried 6 feet underneath the dirt, to be remembered for however long people around him lived until he became nothing but another headstone in the cementary. His body rotting somewhere.
He didn't leave the apartment for days afterwards, his voice barely keeping it together as he breaks the news to people John was close to, Laswell, the 141, Farah, some relatives, his old captain... The phonecalls seems endless, the sounds of people crying over the phone and condolences merges into one entity in his mind, shoving themselves down his throat until he couldn't breathe.
The pain still vast, endless. With so many things to do on the way, funerals to be planned, people to meet. It had barely been a week and he's already tired. Like a child left without any answers, it hurts in parts so deep in him, impossible to reach, impossible to carve out.
John's pillow was still sitting there, stained with brown crusted up blood. The bedsheets that would never be warmed again sits haphazardly on the floor. He feels cold, empty in parts of his heart that he doesn't want to move. His limbs feels numb, and everything else seems so boring now that John wants beside him.
He misses the mornings with John, misses the smell of his cologne when it was still clung onto his pillows. He misses everything about John's from his scarred skin to the tattoos that decorated his body.
Nik doesn't stay in John's apartment now, with too much memories there waiting for him. The pain of a love lost, the pain of memories not yet made too much for him to bear. The pain that there was nothing else to remember John by now, nothing but the tattoo on his wrist and the home he had abandoned.
Months past, and Nik grows a little older. He refuses to think about how John would have gone grey now, how he would have pinched Nik for teasing him.
No, instead he reverts back into his old ways.
Nights spent in hotels with another person next to him, desperately trying to fill the void that John had left, clinging onto whatever remains of John in this world.
He gives up after one night, stands at the edge of a rooftop. The cars below him whizzed by, he could feel the wind on his face from up here. Blue eyes still haunting him from some crevices of his mind. He doesn't intend to jump, to just watch the skies above. Familiar cologne wraps around his body like a snake, the only remnants of John he could carry around with him.
The night sky seemed so inviting when he falls.