Chapter Text
Landon isn't a martyr.
The last thing he'll ever do is risk his life for anyone, especially an enemy.
But his body does that godawful thing where it moves before he can really think, an impulsiveness that doesn't make any sense but he does know that no one else is allowed to just kill Jeremy Volkov without his consent when he wasn't done with him yet.
Landon can find other people to entertain him, but he just moved like there was something of value on the line.
So he's riddled with the bullet on a nonlethal area while Jeremy Volkov isn't shot anywhere vital because that sniper had been trained to end him efficiently. The guards were scattered after that to track the person, while Jeremy was crushed under Landon's weight. There are screams from all directions that are a cacophony to his senses and echo faintly as the world deafens for a split second when the bullet pierces his flesh.
"Fuck," Landon says through gritted teeth."That hurts so fucking bad. I'm going to murder you myself, so they know how it's done. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
He's pissed.
Not panicking because he doesn't panic but he's pissed because of the white-hot pain.
The ragged breath he takes burns. And then other places burn so hotly he closes his eyes but a hand lands over his shoulder and squeezes. "Stay conscious," Jeremy says, voice a little frayed. "You hear me–"
Landon's annoyed with him and growls in frustration but he opens his eyes and tries. It's not like it's a serious wound but he realizes that as he shifts, tries to, there's no way for him to move because his leg is bent at an awkward angle. The realization makes the pain register more intensely than ever.
A yell is caught in his throat because he tries to swallow it down. He'll be composed even while bleeding out and his leg broken. He tries to so he sweats from the effort.
Black dots in his vision and his body shakes so hard despite the tension in his muscles locking up from being in pain.
Then, he succumbs to it.
Why should he have to suffer anyway?
"What?" Landon asks.
Fucking tired of being looked at.
The man is looming like some frankly ridiculous gargoyle in a white-shirt that shows his ink off. Over his biceps, the length of his arms and even through the cotton whenever it ripples over his skin with every move.
The shirt is tight on him. And Landon's in the hospital without any sort of attention of that variety so maybe he's easily aroused.
But it has little to do with how subjectively, delusionally attractive Jeremy Volkov is at the moment.
Landon's eyes haven't caught sight of much but his doctor and the nurses, and his family that visit.
Then, Jeremy Volkov who visits after the hours that are appropriate since he sneaks in very late when no one else is around to just stare at Landon's crumbled form on the bed. Landon's discharge is soon, but he has to wait another boring week. But he feels fine. He can move around at least without feeling like his sides are being ripped open or he's going to lose his balance with how hard it is to adjust to hopping around on one leg.
A slightly wrong movement and the pain bleeds right through his muscles to so it feels like a stab wound.
His whole body is suffering through being put through a meat grinder it feels like, because pain in one small place has his entire body is reacting like it's being shredded apart.
Day by day it becomes more bearable and the pain relievers have helped but only temporarily. There are aches in his joints and his hand flops with no coordination. His wrist isn't broken, thank fuck but his arm is in a sling from being shot. The bullet had passed through and fractured a bone, at least no nerves were severely damaged or he would not have been so nonchalant about this. Eight weeks. Doable. Really.
But his leg had broken from the impact of him falling wrong on it.
A ridiculous way to sustain an injury in his opinion. No true gritty story, just "Yep, I tripped. But hey that was after I got shot."
Jeremy could have ended up in a casket if Landon hadn't shielded him.
It wasn't some heroic act either because Landon thinks about it and realizes if he'd known it'd hurt this much, then he wouldn't have moved at all.
That's the thing.
He regrets this.
But he's not going to mention that because it has Jeremy looking at him with those sheen filled eyes, and his family paying more attention to him than ever, which isn't difficult to obtain but being the center of their world is utter bliss. He doesn't have to do much. Usually it required more steps but now all he has to do is bat his eyes and twist his mouth into a certain expression and he's being fawned over like he should be.
Jeremy stares like an abandoned stray dog, big soulful eyes but also a flicker of anger in his gaze like he hates Landon for making him feel any sympathy at all.
His conflicted expressions are the best, so the regret doesn't feel as heavy as a stone in his gut whenever Jeremy's here.
"You're being released soon," Jeremy states the obvious, voice roughened by lack of use. Like he's been quiet for hours.
"Yep," Landon pops his lips for the effect and snorts humorlessly as he settles back, though he's only moving his head slightly on the pillow to stare at a more comfortable angle. "Can't wait. I'm tired of the food and the smell." Sterilization and antiseptics. He already has to taste pain killers in his mouth so it's just more intense.
"Who's checking you out?" Jeremy asks.
"Brandon," Landon replies, and he cranes his neck a little to get a better look at Jeremy.
All he sees are his face that's shadowed over by whatever conflicting thoughts he has and his grey eyes brewing with some intensity of his emotions. So many are storming there that it's difficult to decipher but the sympathy, or what passes as such, and the anger, from the set of his jaw and clench of his hands. His shoulders are bunched up and tensed too.
"And after...during your recovery, will he be there for you?"
"I'm not crippled," Landon says, warring with some confusion but also offense.
There's no permanent injury, if there was then this conversation would be a whole lot different. He would have devised a murder plot of his own and succeed where that assassin had failed. From what he knows, that person has been handled by Volkov men.
A pity, because Landon wanted his own revenge but it made sense. Landon was unaccounted for.
It was Jeremy they wanted to kill.
So the Volkov family needed their answers.
"I know," Jeremy says, brows all furrowed and causing his forehead to crease. Landon should warn him about wrinkles but he just stares, slightly fascinated.
He's never seen Jeremy in many ranges, mostly because they met in the dark of the dank underground ring and their fights weren't providing any time for Landon to properly inspect him. Other instances where Landon intruding into their mansion because his siblings were there but he was promptly thrown out. After a fight. The closest he's ever been to Jeremy in any proximity led to fights so yeah he wasn't taking a good look at his face when he was too busy punching it and fending off the counterattacks.
But it's anger.
So much of it unleashed to the forefront.
The moments Landon did manage to rarely catch with Jeremy's guard being lowered only had the man with a small smile on his face, borderline a smirk, but it reached his grey eyes.
Landon couldn't do that for his audience, so it was something he observed with a particular wrongness.
The sociopath right here with him wasn't a charmer, couldn't smile at people on demand, and get them to like him, but he was able to express himself genuinely. He's not even reserved with his emotions, nor stoic. His expressions are stingy. He only shares them with people he cares about.
Otherwise it was anger or the approximation of that. Or that's all Landon had ever seen. He doesn't know.
Then he glances away, forcing himself to not be drawn towards that face again. It's just Volkov. They shared an island since they were nineteen, but he hadn't been fully aware of him until recently. If only his Heathens weren't involved with his siblings.
The rivalry he took part in was only a momentarily fix for his own boredom.
He incited fights with the Serpents, pinned it on the Heathens and waited for them to go through their own war before they inevitably realized who was behind it.
When he heard rumblings of them uniting for a common cause–to beat the Elites, to get revenge on him, there was no fear. He was excited for more fun. A cycle on this island that didn't put Landon any closer in Jeremy's path because they truly didn't find one another with this back and forth game until very recently.
Those initiation nights.
The Bratva heirs invented them because they didn't exist before.
Jeremy doesn't remain much more after that, but he stares one long last time at Landon's face, gaze traveling over the length of him before his mouth tightens.
Then, he's gone.
Brandon's worried as fuck, and frets over him like a nursemaid. "Why don't you stay in your room at the mansion until you get better?"
Landon already has plans and Brandon wants to shake them up, but he understands his concerns. "I'm fine, just drop me off and the rest I can handle on my own." He had a penthouse, that was more of an art studio than a place to live, but it was still furnished for him to sleep there if he wanted.
"What if I can't get to you on time if you need anything?" Brandon asks, but he's still driving where Landon wants to go.
"Don't worry, it's not any different than before when you're with your boyfriend and I was only an afterthought."
"That's not fair," Brandon says more tightly but he glances over at Landon, sees his cast and his crutches, and swallows, gaze back on the road. "You know you aren't completely innocent in anything but I chose you when it mattered."
"But you're still with Nikolai anyway," Landon says. He doesn't actually care. As long as Brandon's happy but he still doesn't understand. They were nothing alike. What if he ended up hurting Brandon later?
"He's mine," Brandon says.
Just simple and straightforward. Nothing romantic about it but it's said in a tone that Landon understands.
The possessiveness and the finality.
Landon scoffs harshly but he's amused. Brandon's always been possessive when he really liked something. So he's going to have to live with Nikolai being an eventual brother-in-law.
The drive is quiet after that but he feels Brandon glancing at him throughout until they reach their destination.
On the outskirts of the island there's his penthouse surrounded by the forest. He refuses help as he gets out on his crutches but he lets Brandon carry his supplies for him, all the meds for his injuries, and the cherries he bought for him before picking him up because he was tired of hospital food and deserved a treat. So a whole bucket of cherries that were going straight into his fridge.
Inside the place is stale from the clay, but Brandon cracks the balcony doors open, letting in fresh air, and does a little clean up without being asked but the disorganized space might be offensive to his senses. He stocks up the fridge for Landon and clears out the couch of random tools that Landon had thrown there and even goes as far as to rearrange some of the furniture so the coffee table is set aside so there's more room in the middle without bumping into anything.
Then he grabs Landon's phone and makes himself the emergency contact. Landon doesn't thank Brandon with words, because he's awkward about this.They don't do any mushy shit but Landon pats Brandon on the shoulder.
After an hour of Brandon tidying the place, Landon is finally alone and sits back on his couch, relaxing with a bowl of cherries.
The art he's started are still around waiting to be completed but he has to wait a while longer before returning to them, but he might not be interested in these sculptures anymore. He has others that he can bring out and look at and tweak around with, something that doesn't require two sets of hands.
A breath expels from his chest.
He sets the bowl aside and stands up, to test really how much he's capable of.
But he takes a slight limp before realizing he can't really stand that long. So he moves a stool over in front of a sculpture to sit down, but that action is even hard to do as discomfort pricks throughout his hanstring, so he hisses and stands back up, frustrated he knocks over the stool with his other foot and goes back to the couch to plop down and eat more cherries.
Anything to chase away the sour and bitterness.
Hours, eons, same difference, seem to pass when he's sitting there because the room is blanketed in darkness.
And then he's there.
Landon isn't surprised.
"Here comes the fucking Batman," Landon scoffs.
"Are you the Joker?" Jeremy asks roughly, which Landon pauses at, with a cherry bitten into. But Jeremy doesn't wait around as he sets something on the coffee table that's near the wall.
More bags.
Landon stares.
Jeremy gives him another through once over. And then his gaze flickers upwards for direct eye contact.
"What can I do for you?" Jeremy asks lowly, eyes all intent and huge on his face in this submissive appeasement that burns right through Landon's chest. This abandoned look Jeremy has on is almost worth the pain.
"Kneel," Landon orders loftily.
Jeremy gets down on his knees.
And Landon startles so badly he drops his bowl so it clatters soundly, and the cherries all roll on the floor, splashing into a clumped mess.