Chapter Text
Nikolai wakes up in the middle of the night feeling hot and feverish. He whines into the couch pillow, his back throbbing.
He lies like that until he realizes he won’t be able to go back to sleep. He slowly gets off the couch and stumbles over to Fyodor’s room with his pale arms wrapped around himself. He hesitates at the door handle, before sighing and yanking the door open to find Fyodor in bed with a book.
“Can I help you, Kolya?” Fyodor asks without looking up from his book. The only light in the room is the dim lamplight that makes the demon’s eyes seem to glow violet in the dark.
“I feel awful, Dos-kun,” he whines, “I can’t sleep.”
Fyodor finally closes his book, a black and white swirled cover titled The Stanger, “Does your back hurt?”
Nikolai nods, he pouts, “I thought pain was supposed to hurt less over time.”
“That depends entirely on how the wound is treated, silly fool,” he smiles slightly, “Have you showered? Have you changed your bandages at all?”
Nikolai blinked at him for a few moments before he slowly shook his head. He hadn’t changed out of the clothes Fyodor had given him on the day he fell.
Fyodor looks longingly at his book one last time before he gets out of bed with a sigh, “I really did want to finish that book… I think you would like it, Kolya.”
Nikolai follows Fyodor to the bathroom, he’d never really seen the demon without his long black coat or without his ushanka, but here he was in the late night wearing plain pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt with a cartoon rat printed on it.
“What’s the book about?”
“It’s about a man who doesn’t believe life has meaning,” Fyodor says, filling up the bathtub with warm water, “He sees religion as a desperate attempt to give meaning to life by implying the existence of God. He reminds me of you~”
Nikolai hops onto the sink, dangling his legs over the edge, “I’m very flattered, Dos-kun.”
Fyodor's lips twitch slightly, he looks down at the water slowly filling up the tub. When the tub’s a bit over halfway full he gestures for Nikolai to climb in.
Nikolai strips off his clothes and slowly climbs into the tub with only the bandages wrapped around his middle. He sighs at the pleasant warmth that thrums through his body in the warm water.
The pleasure is quickly broken by Fyodor peeling off his bandages.
“Owww~”
Fyodor shushes him, continuing to unwrap his back to reveal the angry red gashes down Nikolai’s back. The wound still looks raw in the middle, but the edges were scabbing. There’s only a bit of puss, it didn’t seem that the infection had properly set in yet. Fyodor scrubs the wound with soap and, to Nikolai’s dismay, dabs a bit of alcohol on the wounds.
Nikolai calms down once Fyodor puts down the horrible alcohol and opts to wash his hair instead. The demons bony fingers feel nice as they work out the knots from his now-short hair. His mismatched eyes grow droopy as tiredness finally starts to catch up with him, “That feels good, Dos-kun.”
Fyodor hums, pouring some of the bath water over his head to wash the shampoo out. Nikolai must have fallen asleep during the conditioner, because he woke to the feeling of the bath water draining and a towel being wrapped around him. He doesn’t complain when another gauze is wrapped around his chest, he just closes his eyes again.