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Warnings; swearing, violence, descriptions of injuries and medical/first aid
Life has been going pretty darn well since him and Mike had run off and the whole shit show with Irma and Mike getting kidnapped. Mike’s taking the whole thing pretty damn well in Alberts option but he’d aways been tougher than he’d appeared in a way that never failed to surprise Albert. The pair of them had found a place together, just a kitchen and a bedroom, but it suited them pretty well. Nobody questioned them either or gave them a second look, which was good. The last thing they needed was for someone to realise who Mike is again or the nature of their relationship.
Alberts gotten a job, working a stable, and Mike had too, using all his book smarts. Plus Mikes teaching Albert writing and stuff. In exchange, Alberts teaching Mike how to cook since Mike can’t cook for shits. He’d been expecting it to be way more annoying than it is. Mike may be an incompetent idiot with no idea how real life works sometimes but he's willing to learn (and watching him make a fool of himself is kinda endearing).
So yeah, Albert would say things are going pretty well. He's got a weirdly domestic life, a solid job and a boyfriend he's head over heels in love with.
He can’t help but wait for something to go wrong. It's never gone this well before for him.
As good as Albert is at talking himself out of trouble, he is just as good at getting himself into it. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and all of a sudden you’ve made yourself a whole lot of enemies.
Alberts not even entirely sure what he did to get these men so freaking pissed at him. If it’s something he said or he won a bet against them or some shit. It doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s hard to care too much about why when someone’s beating the living shit out of you.
Albert curled up into a tighter huddle on the floor as blows continued to rain down on him. He’d tried to fight back, put up a damn good fight if he does say so himself but there's only so much one guy can do against a whole lot ganging up on you. He no longer has the energy to fight back anymore, just enough to pray that someone finds him or his attackers to just give up and leave him to die.
Everything hurts. One of arms was broken from where someone brought their boot down on it and his head is sitting in a small but growing pool of blood from his nose and a small cut on the back of his head. He vaguely remembers someone saying that head wounds bleed more than their size would suggest. It’s hard to take stock of his injuries while more are appearing.
The men don’t seem to be letting up anytime soon and when they do, it's without warning. The blows suddenly disappear and Albert prices his eyes open.
He's been left lying on the dirt covered stones of the back alley behind the pub. He's not sure how long he lay there before finally working up the strength to push himself into his hands and knees. His hands shake but he manages to do it. As much as he would like to just lie there forever, he needs to make it to his feet. He cannot trust that someone will find him. He needs to make it home.
“Fuck” he mutters. He's blooming lucky that his legs aren’t broken.
He staggers to his feet and starts to limp out of the alley. Every step hurts but he's determined to make it back to Mike.
It's not that far between the pub and their tiny little flat but each step feels like an eternity and a bit, and takes the strength that Albert doesn’t have. He doesn’t even make it half way before collapsing to the floor in a heap without the strength to stand back up.
At this point, keeping his eyes open feels like prying apart magnets. He wonders if Mike has noticed that there's anything wrong yet. Albert didn’t give a time that he’ll be back so he can’t picture he has. And even in the one chance in hell that he has, what in Albert’s rotten luck are chances that he’ll be found?
Any bloody luck he had was used when Mike got kidnapped.
At last, even the strength to keep his eyes open runs out. His eyes close and he surrenders to the darkness.
Albert can’t help the shock of surprise when his eyes flutter open. He’d half assumed he was a goner. The first thing he realises is that someone is shaking his shoulder. The touch is light but dentermaid. The second thing he realises is the sound of someone calling his name.
“Albert”
“Albert!”
The voice sounds like Mike, has his overly posh accent that Albert likes way more then he pretended he did. When his eyes finally come back into focus, they settle on Mike’s face,which is scrunched up with worry.
“Mke?” He manages.
“Albert! Oh thank god you’re okay”, Mike’s voice is panicked and his hands fail around for a bit like he doesn’t know what to do before he seems to decide on something. “I’m going to get you out of here”.
Mike reaches under him and starts to pull Albert to a pretty close standing position. He doesn’t have the strength to stand on his own but Mike loops his arm around Albert’s shoulder, taking basically all of his weight.
Albert rests his arms over Mike’s shoulder, the not broken one at least. The other one hangs limply beside him.
Together they limp out of that alleyway, leaving flecks of blood from Albert’s dripping nose behind them.
Alberts never been so relieved to see the door of their tiny little flat. The stairs to get to it has been hell, having to lift his legs rather than basically drag them but he made it. Mike lent him up against the wall and unlocked the door.
“Let's get you patched up” Mike says, trying his best to sound like everything is going to be okay.
Threw the haze of pain, Albert thinks that Mike’s keeping it together pretty damn well even if he can hear the panic in his voice, a lot better then Albert expected of him. He also vaguely thinks about how pretty Mike looks in the candle light. But he thinks that regularly so that's neither here nor there. It's a nice distraction at least.
Mike lies him down on their bed, with a strict warning not to close his eyes, even as they feel like lead weights. Mike disappeared for a moment, round into the kitchen and came back with a scrap of fabric, a bowl of water and long strips of old fabric that Albert had stashed in a cupboard ‘just in case’. Turned out he was right about that.
“Uh” Mike says “I'm going to do my best to clean this up but i’m not going to be able to deal with the arm but i’ll try and stop the bleeding. It's probably going to hurt a whole lot, I’m sorry”.
He dips the fabric in the water and starts to clean some of Albert’s cuts, apologising the entire time. Mike wasn’t lying when he said it would hurt. It hurt like fucking hell . Alberts pretty sure he used every single swear word he knew and he knew one hell of a lot.
Eventually Mike finishes. He lets out a long breath and drops the now bloodstained cloth in the bowl. “I’m sorry to leave you here but I’m going to go get Irma”.
Albert makes a vague noise in response. Talking was feeling like a bit too much.
Mike’s better at first aid then Albert though he would be.
“Irma will know what to do”. Mike doesn’t sound likes talking to Albert, more like himself, as he leaves and closes the door behind him.
Albert doesn’t sleep, he figures Mike must have a reason for wanting him to keep his eyes open, but he's not really awake either. Time moves both really slowly and really fast and he spends most of it lost in his own thoughts.
The door opens. Albert hears the sound of two sets of footsteps, one the familiar sound of Mike’s shoes, the other the clack of low heels on wooden floorboards that he can only assume is Irma.
“Hello Albert,” Irma says. In her arms is a proper box of first aid supplies, in a metal box and everything.
Albert can’t be bothered to work up the energy to open his mouth and besides, his throat is still sore from all the swearing he did earlier so he just makes another weird noise. It seems to get the point across.
“Let's deal with that arm of yours” she says, opening the first aid kit.
If Albert thought Mike cleaning out his cuts hurt, it had nothing on Irma setting his arm. If his voice wasn’t raw before, it certainly is now. Irma got his arm back in place like she’d done this a hundred times before and had it up in a sling before you could say ‘kangaroo’.
Irma said she’d leave the first aid kit with them, saying “given how much trouble you two seem to find yourselves in, it's probably better off with you”.
“Thank you” Mike says “ if there's anything we can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask”.
“To be honest, I’m still paying you off for finding me on the rock” Irma says, smiling softly “and besides, you’re my friends”
It is the middle of the night and they are doing a very good job of burning through the candle stash so soon after that Irma leaves to head back to the apartments she's settled in since her arrival back in Melbourne. She leaves a page of instructions on when to unwrap Albert’s arm. He starts to think about what the hell he's going to do about work tomorrow but shuts that train of thought down. That is very much a problem for later.
Mike doesn’t offer to walk her back, which vaguely surprises Albert until he realises that Mike is more worried about him and it's not like Irma can’t take care of herself (he's seen her fight. He's not worried about her). It's not something he's all that used to, as a kid nobody had really cared but Sara and he hadn’t seen her in ages. He wonders what she's doing now.
Once Irma is gone, Mike collapses into the chair he’d pulled up next to the bed and lies his head down on the sheets . “I'm so glad you’re okay,” he mutters, reaching for Albert’s uninjured hand and wrapping their figures together.
“Me too” Albert jokes, voice barely audible, “that would have been a pretty stupid way to die”.
“I’m serious Albert” Mike says “don’t do that again”
“I could say the same thing to you Micheal Fitzherbert, which one of us got kidnapped again?” he rasps.
Mike rolled his eyes. “I’m going to grab you a glass”
Mike grabs one of three very battered mugs they’ve collected since they’ve settled down. None of them are actually glass. He fills it with water and hands it to Albert. The drink goes down in one go. It doesn’t fix his throat but it does feel hell of a lot better.
“Are you going to sit there all night or actually get some bloody sleep?” Albert asks, dropping the mug on the crate that acts as a bedside table.
Mike yawns. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he says.
“Right as rain” Albert says. He's lying on top of the blankets but eventually moves his way to being underneath.
“Fine,” Mike says.
Him and Albert curl up under the covers, careful to keep Albert’s arm stable. It's comfortable, a hell of a lot more so than dying on the ground bleeding was. He may be mostly bandages at this point but it could have been worse and would have been if he was by himself. It's pretty impressive how they keep getting themselves into these situations and coming out the other side. If someone was telling him this, he’d assumed they were telling a tall tale.
“Night Mike” he says.
“Love you” Mike says, voice thick with sleep.
“You you too”.