“And what happened next, Mr. Seaver?”

The FBI agent watched Bas with calm, sympathetic eyes as he scribbled notes on a paper, but Bas couldn’t answer. He looked down at the hospital scrubs he’d been given to replace his bloodstained clothing and picked at the material on his thigh. He looked up at the brightly colored posters on the waiting room wall.

Still, the words just wouldn’t come.

“He’s just doing his job, Bas,” Cam whispered, voice heavy with fatigue and sorrow. “Answer his questions. It’ll be okay.”

Bas looked at his brother, at the dried blood that still matted his hair and caked beneath his fingernails. He looked like an extra in a horror movie.

And still, Sebastian wouldn’t speak.

Because what had happened after Drew had held him back, after he’d screamed and the gun had gone off, was the single most terrible moment of Bas’s life. And in a life where both of his parents and his fiancée had died together in a plane crash, where he’d been threatened and nearly bombed, that was saying something.

He’d already been sobbing by the time his knees hit the floor, and he’d yanked Drew down to shield his body before Alexei could get off another shot. If they both died, he’d reasoned, so be it. It would be better that way.

He’d been dimly aware of shouts behind him. Of someone - Damon? - rushing toward Alexei. He didn’t care. Not about any of it. Not anymore.

He’d known in an instant that Drew was gone. The amount of blood and gore on his face - in his hair, soaking his tuxedo - was beyond what any human could stand to lose. He’d dropped his head to Drew’s chest, his own breath coming in painful gasps, and screamed all of his grief and rage into Drew’s flesh.

What the hell was he going to do? A selfish thought. He’d always been selfish. But Drew had known that. Had loved him anyway. There would be no one else in his entire life who would ever know all of his flaws and all of his weaknesses the way his best friend had.

He had wasted so much time. They both had. So much fucking time.

Ask me when this is over, Drew had said.

We’ll go to an island when this is over.

When it’s over, over, over.

And now… it was.

But there was no point to it anymore.

“Why did you do that?” he’d whispered against Drew’s shirt. “I hate you so much.” I love you so much. “Hate you.” Love you, love you.

“Bas?” Cam said, bringing him back.

The agent with the kind eyes was still watching him. “We can finish this later,” he offered.

Bas nodded. Later, when he’d vented some of the emotions that choked him, maybe he’d be able to speak.

As the man walked away, Bas lifted his eyes to Cam. “Shouldn’t you be with your boyfriend?”

Cam nodded. “I will be. Damon’s in there now, and he’ll come get me as soon as Cort wakes up.”

“The surgery was a success.”

“So they say. Through and through. We’ll have to put up with his just a flesh wound jokes until the end of time.”

Bas huffed. “I owe him at least that much.”

“You know what he’ll say to that, right?” Cam said gently. “There’s no debt when its family.”

Bas lifted his chin. Right.

“You know I love you, right, Cam?”

Cam frowned. “Of course I do. You’re my brother. It’s your job.”

“Nah,” Bas said. “Not just because you’re my brother. I admire the hell out of you. I’d want to be your friend even if we didn’t share DNA.”

Cam looked surprised, stunned even, and Bas realized that, like so many things, he’d waited too long to say this.

“Mom and Dad would be so fucking proud of you,” he said, smiling just a little as Cam’s eyes filled with tears. “At the confident guy you’ve become. You’re the best thing they ever did for me, and that’s the truth.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up!” Cam complained, thumping Bas in the thigh with his fist. He swiped at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. “God, I have cried enough tears today to last me for the rest of the year.”

“No shit,” Bas said, taking a deep breath. A knot in his stomach loosened. “The rest of my damn life.”

Cam gave him a soft smile. “You wanna talk about it?”

Bas nodded and looked up as the kind agent reappeared. A man wearing the same elegant blue scrubs as Bas trailed behind him. “But not to you.”

“M’kay.” Cam stood and stretched. “I’ll be with Cort if you need anything.” He winked the man in scrubs, and gave the agent a thankful smile as they walked out together.

The man in the heinous blue scrubs walked forward until he stood directly in front of Bas.

“Are you speaking to me yet?” he whispered.

Bas looked up, past the borrowed clothes, past the white bandage on his cheek, to the brown eyes - strong as whiskey, sweet as honey - he’d spent precious minutes thinking he’d never see again.

“Always,” he told Drew. He stood up and Drew fell back a pace, but Bas grabbed his hands and yanked him forward. “I will always speak to you, even when you piss me off and terrify the shit out of me. I will always want you, even when you absolutely destroy me. And you will always be my best friend.”

“Even when you hate me?” Drew teased. “Seriously, who thinks their boyfriend is dead and whispers ‘I hate you’?”

But Bas wasn’t ready to joke about it yet. Wasn’t sure he ever would be. “Maybe the kind of guy whose boyfriend pushed him aside and was ready to take a bullet?” he growled. “Andrew McMann, you have no idea what I thought when I looked at you, when I saw you covered, head-to-toe in blood. My life ended in that minute, and I…” He choked on the words and shook his head.

“Hush,” Drew said. “Hush, baby. It’s okay.”

Bas blew out a breath and wrapped his arms around Drew. “Yeah. It is. But Jesus Christ, that was a close call. If Ilya hadn’t gotten Cort’s gun in that second? If he’d hesitated before pulling the trigger?” The very thought still made shivers dance up his spine.

“But he didn’t,” Drew said soberly. “I feel so awful for him, Sebastian.”

Bas coasted a hand up and down Drew’s spine, thrilling at the warm solidity of the man in front of him. Alive, alive, alive.

Unlike Alexei, whose blood had been spattered all over the tiny supply closet… all over Drew. Drew had walked away with nothing more than a cut on his face from scratching his cheek on the shelving when Bas had yanked him down.

“I do too, baby. I can’t imagine having to make a choice like that. He loved his son more than anything, but he killed him to prevent him from doing any more evil.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I could be as strong.”

The look on Ilya’s face, when Sean Cook and his team had burst through the door a few moments later, would haunt Bas for the rest of his life. “I killed him,” Ilya had sobbed. “Shoot me, please.”

“Gary said Ilya has a concussion, and some kidney damage from the beating.”

“He came?” Bas asked.

Drew nodded. “Said he was going to visit Ilya’s nephew, too. Dmitri. Apparently, he’s not doing very well.”

Bas sighed.

They were both bloodstained and disgusting, exhausted and strung-out, with scars that might never heal, but at least they were together. That was the only thing that mattered.