#also also. bingos number 6 and 7 let's goooo

[set-phasers-to-whump]

bulletproof kisses

prompt: taking the bullet

whumpee: sakari nurmi

fandom: karppi/deadwind

heya! this fic is for the wonderful @thecolourblood - sorry it took a minute but i hope you enjoy! it's set during 3x08 and is canon compliant :) (title from ginasfs by fall out boy)

He knows what’s coming. He’s been braced for it since he got out of the car, his body tense, though he’s trying to look relaxed. Like he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

He turns to face her as she approaches. He knows how this needs to go, knows the part he needs to play. Most of all, he knows that this is all pretend. But the look on her face when she walks towards him - it scares him, a bit. He has never seen her look quite like this before.

“This is where he used to work,” he says to her, to break through the silence that feels like it is suffocating him. She says nothing in return, just keeps walking towards him.

“Can you hear me?”

She continues approaching, absolutely silent apart from her footsteps. And then she stops walking, maybe two meters away from him, and just like that she draws her gun and shoots him in the chest.

The bang of the shot echoes horribly off of the disused metal. Pain explodes from the point of impact, knocking the breath out of his lungs with the force of a sledgehammer being driven into his chest. He falls to the ground and the movement seems at once to take forever and no time at all. 

“Don’t…”

He looks up at her, panting, not even sure what it is he’s saying. He tries to breathe. Tries to remind himself that everything will be fine. But fuck, it hurts. 

She points the gun at him again, as if she is going to finish him off. She seems impossibly close, standing over him like this. And then she pulls the trigger. 

A second round of pain explodes in his chest, worse than the first, so intense that for a second he cannot see or hear a thing.

He blacks out. 

--

He wakes up with rocks digging into his back, which is far less painful than the feeling in his chest. It hurts just to breathe. For a long moment he lies there on the cold, uncomfortable ground, trying and failing to push the pain to the back of his mind. 

He needs to move, though. They don’t have a lot of time. And so he steels himself as best as he can and forces himself to his feet. 

This hurts horribly. For a second he feels like he might just collapse right back down to the ground, but he knows that he can’t.

He has to get to Sofia. 

And so he breathes through the pain (though, of course, breathing itself hurts) and wills his eyes to focus. When he feels sufficiently in control of everything, he makes his way to the car and starts driving. 

--

Everything that happens at the ruins is a bit of a blur, overridden with worry and with the searing pain in his chest that refuses to let up. 

He shoots Paarma. Sofia asks him what the fuck took him so long. He jokes, asks whether she wants to try how it feels to get a bullet in her chest. Tries not to let on that it still hurts - they both know she’d done what she had to. He does not want her to feel guilty.

The van and the smoke. The trees blurring past him. Emil. 

This is what matters, really. He’d let himself get shot again, as many times as necessary, to save the kid. The pain is worth it a thousand times. 

--

After, they go to the hospital. Normally Sofia would fight tooth and nail for her right not to go to the hospital, but this time it’s different. This time there’s Emil. 

All three of them get checked out, though Sofia and Sakari try to wave off the doctors’ attention. It’s no use, though, and Sakari supposes they should probably set a good example for Emil in any case. They both give in. One doctor takes Emil and Sofia off down a hallway, and another leads Sakari in the opposite direction. 

In the exam room, he sees the effects of his being shot for the first time. After a rather arduous and painful battle with his jacket, shirt, and vest, Sakari finds himself looking down at a livid bruise, more red than purple. It extends across his entire chest, with two darker circles indicating where the bullets had struck. 

It makes him feel faintly sick to look at, and seeing the source of his pain only makes him more aware of how much everything still hurts. He looks away. 

The doctor gently prods at his ribs. He knows she’s trying to be gentle, can sense that her touch is light, but he sucks in a gasp of pain anyway. This hurts, too, and he’s left clenching his hands into fists and closing his eyes to stop them from tearing up. 

“Sorry,” she says, continuing to feel his chest. “I’d like to send you for x-rays. At least three of your ribs are fractured, if not broken, and my guess is that several are bruised as well.”

“What can you do about it?” 

“Not much, unfortunately. The injuries will heal on their own in about six weeks, as long as you’re careful and monitor your breathing.”

Sakari nods, though he doubts that his definition of ‘careful’ will align with the doctor’s. 

“We can give you medication for the pain, of course,” she continues, as they make their way to an x-ray room. 

“No, thank you.” He won’t mess with that. Especially not now. He can’t.

“Okay,” the doctor agrees, as they arrive at the room. “Now, if you’ll wait here while I get a nurse…”

--

After the hospital, the three of them go to Sakari’s room at the Hotel St. George. While Sofia gets Emil to sleep in the bed, Sakari stands alone in the dark living room and stares out at the lights of the Helsinki night. 

He tries not to think about anything. About the things he has lost. About everything that has happened in the past few hours. About the burning pain in his chest - two of his ribs are broken, two are fractured, three are bruised. He can’t decide if knowing this fact makes the pain better or worse.

“He fell asleep,” Sofia reports, joining him by the window. Sakari looks up from his phone, where he’s just received a message, and makes a report of his own. 

“JP sent a message that Emil’s grandpa will recover. They performed an angioplasty.”

“Heart attack?”

“Yeah. He’d gone after Paarma.”

There’s a beat of silence. Sofia looks out of the window. Sakari feels compelled to say something else.

“Did you know Paarma worked at the lime mill for 20 years?”

“That place where I shot you?”

He huffs a laugh and refuses to wince at the pain it causes. He wants her to know that he understands. That he’d do it again, for Emil, for her, in a heartbeat. “Precisely.”

“I didn’t know that.”

A soft, comfortable silence falls between them. Sofia steps closer to him, very slowly. He watches her, doesn’t move at all. This feels so different to her earlier approach, before she’d shot him. He lets his eyes close. And she kisses him. 

It’s wonderful. Unhurried and gentle. He reaches up and lightly touches her face, barely even registering the way that his chest burns at the change in his breathing.

And then Emil calls for his mom, and they break apart. Sakari opens his eyes again. They look at each other for a second that feels impossibly long. 

“I’m coming,” Sofia calls. She looks at Sakari again, looks away, and goes to check on her son. 

Sakari watches her leave. A ball of warmth is making itself felt in his chest, and it scarcely even hurts.

thanks for reading! i hope you liked it :)