#guysss i have such a bad sore throat rn i hate itttt

[set-phasers-to-whump]

bulletproof vest, my only clothing

prompt: friendly fire (alt no.5)

whumpee: sakari nurmi

fandom: karppi/deadwind

heya! this fic is a follow up to the last episode of the series. i did something vaguely similar a while ago but fucked up in re: actual canon and also i wanted to focus more on the emotional fallout of everything with this one. so here's that. hope you like! (title from alcatraz by oliver riot)

Sofia shoots him and it hurts. She shoots him once and he hits the ground, “don’t,” and then she stands over him, expressionless, and shoots him again. 

The pain is horrible. Even with the vest on, getting shot at such close range is awful. The first bullet steals his breath, and the second his consciousness. 

--

Sofia keeps shooting him, in his dreams, night after night. She shoots him and he isn’t wearing a vest. He stares up at her as blood pools beneath him, and she delivers the second, fatal bullet. Or she shoots him and he is wearing a vest, but the second bullet is aimed at his head and the vest can do nothing to protect him. 

Sometimes she kisses him before she shoots him. Sometimes it’s his parents she shoots, and he is rendered an unwillingly silent observer. Once, the gun is in his hand but he can’t shoot, and then she takes it from him, places the barrel between his eyes, and pulls the trigger. 

It’s been over a month since that day, and multiple times a week, he wakes in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, the image of Sofia Karppi pointing a gun at him and pulling the trigger frozen in his mind. 

He understands. Why she’d done what she’d done. Why she’d shot him, left him there. He does. 

But he’d seen the bruising across his chest. Those two especially dark points, where the bullets would have entered his body. 

If he hadn’t been wearing that vest, he’d have died. 

And she hadn’t known he’d been wearing it. 

He doesn’t blame her. It had been Emil’s life on the line, her own child. He knows she’d done what she had to. 

He can’t stop himself from reliving it, though. From looking at Sofia from across the room and seeing the gun in her hands as he lies there powerless on the ground with her standing over him, nothing at all on her face. 

Besides this, strangely, their relationship is good, stronger even, than it had been before. Sofia seems to have all but forgotten the events of that day, and he’s trying to, too. 

Trying being the operative word there. It’s hard to forget when his subconscious is intent on making him relive everything in new and inventive ways almost every night.

Things come to a head on a frigid November night. Sakari hadn’t wanted to spend the night on Sofia’s couch, but it had been late and they’d been drinking and Sofia had insisted. Neither one of them had, he thinks, quite been ready to share a bed—they’ve been taking it slow, still dancing around each other romantically. And so he’d ended up on the couch, buried in blankets and just hoping that tonight would be a rare quiet, dreamless night. 

Of course, he couldn’t be so lucky. 

Sofia shoots him and he hits the ground, whispers, “don’t,” and she stands over him as he lies there with the breath knocked out of his lungs and terror in his throat and he knows that he is going to die, that Sofia is going to kill him. 

She aims for his head and pulls the trigger. 

He wakes with a sharp inhale. He’s drenched in sweat and trembling and his breaths come in quick and painful pants. For a second, he’s all the more affected by his surroundings—he’s not in his own bed, so it takes him longer than normal to realize that it had only been a dream. 

He doesn’t notice that Sofia is standing nearby until she speaks. He doesn’t really hear what she says, because he’s too busy flinching in surprise at the unexpected presence of his partner, his killer. 

She’s standing next to him now, arm on his shoulder. The point of contact is warm. He isn’t afraid of her, never is, in his waking life. 

“Did you have a nightmare?” she asks, and he thinks it should sound pitying, as though he is a child who cannot even manage to sleep through the night. 

It doesn’t, though. It just sounds like her. 

He nods, not trusting himself to speak. He can’t stop shaking. 

“Move over,” Sofia says, and he shifts his body, scarcely even conscious of doing so. She sits beside him, steady and warm, and wraps an arm around his shoulders. 

He leans into her automatically. She rubs a hand up and down his arm. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, after what feels like a very long time, when he finally trusts his own voice again. “I’m okay.”

Sofia tugs him somehow closer, presses a long kiss to his temple. “You’re okay,” she whispers back. 

It should be odd. He feels so completely safe in her embrace, so comforted by her presence, yet it’s her that’s made him like this. It’s her that had been willing to kill him. 

Except she’s saved him, too, more times than he’s capable of numbering at the moment, and in more ways than one. He trusts her, even now. He wants to be around her. It’s just that there’s some animal, fearful part of his brain that is protesting their continued closeness. 

He thinks, maybe, that they need to talk about this. They haven’t really, not properly. They’re not ones to talk about things, usually. They’ve become more willing over the past few months, but it’s still a bit odd, still unnatural. 

He thinks that this might need to be overcome. Thinks that, perhaps, if he could talk to Sofia, explain the nightmares and the memories that keep pushing themselves to the front of his mind even though he doesn’t want them there, things would begin to get better. 

But this is a job for later. Right now, it is just the two of them and the silence and Sofia’s arms still wrapped around him. She’s falling asleep, leaned against his shoulder, and he feels himself being dragged back into sleep, too. He fights it for a bit, afraid of having another nightmare, of making everything worse, but then Sofia exhales softly, whispers, “sleep,” and he finds himself doing exactly as she says. 

He sleeps soundly through the rest of the night, and when he wakes in the morning, he asks Sofia if they can have a conversation, before he can talk himself out of it. She agrees easily, presses a steaming mug of coffee into his hands. 

He accepts it, breathes in deeply. Things are going to be alright, he finds himself thinking, for the first time since that fateful night. They’re going to be alright.

thanks for reading!! i hope you liked it <3333