Warnings: I'm not a medical expert, so don't try any of this stuff at home. I had to improvise the medical aspects so none of it is accurate (research brought me nowhere with DIY blood transfusions or wound treating). Warnings for blood, injury, character death.

For the prompt: Please tell me that's not your blood...!" / Rusame / Alfred saying it.

"Hey, babe? Just wanted to let you know I'll probably be late tonight - got held up by the boss."

"It is alright, I have a meeting; it will probably run late, too."

"Love you!"

"I love you too, lyubov."

"Please tell me that's not your blood…" Alfred muttered, his words clear and enunciated.

Ivan stared up at Alfred. "I cannot even tell which answer you would prefer," he wheezed out. He was leaning against the door of their shared house and grunted when he moved to lean higher, his clothes were covered in blood - a large stain at the thigh had soaked his suit trousers, random splatters were sprayed onto his white shirt, a slash having torn the shirt just across Ivan's chest, but his large, dark coat concealed most of the rest of the shirt. There had to be splatters on the coat, too. Alfred couldn't count all the different stains.

At Alfred's increasingly alarmed look, Ivan looked down at himself. "How would you react if I said it was not?" He asked slowly.

"I'd call the cops?" Alfred said incredulously.

"What if it is?"

"I'd call an ambulance!"

Ivan seemed to assess the two options in his mind. "What if it's a bit of both?"

"A bit? Of both?" Alfred stared at Ivan. "You're kidding, right?" Ivan shrugged. "What the hell did you do?!"

Ivan's head fell back to rest against the door, his breathing still uneven. "Does it matter?"

Alfred tried to come up with a response, but nothing came.

"I ran into some trouble at work."

"You're a businessman."

Ivan flinched. "In all fairness, I have never used that exact term - I merely have clients whom I do business with."

"Isn't this the kinda moment when you would go 'semantics!' and I sit there rolling my eyes?"

"It really is not about semantics this time."

"What business?"

"Er -"

"What business?"

"Research?"

Alfred glared. "Of what?"

"Well, there are different facets-" Ivan started coughing, and covered his mouth by his sleeve. His wheezing had gone down only very little.

"Are you hurt?" Alfred asked as he approached Ivan, who held up his hand and stopped him.

"I am fine, I am completely fine, you don't have to worry."

"Researching what?"

"Actually, it is more like extraction-"

"Goddamn it! What the hell is the issue with you telling me your job?! Extraction of what, Ivan?!"

"Will it suffice if I leave it at extraction of information?" Ivan's hand readjusted his dark coat, from where it had slipped slightly aside to reveal another, larger red stain. Alfred took a step forwards, but Ivan held out his arm again with a warning look. "I am fine."

"What?" Alfred stared at Ivan. Ivan frowned, confused by Alfred's question - what was he confused about? Well, granted, a lot of things were confusing, but there was something else in the shock on Alfred's face. "Extraction of - information?"

Ivan's frown deepened. "That is what I said."

"What information?" Alfred asked, his voice hurried, his words more urgent.

"Alfred-"

"What information, Ivan, I need to-" Alfred seemed more panicked than just before. "I need to know." His eyes landed on the stain on Ivan's leg, and Ivan made sure to turn away from Alfred just enough to hide the bullet wound on the outside of his thigh from Alfred's sight.

"It's not important-"

"Yes, yes, it is! I need to know, Ivan, for the love of God, I have to know! What. Kind. Of information?"

There was a heavy, silent pause. Ivan's eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he straightened himself. Alfred was too close for comfort. His questions were too specific. "Step away from me, Alfred."

"Ivan-!"

"I said, take a step back away from me, and I can tell you," Ivan breathed, trying to keep his voice steady.

Alfred seemed reluctant, but there was a certain visible tension in his shoulders that didn't sit right with Ivan, and he complied. He looked at Ivan expectantly. "Well?"

Ivan wanted to gauge Alfred's reaction, and so his right hand reached inside his coat, into the left breast pocket, and saw how Alfred's hand almost shifted towards his back.

Ivan's hesitation made alarms blare in Alfred's mind. "Where the hell were you this evening?"

"Working," Ivan answered curtly. "Where were you?"

Alfred looked at Ivan with a mixture of anger, of distrust, of betrayal. "Working."

It was a flash of a second later that Ivan was faced with a gun pointed to his brain - and so was Alfred.

"It was you?!" Alfred spat, his disbelief unconcealed in his eyes.

"Where the hell were you?" Ivan asked, confusion settling in - Alfred hadn't been there, the Embassy had been empty, no guards, no personnel wandering the grounds, just the CIA agent who'd been tipped off, whom Ivan had to kill, and the s- Ivan's eyes widened in realisation. "You were the sniper?!"

Alfred's eyes drifted back to the leg, and then to Ivan's abdomen - the stain he had hidden under his coat again. They slowly came to meet Ivan's eyes, before snapping back to the leg.

Alfred's gun clattered to the floor, his left hand grabbing the railing of the staircase to steady himself, his right hand covering his mouth in horror. His legs almost gave out. Ivan's arm fell to his side, and a pained gasp echoed in the silence because of the movement.

"I shot you." Alfred said. "I shot you," he repeated, fear edging into his voice, Ivan's hand carefully, delicately moving to hide his abdomen. "Oh God, I shot you. I have to call an ambulance-"

"No!" Ivan barked with what little energy he had, the effects of blood loss settling in, the lack of adrenaline in his system bringing his attention back to the wounds. "You cannot call an ambulance, because they would question us both. Your bosses - your government would find out. If they know you saved a foreign agent who, as I might remind you was my aim, was about to break and enter the Embassy and extract some of your most sensitive information-"

"I didn't know any of that!" Alfred said in despair, but Ivan's deadpan looked prompted him to continue. "I didn't specifically know any of that?" He tried. It was a lie - Alfred had known full well what the Russian agent he'd been after for months had been trying to achieve, he just hadn't known his identity.

"Do you think your government will care? They will try me for treason, murder, and on fifty other counts, and if I don't get the chair it is rather obvious I won't be seeing much of daylight for the rest of my years. They will also only know that you didn't do your job properly, didn't manage to kill me, and only managed to have your partner killed in the process!"

"You killed him!"

"You didn't kill me fast enough!"

"Well what do I do, then?!"

"Alfred, there's nothing-" Ivan hissed as he moved again, his position against the door losing friction - he was sliding down, his current stance extremely painful and uncomfortable. He slunk to the floor, his coat finally falling open to reveal the entry wound of the bullet in his abdomen.

Alfred immediately darted up the stairs, and brought - apparently he had his own special emergency care kit, seeing as Ivan's was not the one he was bringing now. He fell to his knees next to Ivan, taking scissors and cutting open the leg of Ivan's trousers around the second bullet wound, and then forwent the buttons on Ivan's shirt as he tore it open.

"Alfred you need to-"

"Fuck's sake, I know how to get a goddamn bullet out - I need -" Alfred dashed up again, and returned quickly after with-

"Alfred-!" Ivan whined, trying to interject at seeing the only bottle he had of his favourite brand of vodka as Alfred uncapped it. He tried telling Alfred he would much prefer spending what little time he had left drinking the vodka.

"It's the strongest we have!" Alfred retorted. "I can't find the antiseptic!" He poured the liquid onto Ivan's leg, then his gut, Ivan hissing throughout it all - then he unpacked ungodly amounts of gauze and place them on the wounds. He dug into the bag again and produced a tube with a needle at the end of it and at the other end an IV-style plastic bag, a strip of elastic plastic-

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Giving you a blood transfusion - you've lost too much already as it is, I ain't gonna have you die of blood loss while i'm doing this!"

Ivan coughed, a hacking an oddly squelching sound. "You do not even know my blood type!"

"You're in luck, Braginsky," Alfred said sarcastically, "because I'm O Neg. Trust me, I know what I'm doing," Alfred tied the strip around his left arm before poking the needle into his vein - the bag starting to fill up. Meanwhile, Alfred set to work on cleaning the wounds as best he could, and took out a pair of tweezers. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he whispered, Ivan trying to stay as quiet as possible (rather unsuccessfully) as Alfred managed to find the bullet in the torn tissues and pulling it out.

"Alfred-"

"Zip it."

The moment the bullet clattered on the floor, Alfred stuffed alcohol-soaked gauze into the wound and glanced at the bag at his side. "Press as much as you can on it," Alfred ordered Ivan. Noticing the bag was practically full, Alfred took out the intravenous tube from his arm. He grabbed the bag between his teeth to elevate it after having told Ivan to get his left arm out of his coat, his right hand still pressing on the wound. Alfred found a vein and without further ceremony stuck the needle into it.

Ivan gasped, but no sound came. Alfred moved to the leg wound. He repeated the procedure, before finishing up with it and dragging the small table that had been the home of a potted plant at the entrance of their house to his side, and placed the bag on the elevated surface. He dug his pockets for his phone, dialling and calling.

"Alik-"

"Mattie! Matthew, Matt, I have a huge problem, and I need your help. You did some medical training! Yeah, how do you dress a gunshot wound? No, I never listened in those classes! Well I never thought I would shoot - I would have to take care of it, please help me," Alfred spoke hurriedly into the phone. "Two wounds, both just entry, I removed the bullets, gave him a blood transf- yes, I know what I'm doing with that! No, it's more of a DIY transfusion, not the main problem! … Uh, does vodka count?"

Alfred glanced at Ivan. "I can't call emergencies, Matthew, no, you can't ask. If I sew the wound shut is it - it is? Temporarily? Uhm, well I can get across to Canada in two days, come see you, you can help me, and then Ivan and I are going to Europe. Uh - what? No, that's stupid," Alfred laughed uncomfortably, running a bloodied hand through his hair, leaving streaks of red as it went. "'Course it's not Ivan! I - thanks, you just saved two lives." The call ended, and Alfred wiped his hands onto his jeans, leaving trails of red on them. He fell back next to Ivan, going back to the emergency kit, hearing Ivan's breathing hitching and becoming more uneven.

He grabbed a needle and the medical thread, and began sewing the wound closed at Ivan's abdomen. Then, he heard a sporadic gasp, he looked up into Ivan's abnormally pale face. His eyes were unfocused, staring somewhere ahead of him, his teeth almost grit together.

"Ivan?" Alfred asked. When no response came, his sewing halted. "Ivan?!"

"Alfred-" Ivan hissed in pain, his eyes squeezing shut, his hand weakly coming to where his shirt had been torn open, as if by a blade - Alfred hadn't even looked there, but now…

His mind shut down, for a moment, as he saw the deep wound embedded into Ivan's skin, blood spurting out randomly. It was right in Ivan's chest, too deep, too-

His lung.

Realisation crashed on Alfred, realisation that the stab wound had punctured Ivan's lung.

How had he missed that?

His coughing was more erratic, and now that Ivan didn't even lift his arm to cover his mouth any more there was a trail of red left by the blood that had come from Ivan's drowning lungs.

"Ivan, Ivan please, hold on, I'll call an ambulance, I don't care what they do to you or to me, please hold on, goddammit!" Alfred frantically scrambled for his phone, before Ivan managed to grab his wrist.

"Alfred, please-" Ivan breathed heavily. "I will be DOA by that time, it is pointless. Let it be." Ivan sighed, and let his head fall back against the door. The wheezing had returned, and Alfred had nothing left to say. Ivan then looked at Alfred again, and drew Alfred's eyes to him. "I do not blame you. For anything. Don't you dare feel guilty for this."

Alfred finally grabbed a hold of Ivan's hand, before he broke apart. He held the hand to his mouth, resting it against the knuckles, the tears slipping down his cheeks sliding onto it and clearing some of the blood there. He mumbled something against it, something Ivan couldn't make sense of, but it was frantic and quiet.

"Alik," Ivan tried, his voice weakening by the second. "Alfred."

Alfred looked up, his eyes pleading. "I'm sorry-"

"The same could have happened to you - do not apologise, it is not your fault. Please, for me, don't feel guilty. Promise me."

Alfred took in a breath, hitching slightly, and nodded weakly. He let his head fall against Ivan's shoulder, delicately so as not to hurt him. "Ya tebya lyublyu, Vanya, ya tebya lyublyu tak sel'no-"

"I know, Alik, I know," Ivan whispered, and lifted his hand to stroke Alfred's hair. "I love you more than anything," he said, frail breaths becoming more and more spaced apart.

No matter how many times Alfred promised to Ivan that he wouldn't let the guilt eat at him, that he would forgive himself, that he would someday get past it, no matter how many years later Matthew reminded him it was not his fault, no matter how many times he had almost stepped foot on a plane to return to the States and face the music, he never managed to keep the promise.