Perfect Stranger (SevenxBathos)

Michael panted through his nose, nostrils flared, and gritted his teeth as Nick helped him to his feet. There wasn't anything wrong with his legs, but when he jostled his upper body the glass wiggled in his shoulder, shredding more muscle and lighting up his nerves with pain. When he was standing upright again, he shrugged Nick off (and hissed with renewed pain for his troubles).

He could smell his high dollar shampoo, tangling with notes of his shower soap, and the familiar, organic scent that was Nick's very own. It was not a calming effect.

"Fucker stabbed me with a broken bottle," Michael said, sounding dazed. "One second he was smoking me out and the next, he was stabbing me with a fucking bottle."

For a moment, it seemed as if the storm had passed. Michael was in pain, Burke was in pain; any reasonable man would point out that they'd come out square. But Michael had that look in his eye. The dark, murderous set of his eyebrows and hard set of his mouth promised violence. To someone, somewhere.

To Burke, he said, "You're lucky I don't beat the shit out of cripples, asshole."

To Nick, he said with a jerk of his head in the direction of the object in question, "Fetch me that joint, would ya?"

Nick eyed the bottle as it wiggled in Michael's shoulder and he decided it probably wasn't a good year; he said nothing in regards to Michael's request, striding over to the lit joint and picking it up delicately between thumb and forefinger. For a moment he stayed there, eyeing the dying fire at the end of the joint before his eyes shifted up to peer at Burke, who was laying only a few feet away, too absorbed by the pain to notice.

Burke sold weed and snuff videos, two vices on the opposite sides of the spectrum - he had no doubts that the rat would also pawn off everything in between.

He glanced back at Michael; there weren't a lot of options left. As of that week, Michael had a fresh police record, and getting hauled into a hospital with a bottle in his shoulder and THC in his piss would only end badly; the LAPD Commissioner was already looking for any excuse to get his hands on Mikey again and - well, Nick didn't like that.

The embers on the joint were flickering now, and Nick unconsciously brought it to his lips, taking a draw on it and breathing new life into the light before it could completely die out; it was an action that he immediately regretted because, christ, he was Nicholas Godwit today. He wasn't supposed to do that sort of shit. Still crouched and facing Burke, he blew the smoke out as discreetly as he could manage it, giving the stick a second look, satisfied that it wasn't about to die on it's way over.

Moving back to Michael, he casually placed the joint between his friend's lips, eyeing the champagne bottle one more time,

"Can you make it to the truck? I'm going to have to carry our bundle of joy over." he said, nodding his head in Burke's direction.

Michael stood with an argument at the ready on his tongue, waiting for Nick to do that thing where he lectured without using actual words, but a complex system of eyebrow twitches and a serene, accepting smile. It never came, so Michael never had to argue.

Instead, Nick did as he was asked. He fetched the joint off the ground, held it until it was nearly dead in his hands, and took a hit. Not only did he drag off the contraband, but he did it like a pro. There was no coughing, no watery eyes, no wince at the burn of the smoke against his throat and in his lungs. Nicholas Godwit was smoking pot and he had definitely done it before.

Michael stood frozen when Nick returned to him and put the joint between his lips, doing his ever loving best to prove that 'eyes as wide as saucers' was, in fact, physically possible and not just a cliched exaggeration. It wasn't until the smoke off the tip was stinging his eyes that Michael shook himself from his stupor and took the joint out of his mouth.

"You."

The pot was making it difficult to form words. Or maybe that was just Nick, contradicting everything Michael thought he knew about him, who was sticking the words to the roof of his mouth like peanut butter.

"I ...?"

Michael flailed and the joint drew a temporary line of light in the darkness.

"Yeah," he finally settled on, turned, and headed back for the truck. He sucked on the joint as he went, and as the body high set in the pain began to ebb. It was still there, and it was still an exercise in torture to swing himself up into the passenger side of the cab, but it was manageable.

Nick nearly grimaced, but managed to hold it back, replacing it with his usual expression of dim geniality, something friendly and a little stupid - though, he wasn't entirely certain it was appropriate for the situation. But neither was kicking the shit out of Burke, so he had to choose one of the two.

He watched intently as Michael headed for the truck, briefly struggling with getting into the passenger seat, but managing without complaint - as he would expect of Mikey. Once he was settled, Nick turned back to Burke and approached him with an almost casual air, hands tucked into his pockets; for a moment, he stood over Burke and watched him keen on the ground, clearly in agony.

The taste of marijuana clung in Nick's mouth right then, combined with the lingering smell of the bar and the cheap, sweet, flowery perfume that the stripper had been wearing. The combination brought him back to a time not so terribly long ago, a time before he had met Bianca Borgstrom, a time before restraint had become a neccessity - everything about the situation was raw and dirty. It was familiar.

And now it was in this life. The one he had been fighting to keep separate from his work for years. The life he had wanted to keep.

But the job inevitably claimed everything - he knew that; he just hoped he could salvage some of it.

A brief wave of something dreadful rose in his chest, but he breathed it out the way he had breathed out the smoke.

"Consider this an introduction to the rest of your life." Nick said finally, before crouching down and gathering Burke up into his arms; for being as small as he was, the redhead was surprisingly heavy, and he made a loud noise of pain when his leg was jolted from the movement. Nick ignored it and began back down the alleyway, but instead of going towards the cab of the truck, he went around behind it.

"You get the fun seat." he added, before dropping Burke carelessly into the metal bed of the truck, barely able to keep from cracking a smile at the sound of the howls of protest. He reached down, then, and readjusted Burke's lapels and, while the redhead was distracted, took that moment to retrieve a plastic bag from the interior lining of the man's peacoat.

He had only gone through Burke's jacket half-heartedly earlier that day, in search of the video - but it had occurred to him after the fact that he should have taken a better look.

He wasn't regretting the choice, either. Amidst the pre-rolled joints and grams of marijuana, there were some distinctive white pills that had been stamped with little crowns; he stared at them for a long moment, and then gave a sideways look at the back windshield, staring at the back of Michael's head.

They couldn't go to the hospital, he knew that much.

The least he could do was help Michael deal with the pain.

Burke let out another sob and Nick rolled his eyes skyward before digging into the bag and pulling out one of the pills; he clapped his hand over Burke's mouth and forced the tablet in, deciding to make his own life a little easier along the way. He held his hand in place while Burke struggled and made weak attempts to pull Nick's arm away, desperate not to swallow the pill, but then Nick reached his other hand over and pinched Burke's nose closed, effectively blocking off all airways. Casting another surreptitious glance towards the cab of the truck, just to be sure he wasn't being watched, he waited for Burke to begin bucking and struggling before he released him, letting the redhead gasp for air.

"Try not to make too much noise during the ride," Nick said, reaching down and unbuckling his own belt, pulling it from his slim waist in a single movement; he looped the belt through the buckle then and gathered the still-wheezing Burke's arms, holding them together and yanking the loop of leather tight around his wrists - it was a quick fix, but Burke would be too stoned to know which way was up in a few minutes.

"Or i'll make sure to hit as many speed bumps as I can find." Nick added, giving Burke a genial pat on the chest before going around to the driver's side and slipping in; he cast a grave look in Michael's direction, rolling one of the ecstasy tabs between his thumb and forefinger, thinking it over for a moment.

The only other option was risking Michael getting arrested again. He couldn't have that.

"Here," Nick said, offering out the MDMA, "It'll kill some of the pain."

Michael glanced down at the pill resting in the center of Nick's palm, quirked an eyebrow, and looked up at Nick. The joint was burned down to nearly nothing by that point, but Michael held onto it even when it burned his lips to draw from it.

With effort, he unclenched his jaw. "Hate to break it to you, amigo, but an aspirin's not gonna put a dent in this thing. Look at me, man. I'm ground beef!"

In direct contradiction to his nay-saying, however, Michael took the pill and put it on his tongue. He tipped his head back and swallowed the thing dry and felt it every inch of the way as it plummeted into his stomach.

When it was done and they were already driving down the street, Michael lifted his head and said, "Gin. I need gin. Or morphine. Are doctors allowed to give convicted drug offenders morphine? I could maybe settle for Vicodin. Jesus, and I can't even claim workman's comp for this shit. How'm I gonna bounce dudes with a bum shoulder? I'd sue that fucker, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to smoke what's left of his fortune. Fuck." Michael took one last drag and pitched the roach out the window. He was on a roll. Good pot made him chatty, not to mention it distracted him from the burning pain.

"And you. You, Nicholas Godwit. Nicholas Godwit, pot smoker. Color me shocked. Since when do you smoke?"

"I don't know," Nick said, leaning across the seat so he could reach over Michael's good shoulder; he took hold of the seatbelt and pulled it pointedly across Michael's lap, buckling him in, "Mincemeat seems a little harsh, I'd say you're more of a shredded sort of beef right now. Sort of a manwich."

He settled into his own seat and turned the engine over, backing away from the alleyway and onto the crappy, dusty little street where Soft Tails continued to glow in neon pinks and oranges; he wondered if the cop had left by now, or if he'd been distracted by the curvy stripper who had practically been thrown in his direction - Nick put his money on Crowman already being back in his car. Maybe even back at the police station, head stuffed into a few case files.

Using his peripherals, he was able to watch Mikey throw back the pill, swallowing it down without water; Nick briefly considered offering him champagne to wash it down, but felt it would be in bad taste.

"I don't smoke." Nick replied crisply, intentionally hitting a small pothole just to listen to the thunk in the bed of the truck; he chewed on his bottom lip to kill the smile.

Michael winced as they rumbled over the pothole. His suspension was good--the truck was designed with off road use in mind, after all--but there was still a minor twinge when he bounced gently in his seat. The seat belt probably minimized the effect, but seeing how Michael wasn't ten anymore and therefore could make up his own mind on whether he needed it or not, he wasn't about to thank Nick.

So maybe getting stabbed put him in a bad mood.

"Whatever you say, chief," he said when he was breathing evenly again. "How are we spinning this one, then? Puff-puff-pass as an involuntary, evolutionary response to cannabis?"

It wasn't like Michael to call Nick on his bullshit. In fact, he had a very strict policy against it. IF he hadn't, he'd have grilled Nick about his creepy murder case right when he found it, before he'd swept the passports off the floor. But smoking pot wasn't the same thing as a secret identity. It was safe, as far as Michael was concerned. That, and the pot impaired his ability to detect when he was being an obnoxious brat.

"'F you don't wanna tell me, cool. But I think we're past the point where you pretend to be Mike Brady and I pretend to--Hold up. This isn't the way to Centinela. Dude, my insurance? Not great. I doubt Dom Perignon's back there is much better. What gives?"

Nick knew this was the juncture where he would need to tread lightly; in the past few days, barriers that Nick had carefully built over the course of several years had been suddenly and unceremoniously broken down. He had managed to make a series of stupid mistakes that had led to this point - and as far as he was concerned, it had all started with him breaking his own rule by getting completely hammered; he had lost his inhibitions.

Stupid, stupid mistake - and now he had a drug dealer with a broken leg tied up in the bed of a truck, and Michael was currently playing the role of a chatty wine rack, pushing for answers that Nick wasn't prepared to give.

Thankfully, though, he was spared the need to respond as Michael was promptly distracted by their surroundings,

"You've got a record." Nick remarked, but since this was obvious, he patiently expanded on it, "And in case you didn't notice, you've got the LAPD commissioner tailing you - he doesn't exactly seem like the type to hang around Soft Tails, does he?"

He shifted in the seat,

"Unless you can convince the staff at Centinela that you somehow fell on that broken bottle of Moët, I can't take you there. Not only are they required to report crimes, but they would have to run a urine test." he said, straightening his back and looking towards the road, adding, "Which you definitely wouldn't pass right now."

Michael made a harrumph noise and fell momentarily silent. Nick, he realized with a sinking sensation in his gut, was right. He couldn't afford to go to the hospital, not with Crowman on the war path. And, considering he was currently in the LAPD's trigger happy sights, finishing off that joint wasn't the wisest decision Michael could have made.

The sinking feeling in his stomach intensified and Michael shifted in his seat.

"Man, I don't feel so hot." This would be stating the obvious, if Michael were talking about the broken bottle digging into his shoulder, but oddly enough that pain had fuzzed into the background. Or not so odd, considering the drink he'd slammed and the primo shit he'd smoked. But Michael actually wasn't referring to that.

"I feel ... heavy." He realized immediately how ridiculous he sounded. "Wow, when did I become such a light weight? That weed is messing with me." Michael squirmed. There was no other word for it. He squirmed in his seat, and movement seemed to alleviate the strange knotting in his gut. Relief spread through his torso and into his arms and legs.

Michael sighed, loud and breathy. "So, uh." He cleared his throat and crossed one ankle over the other. Immediately, he swapped their positions. "Where are we going, then?"

Nick could practically see the realization hitting Michael, forcing him to acknowledge that the hospital was the last place he could go, lest he wind up wearing orange and being extra careful about bending over in the shower. At Michael's remark, Nick peered over at him, giving him a brief sideways look before focusing on the road again,

"It's been a long night." Nick remarked finally; he could hear Michael shifting on the seat beside him, aggravated as though he suddenly had too much energy to hold still, "And you've got a broken bottle in your shoulder. Of course you don't feel great; just try to relax."

He brought a hand up to his neck, rubbing at the side of it, tilting his head to stretch the muscle,

"I'm taking you somewhere to get fixed up." he added.

"Try to relax," Michael repeated. He nodded weakly. In the span of a few moments, his expression had gone from tight and pained to loose and open. His eyes were dry and heavily lidded and he couldn't help but notice that the headlights of the oncoming cars were too harsh on his eyes and the light seemed to splinter and trail across the road.

His fingertips moved absently against the faux leather of the center console. Tiny brushes at first, a nervous tic that was slowly transforming into outright petting. Michael was seemingly unaware that he was doing it.

"Try to relax," he said again, as if it were his mantra. "I'm relaxing. Of course, I'm relaxing. You're Nick. You've got it all under control. It's what you do. And I ..." Michael's mouth twitched and leaped into a smile. "I actually feel good. I mean, for having been recently stabbed and ... with the weapon still in me."

Michael looped the fingers of his right hand loosely around the protruding glass. "I wanna pull it out. There's no telling what kind of crazy shit is living on this thing. I could have hepatitis now or something. Nick, tell me it's okay for me to pull this thing out."

It had been a while since Nick had partaken in any sort of recreational drug - he had broken the habit years ago, before he'd even set foot in L.A - but he remembered the effects of ecstasy very vividly. From the corner of his eye, he could see Michael running his fingers over the pleather that decorated the dashboard and stick shift; there was no mistaking it, Michael was beginning to feel the effects of the tablet he had been fed, because along with the sudden fascination with surfaces, he was beginning to babble.

Of course, then he could see Michael's hand moving,

"Hey - what? No." Nick said, doing a double-take, looking in Michael's direction and then back on the road, trying to focus on both at once; he reached out, gesturing for Michael to put his hand back down, to release the neck of the bottle, "Don't touch it. Just leave it - just a few more minutes, alright? Anything that's on that champagne bottle probably isn't any worse than the stuff you've encountered at Soft Tails."

"Hey, that's not fair," Michael said, obediently dropping his hand onto his own denim clad thigh. "I don't mess around with ..." He mentally groped for a term. " ... Unclean women."

A light went on behind Michael's eyes and he twisted to face Nick. His own face crumpled into an expression of pain, however, and he sat back right away. How he could forget his fresh injury was beyond even him, but he was only momentarily deterred.

He only moved his neck the second time around. "Speaking of which," Michael began, but found he really didn't know where to go from there. He huffed out an exasperated breath. "What I mean is. Well. I told you I saw Bianca today. At Chance's. And ... Well, come to think of it, it was actually something he said that I wanted to ask you about. Or, not really ask because it's none of my business. But, have you ..."

This was not going well.

"And with Amber, you seemed really, well."

Michael chewed his lip thoughtfully, which then turned into Michael chewing his lip because it felt kind of nice.

"What I'm trying to say is," he said, around his own bottom lip. He released it with a wet smack. "if you ever need to talk about anything--anything at all, though right now I'm kind of referring specifically to women--I don't judge. You're my best friend, Nick. You can tell me anything."

Nick eased back in his seat a little when Michael lowered his hand back to his leg; the last thing he needed was Mikey bleeding out - he liked Mikey.

Then came the awkward, stumbling half-questions - he knew that Michael had run into Bianca, but the content of their conversation had been left unrevealed. In fact, up until that moment, it hadn't even occurred to Nick that anything of particular importance could have been said, but given the hesitations that were suddenly peppering Michael's speech, it was clear that something had been communicated.

Regarding Bianca.

And Amber.

Putting it together was easy at that point; Nick's complete lack of a sex life for a full year was out in the open, but that didn't make it any less of a complicated topic. Bianca had been the first to try and initiate it - during their first date, in fact, and his outright refusal to take it further than a goodnight kiss had astonished her - and several tries on her part afterwards had led to her frustration.

He'd had to sit her down and have a heart-to-heart with her. Maybe that had been his mistake. He'd told her that he wanted to know they loved eachother and were both invested in the relationship before they went any further - Bianca had then asked if he was a Catholic, and he'd had to stop himself from laughing in her face. He'd replaced that urge by telling her, yes, he was Catholic and that his parents were too. It was in his up-bringing. That was why he wouldn't fuck her.

It was only the first of many lies anyways.

He'd told her he'd had bad experiences with having sex too soon in a relationship, too - that things had fallen apart after that. That bit hadn't been a lie.

Of course, a few weeks of no sex had dragged on into months, months had turned into a year and he hadn't been able to find a way out, to find a way around it.

She did, of course. In the form of Kennedy Chance.

"Mikey," Nick said slowly, and then peered over at him, dragging his eyes slowly to the champagne bottle, "Probably not a great time for this."

And it was only moments later that they were heading down the rough, familiar roads of the city's downtown, a route they had already taken once that day - the yellow awning of Csardas' imports came into view and Nick parked around the back.

"Let's just - get you fixed up, alright?"

Mikey missed a couple of beats, staring blankly at Nick. Then his attention fluttered down to his shoulder, and then over it, to the darkened truck bed. Not the time.

"Right." He gestured vaguely with his good arm. "I just thought, you know, while we're driving, anyway, may as well--" Mikey cut himself off abruptly and sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath. Pleasure oozed down his spine and across his scalp, like a phantom hand had just given him a particularly satisfying scratch.

He clamped both his hands down on his bent knees--momentarily distracted by how the rough seams of his jeans scraped beneath the pads of his thumbs--and took another breath, deep and steadying. Outside the window, the scenery passed virtually unnoticed.

"Holy shit," Michael said, but there was a profound lack of concern in his tone. "I think that guy dosed me with molly." Michael leaned his head back in the seat and slowly rolled his eyes heavenward. Then he giggled. "Annnnd that's an affirmative. I am all loved up. Stabbed and drugged. There's no way I can see a doctor like this, I don't care who Meadows has got stored away in his Blackberry o' World Domination."

Naturally, Michael assumed Nick would seek help from Brian Meadows, the only one of Nick's acquaintances who ever gave Michael the 'shady and connected' vibe.

Thankfully Nick could afford to do a double-take now that the car was parked; he had felt the shudder that went through Michael, something so strong and sudden that it jolted the seat - Michael's pupils were dilated, he was shivering, and he drew in a soft breath that had Nick staring at him for a long moment.

He shook it off and stepped out of the truck then, moving around to the other side - glancing briefly at the back, and yes, Burke was still there - before he opened up the passenger side,

"You've definitely been dosed up." Nick agreed, having decided he would deal with the consequences of feeding MDMA to Michael later on - or, at least, until he figured it out, "No, we're not going to go see Meadows - I'm pretty sure Brian is still sore about his three a.m. wake up call the other day. Apparently Mrs. Meadows, upon being woken up by the call, decided it would be a good time for early morning baking. He has assured me that you will personally be eating whatever abomination exits the oven. Knowing her, it's probably still cooking."

He pulled Michael's right arm up around his shoulders then, offering the support to help him out of the truck.

Michael was uncharacteristically passive, allowing Nick to pull him this way and that when normally he'd be shrugging off his assistance along with the declaration that he was 'fine'. (Though secretly he felt he really was perfectly okay and also that he was losing his manly street cred by acting like some dippy free love child while he was powerless to do anything about it.)

Michael leaned heavily against Nick and held onto his shoulder tightly enough that his fingernails were white around the edges.

"This kinda reminds me of our first date," Michael said, deadpan, and since Nick was steering him around and he didn't actually need to look where he was going, he let his head roll back and stared at the passing scenery. Details clicked into place as if they were telegraphed directly from on high.

"Huh. And .... our last. I mean, not that they're really dates. That was just me being--Pfft. But are we stopping to grab a bite while I'm bleeding and there's a psychopath in my truck?"

There was a familiarity in the situation - Nick had walked with him in much the same way during the night they had met - back then, Michael had tried to shrug him off and say he was fine despite a gang-beating; he had been bruised and scraped up, but had held together like a champ.

Nick peered over at Mikey, watching his head loll back as he stared up at the sky - there was no doubt that the E was working it's magic, something both of them would appreciate very soon.

"Yeah, I'm taking you for a big damn steak," Nick said, then nodded towards the bottle, "You can provide the drinks."

He led Mikey in through the back door and it shrieked on its rusted hinges, a sound that acted as an alarm of sorts, as evidenced by Csardas' hasty arrival; the big man was wearing a white apron and clutching a large meat tenderizer in his big hand, expression morphing from one of apprehension into one of surprise. Nick watched as the Hungarian's eyes moved from him, to Mikey, to the champagne bottle, and back again.

"What, you think I came here to get some crystal glasses to go with it?" Nick asked, dark eyebrows rising high.

"Right, right." Csardas said, turning and striding back into the main area of the restaurant.

"I need a clear space." Nick prompted, following after Csardas, "And scissors. Ice. Gloves. And I've got meat in the back of the truck that needs to be kept cold."

Csardas stopped mid-stride, turning to give Nick a sharp look; his moustache bristled,

"Is it him?" he asked hoarsely, "Have you found something? Do you know -"

Nick lifted a hand,

"I recovered what was lost this morning. That's all I've recovered." he said, then re-iterated, "A clear space, Csardas."

The Hungarian was startled back into movement, giving one sombre nod before continuing past the bar and out into the alcove where the display cases were kept; he moved past the gap between them and opened the door into a back room. It was clean enough, but it was clearly meant as a storage area, filled with stacked boxes labelled in foreign languages, a sink, and a broad wooden desk; when the light came on, a series of framed photographs were illuminated and unlike the ones out in the restaurant, these were in colour.

The primary subject of each photograph seemed to be a slightly plump young girl, dirty-blonde, freckled, and rosy-cheeked with a great big smile on her face and a strange little teardrop-shaped mole on her cheek; one of the pictures showed her in a ballerina's outfit, one at a birthday party with a crown on her head, and one at what had to have been her high school prom, standing demurely in a blue dress, hands clasped in front of her.

Nick didn't look at the pictures too hard; he had seen them before - instead, he led Mikey over to the desk prompting him to lean up against it while Csardas' dissappeared from the room,

"And for god's sake, keep Hrodulf entertained with his cigarillos for a while or something, yeah?"

The drugs and the blood loss created so powerful a mixture that by the time Nick propped Michael up against the wooden desk, the time spent on his feet had already worked him over. He was breathing hard--a side effect of all his nerves lighting up at odd intervals like a bug zapper--and he put up no resistance, but sat patiently where he was put. His expression was a perplexing combination of curiosity and stupor.

"Nick," Michael whispered, because despite all the awesome coursing through his veins at that moment, he was also developing one doozy of a headache.

Then he paused, and not just because he was having trouble verbalizing thoughts. Michael had a choice here. He could kick up a fuss about Nick's secrets, drag them out of him or screw their friendship trying, all the while bleeding out, or he could pretend he was too blitzed out of his mind to notice that Nick had just called an injured man in the back of Michael's truck meat.

After a long silence Michael said with a faint tremor in his voice, "You think the short fella'd bring me a beer?"

On some level Nick was aware that he needed to continue being careful - he had brought Michael to Csardas' before, but this was different. The first time around, they had still been in Mikey's world, just enjoying a meal together despite the questions that were hanging in the air, unasked - but this time it felt like he was precariously close to bringing Michael into another world entirely.

He found himself examining his friend for a long moment; with the glass bottle sticking out of him and ecstasy in his system, it was more likely that Michael had already crossed over.

Not what he'd wanted for Mikey.

He should have stepped back sooner; much sooner - but he hadn't forseen Burke getting free, not when he had been bound and injured. He hadn't forseen any of it because he had left loose ends - it was his own carelessness that had led to this.

L.A. was making him soft.

"Yeah, we'll get you a beer," Nick said, deciding that, with E and marijuana already in him, a beer probably wasn't going to make things worse. After all, at that point they were going to need to rely on alternate substances for painkillers - and Nick wasn't about to use anything harder than what he'd already fed to Mikey.

Csardas' appeared again, holding a small metal tool box in his hand; he set it onto the desk and Nick immediately opened it - it was a make-shift first aid kit, filled with astringents, cloth bandages, compresses, and a length of nylon suture thread. He plucked a pair of scissors out of the kit, giving them a sideways look, and then peering at Michael's injury; the lip of the chardonnay bottle gleamed with more menace than any overpriced booze ever had.

"We're gonna need beer." Nick said, "And a whiskey. A strong whiskey."

When Csardas came back the third time, he was holding the entire bottle of whiskey, an empty glass, and a pint of Bass - good memory - Nick gave the empty scotch glass a sour look and picked up the bottle, unscrewing the lid. He brought the bottle up to Mikey's mouth,

"Consider the beer a chaser." he reasoned.

Michael watched Nick, watching Michael. The entire room was bouncing between soft focus and razor sharp definition, dancing around Nick like he was the eye of this particular shit storm. Light--and Michael wasn't sure whether it was real light or a weak spot in his overtaxed sanity--hit Nick's eyes and splintered off of them, and Michael saw rather than heard the words out of his mouth -

Consider the beer a chaser

- only what he actually saw written read more like, 'You're about to be in considerable pain.' His face was grave as the bottle approached his lips and he opened his mouth obediently. He put his right hand around the neck and shifted it, so he could control the pour, tipped his head back and let the liquor flow.

One swallow, then two. By the fourth, his eyes were watering and his face had gone flush, and after the fifth he pulled his mouth free and dragged in a deep, fresh breath. The breath that left him after was sharp and probably highly flammable.

He handed the bottle back, dragged the back of his hand across his lips, and said hoarsely, "I'm not gonna ask you if you've done this before."

He wanted to ask, of course. He wanted a lot of things, but whether it was drug induced generosity of spirit or the very rational, very sensible fear of the truth clawing at his mind, he wasn't going to ask for them. Nicholas Godwit led a double life, Michael was now fairly certain, but he'd existed happily in only one of those lives for some time now. Who was to say he couldn't do it indefinitely?

All right, so even Michael wasn't high enough to buy that bit of rationale, but so long as it got him through this moment, he could handle the rest of it later. Much later.

Nick watched the whiskey slosh around, churning and developing into ripples and waves in the sea that was contained inside the amber-hued bottle, responding to each pull on it from Mikey. He counted in his head, eyes sliding up the neck of the bottle and towards his friend, watching his throat shift, watching the colour creeping up his jaw and into his cheeks.

Michael moved back after impressive six swallows of it and Nick set the bottle aside, going for a pair of disposable latex gloves, snapping them on with a practised ease, flexing his long fingers inside of them for a moment, watching the material bend with the digits while Michael spoke.

On the surface it wasn't a question, but Nick knew that Mikey had only said it because he was trying hard not to be intrusive, but couldn't help himself - and under the circumstances, Nick couldn't blame him for wanting to know. He'd want to know that the guy suturing his wound had done it before, too.

"I've prepped a lot of roasts," he said, completely deadpan while he threaded a needle; once he was finished, he turned fully to Michael; he wriggled his fingers, and the latex gloves squeaked with the motion. He raised his left hand, setting it onto Michael's right shoulder while his right hand moved to the champagne bottle, fingers lingering near the end of it but not touching,

"You should probably brace yourself." he said, watching the muscles work in Michael's neck as his jaw clamped; Nick's fingers tightened on his shoulder, his other hand took the neck of the bottle. After one terribly short moment of stillness, Nick yanked his hand back lightning face, wrenching the bottle out from where it had been embedded; the resulting wound wasn't a pretty one; jagged holes in the shirt leading to wounds of varying depth.

He went for the scissors then, wordlessly bringing them to the hemline of Michael's shirt and making a quick cut before he took hold of either side and tore the cloth open.

A short, wordless yell escaped Michael when the glass tore out of his flesh. (A bigger man might have admitted it was a little closer to a scream, but not Michael Jones.) Immediately there followed a string of low, hoarse curse words, which steadily decreased in volume as the initial, gut-wrenching pain subsided and left in its wake a slightly less fierce, burning one.

"God damn it, Nick," Michael said, finally, and then shut up entirely, except for the labored sound of each drawn breath.

He opened his eyes at last and hazarded a glance down. Nick had already sliced clean through his shirt, revealing only a strip of tan, muscled skin, and Michael opened his mouth to rattle off some half-hearted complaint, mostly to distract himself from the sweetchristohfuckhurts. No words came out, but his mouth was left hanging ajar when Nick made a fist around the two sides of his shirt and -

- tore the motherfucker open.

Michael absolutely did not whimper at that moment. He did not whimper, he did not squirm, and he sure as hell didn't blush like a little girl. Except for how he did all of those things, even as blood flowed freely--though, one might note with relief, steady and slow--down his chest. He also noted, with quiet horror, that the room tilted precariously to the right and he couldn't be sure whether he was legitimately fainting or about to swoon.

"Um," Michael said, and then swallowed thickly around a dry, useless tongue. "I, uh, think I'll take that beer now." He reached with his good arm for the pint.

As far as Nick was concerned, Michael had the right to whine like a bitch right then, but his only complaint had come in the form of a single, loud shout - one that was more than earned.

Nick tugged the remaining, torn material of the shirt over Michael's shoulders and out of the way; blood had begun to seep from the wounds, but the bottle had been left in place long enough for a minute amount of clotting to occur, so it wasn't a large quantity of blood just yet - of course, then Michael was shifting, and Nick put a hand on his leg, squeezing for emphasis,

"Hey, stop moving," Nick protested, reaching for the beer himself and bringing it to Michael's lips, the very image of a mother hen; he got a good look at Michael's face then and despite pain and blood loss, he wasn't the same pallor he had been earlier - in fact, now he was flushed red and Nick brought his other hand up putting his wrist to Michael's forehead. Warm, but not feverish. Whiskey, maybe.

Possibly something else; Michael's body would be doing a lot of strange things right then in an attempt to cope with the pain anyways.

"We'll call this a war scar. Your first legitimate fight with a drug dealer."

It wasn't actually a chore, going perfectly still, when Michael's breath was busy catching in his chest and Nick's hand was burning a phantom imprint of itself on his knee. It was actually immediate and involuntary. For a moment, Michael couldn't make out what Nick was saying over the mantra of 'no no no no no' he'd taken up in his head.

If there was a place and time for this--which Michael firmly believed there wasn't--then it wouldn't be while hopped up on a drug cocktail in the back of some sketchy steakhouse while a crazed drug dealer sat unsupervised in his truck. (Well, that was where Michael had left him, and while he had a very strong suspicion that when he went back out there the man would be gone, Michael was busy pummeling that portion of his brain into willful ignorance.)

There appeared to be a direct connection between Michael's knee and his ability to breathe, because the moment Nick's hand lifted, he was able to draw in a deep, discreet breath (which he could blame on the pain if forced to examine these events closely). He could also move again, which he did, but only to tip his head back and welcome the beer down his throat. He didn't reach for the glass as he did the time before--he was told not to move, after all, and that shouldn't have turned Michael hyper-aware of Nick's proximity the way it totally did--but he allowed Nick to decide when enough was enough, swallowing obediently and watching Nick's face from under barely lifted eyelids.

When the glass was taken away, Michael licked his lips clean and continued to hold perfectly still. Only his eyes moved, sliding away from Nick to stare at some point over his shoulder.

"Is that what fighting with drug dealers will get me?" Michael asked, though he was filled up with regret for his sharp tone, even as he continued speaking. "A bunch of jagged scars?"