Perfect Stranger (SevenxBathos)

Michael's tone was uncharacteristic but Nick wasn't about to take it to heart - especially under the circumstances.

"Yeah," he said, eyes shifting down to the wound again, "Pretty much."

One gloved hand moved down to the injured shoulder then, index and middle finger going to either side of a particularly deep cut - he pressed gently on the spot. Nick's mouth twisted a little in an unpleasant expression and he reached for the medical kit with his other hand, plucking up a pair of tweezers,

"You've got a piece of glass in here still." Nick murmured, suddenly imagining Michael as the board game Operation, laying there with pieces that need to be plucked out, nose lighting up - he shook off the thought and, with the tweezers, took hold of the shining green edge of a shard of glass and tugged it out of place, dropping it off to the side.

Blood flowed a little more freely then, and Nick pressed his hand down on the wound, applying pressure to stop the bleeding while his available hand went for a bottle of saline, thumb snapping open the lid,

"Uh," Nick said, eyeing the saline, then looking at Michael, "Sorry, in advance."

And with little flourish, he began the work of sterilizing the cuts, one hand settled on top of Michael's shoulder, face leaning in close to inspect his work.

In the movies, Michael recalled out of nowhere at all, this was the part where the macho hero gets plopped down into a chair by a savvy, buxom blonde and she scolds him while dabbing daintily at his wounds, and they have a profound emotional connection for about 45 seconds, and all the while the hero's eyes crease sexily in the corners at the minor discomfort.

Utter bullshit, he now knew.

It was all the liquor, his brain supplied, even as it fuzzed white with pain. And the drugs. They made his reflexes difficult to contain. That had to be why he was not crinkling his eyes sexily in the corners, but screwing his entire face up and breaking into an instant sweat. A low, agonized groan started up deep in his chest and slowly grew volume.

"Holy," Michael gasped, but couldn't even string together a proper curse in his state. He was drunk on pain. On the bright side, he'd apparently met his quota for humiliation for the evening as there was no screaming.

"Not a fed," Michael said. His voice was low and rough, not unlike a feral growl, but it was only the pain. Otherwise, he spoke as if he were working out a crossword puzzle out loud, casually engaged. "Feds don't know this stuff. They have people for that. Special ops, maybe. Would explain the travel, but not the location. Retired, maybe. Or a deserter. Would explain the ..." He broke off into another low groan.

"Shit, shit shit, this is not where I need to be right now, man. I am on the verge of a very bad trip and if I could not be, like, anywhere near the industrial freezer I'm guessing you got stashed behind, like, some sinister looking curtain, that would be awesome."

Nick knew how this sort of thing worked; personal experience had lent him the sympathy that he otherwise wouldn't have had, and he knew for a fact that Michael was going to be in an impressive amount of pain from the saline solution - he was literally getting salt in his wound, after all.

Of course, everyone reacted differently from pain and Nick had seen enough people in varying levels of agony over the course of his life to know what the standard response was - hissing was common, screams were likely, fist-clenching and muscle tightening and jaw clamping were all frequent occurrences.

They rarely got chatty, though. Apparently Michael did.

Nick tried to focus on the wound, but the steady stream of speculation was unwinding something inside of Nick's brain; Michael was high, and probably drunk by now, so he wasn't entirely responsible for what escaped him, but it was evident that the thoughts had been there already, and Nick was seeing years spiralling down the drain.

This was the first of his lives that had lasted this long; all the others, he'd been lucky to have them go on for a few weeks, but that was because jobs didn't usually take long, not like this one had. He knew he was reaching the end of this particular assignment, that soon enough he would find what he was looking for - it was only ever a matter of time, but he was rapidly running out of it.

And he couldn't relocate, not yet.

Part of him didn't want to - but he knew that was ridiculous. He had come to L.A. knowing he would have to eventually leave, but somehow he had let himself be charmed by a local. He'd stuck around even after finishing a job, a stupid, dangerous thing to do. He'd even started travelling for work, coming back to L.A. afterwards like it was his home. Like he had one.

Stupid. Irresponsible.

In his absent-mindedness, Nick sprayed the saline with just a little too much force into one of the cuts and he heard a low groan of pain escape Michael - he immediately regretted it.

"It's just a bad day, Mikey." Nick said, but even to his own ears it didn't sound convincing, "Just let me finish up here and I'll get you home, alright?"

Michael didn't have much interest in Nick's assurances. He knew the score and didn't need to have it told to him. Michael was in trouble. Nick wasn't special ops, or if he was it was a long, long time ago. He wasn't California bred, that much was obvious, or else he shouldn't have been hauling around the passports. He had to have a stash somewhere, in his real home, wherever that was. There was no reason to travel with illegal documents when you didn't have to, was there?

Nick was into something messy, Michael reasoned. The nature of said mess and the part Nick played--those answers were still lost in a swirl of denial, confusion, and pain. Michael reckoned it wouldn't hurt to leave it that way, but he couldn't stop obsessing over it, prodding at the puzzle incessantly like a tongue against a split lip. It wasn't right, not knowing if Nicholas Godwit even existed.

The stitching would get done when it got done. In the meantime, Michael needed to find a better way to distract himself from the pain, because rambling to Nick about sensitive subject matter was only marginally better than narrowly escaping humping the air.

"Yeah, yeah," Michael said, through clenched teeth. "I know you're doing your best here and you've got that whole cannot-confirm-or-deny routine down, which kinda brings me back around to G-man, but you lie too well to be anything but intelligence." Michael laughed, raspy and humorless. "You lie really well, considering the ... years." He laughed again, and winced when he jostled his shoulder.

"This is so fucked up," Michael said through his snickering, which looked a little bit like frustrated sobs when combined with the face still contorted with pain. "Please make it so I don't remember this."

The cuts were as clean as they could get, considering they had been caused by glass scooped up from the concrete of an L.A. back alley; Nick put the saline aside and picked up the suturing needle, expression pulled into something grim,

"I think you're doing a lot of speculating." Nick replied, fingers moving to Michael's shoulder again; of course, Michael had every right to speculate, given that he had seen the contents of the briefcase - and he couldn't exactly blame him if he had opened the passports out of sheer, uncontrollable curiosity. People were like that. Chances were, Michael had seen the pile of passports, made a snap judgement, and had decided to try and calm his suspicions by taking a look, maybe trying to prove himself wrong.

Now Nick was speculating.

He cocked his head to the side,

"You're going to have to lay down on the desk." he said finally.

Michael tensed up and did not immediately move to follow Nick's instructions. It took him a long moment to make sense of his hesitation, but when it struck him it nearly made him sick.

Michael was afraid. He didn't want to lay back, he wanted to remain on his feet with something solid against his back. It was a natural instinct, honed over a long career of getting into scuffles, and it wasn't easily overpowered. His subsconscious, at the very least, suspected Nicholas of being an enemy.

"Sure," he said at long last. A few beats of perfect stillness later and he was scooting back on the desk, slow and precise. He swung his legs over so he could put Nick close to the wound, and leaned back. First onto his elbows, and that lasted for all of three seconds before his shoulder gave a twinge and he plopped onto his back. His eyes tracked every move Nick made.

"I'm sorry I dragged you out tonight," Michael said, because silence was killing him and giving him too much freedom to think. "I didn't mean to. Well. Whatever I did, I didn't mean it. And I get the silent thing, I do. And maybe I'm insane and it's the drugs talking and that's why you're not responding, but if you're worried, you don't have to be. I haven't said anything, not that I would know what to say. And I don't plan on it."

Michael let that statement take a moment to sink in and then went on, in a lighter tone, "So if you could please not 'sanction' me or whatever they call it, that would be awesome."

It would have been a lie if Nick had said he didn't notice the hesitation - so he chose not to say anything at all. Sometimes, after all, that was the best solution.

Instead, he tracked Mikey's movements down onto the desk, watching the way muscles surrounding the wound strained from the pain and observing the way that the light was striking the various dips and valleys that created Michael Jones' torso, marked with sweat and thin streams of blood. Of course, it wasn't the first time he had seen his friend without a shirt, but those times had been few and far between, and terribly brief - after all, they had never made a practise of undressing in front of eachother. Not that it would have been a problem if they had. Because they were secure in their sexuality like that.

"Nothing that happened tonight was caused by you - it was purely circumstantial. I could have said 'no' about going tonight, if I'd wanted to." Nick replied simply, aware that his friend seemed suddenly desperate to talk - something that Mikey would normally avoid under any circumstances. He leaned in close to the wound bringing his hands up to it and wordlessly making the first push of the suture needle through Michael's flesh,

"I've just developed this tendency of trusting you, is all." he added mildly.

All things considered, the pain of the needle pushing through Michael's skin was manageable. Possibly even beneath his notice, if not for the fact that it was prodding at an already too sensitive area. Michael clenched his teeth and put all of his focus--which seemed to be in awfully short supply at that particular moment--into breathing normally. He craned his neck so he could keep an eye on the movement of Nick's hands, and though he made every effort not to look paranoid, the restless bunching of his arms and abdomen gave him away.

"You can," he said sincerely. Michael was hurt and more than a little confused and a lot scared, but even so he knew he had Nick's back when it came down to it. He waited a beat before dragging his attention from Nick's hands to his face. He still looked like Nick, calm and collected as he deftly patched up a jagged wound, as stoic as the day Bianca dumped a glass of wine over his head. Michael had always believed it was an act, that Nick took things in stride but he still felt them. Now he wasn't so sure.

Michael dropped his gaze back to Nick's hands.

Nick was focused intensely on what he was doing, long, calloused fingers pulling each suture through with deft skill, each stitch was aligned neatly, a near-surgical precision that defied the life of a business man - when one cut was finished, he would move relentlessly on to the next one, a circle of dashes that marred Michael's otherwise taut skin.

"I can." Nick agreed grimly, "I do."

He looked up at Michael and his expression briefly turned into something strange, something that looked vaguely disquieted,

"You're my - buddy." he said quickly, stuck in that uncomfortable moment where testosterone and human feelings mesh to create a confusing internal battle; he shifted then, as though trying to roll the moment away from them via his shoulders, "At any rate, I'll be getting you home once this is done and you'll have to get some rest. I've got to catch a flight tomorrow, too."

Another uncomfortable shift,

"Which reminds me," he added, but still grimaced internally at the lame segway, "You borrowed a suit jacket back during the - Giza thing. It's not so much the jacket, but - well. Where was it left?"

Michael's eyelids fluttered slowly but his mouth remained motionless. He felt heat prick his cheeks, but he'd lost enough blood that thankfully there just wasn't enough juice for a full body flush. Michael was suddenly too aware of his naked torso and Nick's hands, so he turned his head away and stared at the ceiling.

"Why--" Michael stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again, "Why do you ask? I mean, that's odd phrasing. You mean, like, did I leave it with a homeless guy who might otherwise have frozen to death on the ... balmy LA streets?"

That - wasn't the sort of response he had been hoping for.

Nick paused; one of his hands had settled on Michael's upper arm, thumb and forefinger still holding the suturing needle, the other hand settled somewhere on Michael's torso, splayed out just around his ribcage.

"Well, I ask because you did make a stop or two along the way to - well -" Nick said, then finished lamely " - jail. And as I'm sure you recall, the featured stop off was at the home of my former fiancee - and it wasn't amongst the clothing that was given back to you. So I suppose I'm wondering, in between practising your right hook, and being suplexed by a six-foot-five she-ra, could it have been - dropped?"

Nick cleared his throat this time,

"Unless you actually did leave it with a homeless man, in the fear he would turn into a hobosicle in the eighty degree weather."

Michael was quiet for a long time, and kind of hating the fact that he was blazed out of his mind. He'd have been more convincing if he didn't require a thirty second recess to come up with every answer.

"Yes," Michael began slowly. "It could have been dropped at--" He stopped himself. He didn't want to send Nick on a wild goose chase for his jacket, especially not if it sent him knocking on Bianca's door, which was where the jacket would be if Michael had actually dropped it in her yard.

"No," he amended quickly. "No, definitely did not drop it anywhere." He nodded. "We can totally rule out dropping or ruining in any way. For sure. But, hey, why dwell on the past? It was just a jacket, right? And you pretty much suck at being rich or, another possibility, never even noticed when the zeroes multiplied like rabbits in your bank account, so ... I mean, right? That jacket wasn't, like, special or anything."

Nick waited patiently for Michael to respond - during the hangtime, he even managed to get another suture done before leaning back to continue watching him attentively. For an instant, he considered that he might even need to do the unimaginable and show up on Bianca's stoop to ask for his suit jacket back and he found himself considering how that particular scene would unfold:

Yes, you know, the one my best friend dropped while he was busily punching out the man you were cheating on me with? That one? I'll have that back, thanks.

Much to his relief, that wasn't the case - but the relief was short-lived, due to the fact Michael was quickly trying to brush it off, an avoidance tactic that he had come to recognize in his friend over the years: behave casual, act as though it's all water under the bridge before said bridge is even built.

Even worse, Michael's hasty addendum set off alarm bells,

"Well," Nick said, watching Michael unblinkingly now, his voice as calm and even as ever, "It's really not so much the jacket, as what's inside of the jacket. Mikey. Documents in the breast pocket. For my flight. Tomorrow. To Russia."

Michael winced.

"Oh." A pause and then, "This is probably a conversation best saved for a time when you're not stitching up my wounds." Or when there were no sharp objects within a fifty foot radius. Nick had never actually said he wasn't going to kill Michael, only that he trusted him. Sociopaths killed people they trusted all the time. Not that Nick was a sociopath.

Oh, no. He just leads a double life and is covered in scars and refers to men as meat.

Michael suddenly felt sick. He was not a good liar, not when it came to Nick and, horrifyingly, there was even a small part of him that wanted to tell the truth. It was the same part of him that was hyper-aware of Nick's hand on him, feather light and terrifying on every level. (And really, really nice.)

In a rush, Michael said, "Okay, I'm really sorry but I burned it. No, I can't tell you why. No, I am not kidding. The jacket is gone. Forever. And I'd like the record to show that you never told me about any documents ... Please."

For a moment, Nick went very still - this wasn't the stillness that came from pausing, but rather the sort of stillness that comes when all of a person's bits stop functioning on a cellular level. This was the sort of stillness that ecapsulated breathing and blinking. This was the stillness of being flash-frozen. This moment lasted mere seconds and was gone as quickly as it had come and then Nick finally blinked and moved again.

Slowly, the words came out:

"Burned it." Nick repeated incredulously.

There was a hesitation; he remembered showing up on Michael's doorstep earlier that day to drag him to Csardas' to begin with.

"There was a scorch mark on your driveway." Nick said, expression distant; then, despite the fact he had been told not to, he asked anyways, his eyes coming back into focus and falling directly onto Michael's face, "Why? I mean was - is this a common practise? I mean, granted, I didn't tell you about any documents because - well, I'd forgotten, but I suppose I didn't forsee any - you know, ritual cleansing occurring, either."

Nick closed one eye, cocked his head to the side as though fighting off a headache,

"Burned it." he repeated, more to himself this time, "You're killing me here, Mikey."

"No," Michael barked, "I'm not a firestarter or a total loon. Just, you said you trust me so trust me. It was - unavoidable. And I really didn't think you'd ever ask for it back." Or so soon. Michael had convinced himself, at the time, that he could find an identical jacket and sell a kidney to afford it. Nick had shaken up the schedule.

"I'm pretty sure you can get a replacement ticket at the airport, though," Michael suggested, though he had a feeling it wasn't just a plane ticket that went up in flames in his drive. All because of--

Michael resisted the urge to squirm. He couldn't be sure if he was more frustrated or mortified, but he was a healthy dose of both. "Look," he went on testily (a side effect of the shame), "you got the part where I said was sorry, right? So could you please finish up with the needle?" So I can get the Hell out of here, he didn't say.

Nick was trying - really trying to summon up a scenario in which his jacket could unavoidably be lit on fire, and short of accusing Michael of getting into a fist fight with a fire eater, he was coming up short on ideas. What in the hell had Michael done to completely burn his jacket to ashes? In his driveway, no less.

"It's not the ticket," Nick said, the last word escaping him a little more forcibly than the others had, but he corrected his tone almost immediately, " - that's the problem."

He tilted his chin down for a moment, took in a breath that expanded his chest, then let it out in a small huff; as though he had just performed a self-exorcism, any of the tension that had been building in his shoulders was suddenly gone again - back to status quo.

It was fine.

It would be fine, he told himself.

Sure, there were irreplacable documents in that jacket that he absolutely needed in order to carry out his next job, but he would - he would - figure it out. Figure something out.

And now he only had a slim margin of time to get Burke talking before he had to get on a goddamn plane to Russia.

He bent his head again; completely silent, mouth in a thin line, Nick continued his work on Michael's wounded shoulder, the gears turning and clicking in his head, tapping out a rhythm in morse code that told him he was fucked.

Michael kept perfectly, awkwardly still and stared at the ceiling. He was silent, Nick was silent, and there was nothing to keep his mind distracted from how Nick sometimes steadied his hand against Michael's bare shoulder or how occasionally he would brush his thumb across the stitches, appraising.

It wasn't weird. It wasn't intimate. It wasn't anything but cold and practical and everything else was a product of Michael's bored, drug addled brain. It certainly felt different to Michael. Every brush of fingers against his skin seemed to be suggesting something else. Something inappropriate, given the circumstances.

The silence persisted until Michael watched Nick cut the thread that was holding him back together, and the instant it was done he heaved a sigh of relief and pushed into an upright position. Shortly after, he fell back on his elbows and the room spun around him. Michael pushed all of his weight onto one arm and groped for the whiskey bottle with the other, catching it in his fingers and tipping it immediately to his mouth.

The final suture went through and Nick snipped the thread, watching Michael's skin shift back into place as the line was released from the needle; for a long moment afterwards, he leaned in and eyed the wound appraisingly, lightly running one covered fingertip along the radius of the stitching, feeling the raised lines that created each individual stitch, knowing they were firmly anchored through layers of flesh. Nearly perfect.

Nick finally gave a nod of approval and moved back, pausing to watch Michael clumsily shoving himself upright; he briefly considered telling Mikey it probably wasn't a good idea given the cocktail of MDMA, marijuana, whiskey and beer - but he made the decision to let him figure it out himself, which he swiftly did, if his groping for the whiskey bottle was any indication.

"How's that, uh, going for you?" Nick asked apprehensively, watching him unevenly tipping the whiskey bottle; after a moment, Nick snapped off his gloves, tossing them into a nearby rubbish bin and he reached out, one hand supporting the bottom of the bottle to prevent any further accidents involving glass, the other hand going to the edge of Mikey's jaw, gently easing the bottle end upwards to help his friend along.

"I'm going to get Csardas to finish wrapping that up." Nick said finally, eyes tracking the way the whiskey sloshed in the bottle. A little more, and he wasn't sure Michael would be going much of anywhere for a while.

At the first touch of Nick's fingertips against his face, still warm and a little clammy from the gloves, Michael's eyes abruptly widened and went soft again, and he nearly choked on his medicine. His felt it through his whole body, felt a pleasant spike of euphoria rattling in his brain and he barely managed to keep from nuzzling.

He hesitated to let go of the feeling, which told him already that he was losing his grip on his senses, rapidly. Also, Nick was starting to blur around his edges, so Michael grudgingly lowered the bottle and pondered what might happen if he turned his head and licked Nick's fingers. He loved them, he thought heatedly. He could make them happy.

"Csardas," Michael repeated with great difficulty, eyes glazed. His breathing had grown shallow and fast. "You've got - what - errands?"

Michael was suddenly very put out with the idea of Nick leaving. He'd been stabbed, after all. Didn't that warrant a little bit of bedside coddling?

Not for the first time that week, Nick wanted to kick himself; not only had he misplaced important documents that pertained to an upcoming job, he had also gotten wasted enough that he had allowed himself to be partially undressed, effectively undoing years of careful planning when Michael had seen his tattoo-covered, mutilated torso. In combination with the briefcase - which he had stupidly left in the open, since he was obviously on a roll - Mikey had obviously thought of a few questions to ask, but had been too polite to ask them.

And now all Nick wished was that he could get Mikey fucking hammered enough to forget all of it - but he knew it was only a temporary solution.

He grimaced as he looked at his best friend; he knew that he would eventually have to make a decision.

The kind of decision he really hated making.

But he would think about that later; for now, there were other things to take care of.

"I won't be long," he said, moving for the door, finding that, for the first time in a long time, he was unable to come up with an excuse - and the truth sure as hell wasn't going to be appropriate. It rarely was.

He left the room, crossing paths with Csardas in the kitchen,

"He's all sewn up," Nick told him, glancing back to the door, "I need you to just wrap it up, keep an eye on him, maybe make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit or something."

"He is sick?" Csardas asked, bewildered.

"No, he's smashed. And high as fuck. I fed him ecstasy and told him it was aspirin." Nick said matter-of-factly, swiping up a butcher's knife as he passed by the counter, adding: "Gonna borrow this for a bit."

Michael's gaze remained fixed on the doorway after Nick disappeared through it and stayed there until it began to wobble in a way that suggested a complete breakdown of the laws of physics. Or his mind.

His body and head were both awash in sensation; some bad, some good, and some really fucking good. His body and head were both in a state of utter confusion. Unconsciousness tugged persistently at his eyelids, but he fought against it. He was having a hard time remembering why he ought to fight, but he knew it was important to stay lucid.

No one ever accused Michael of staggering mental fortitude, however. Not a full two minutes after Nicholas had gone, Michael had already forgotten where he'd disappeared to--or if he'd even said. He knew only that he was alone, and lying down, and slowly the tension eased out of his muscles. He could afford a few minutes of rest. Nick wouldn't let anything bad happen to him.

Not unless Nick was the one doing the bad.

With that thought and its many connotations--some more entertaining than others--circling in Michael's sloppy brain, he finally shut his eyes.

Gray mist hung in the air and swirled around itself, obscuring the white walls of the freezer and making it feel like it went on for eternity, an endless room of cold and emptiness - it was almost peaceful.

Or it would have been, if Burke hadn't been strapped down to a stainless steel table - the weed and the ecstasy that had been forced down his throat were taking the edge off the pain but he wasn't having the best trip with the addition of bowel-clenching terror.

And especially not with that dead pig hanging three feet away from him, it's throat slit from ear to ear and the head hanging away from the body like some big, meaty pink pez dispenser; blood had crystalized in the stump of its neck, hanging in reddish icicles, stuck there and never actually dripping.

Burke swallowed down the urge to scream when the door opened, trading it in for a sharp intake of air and a desperate sort of squirming because, fuck, that was him even though he couldn't see his features through the haze of drugs and mist, but it was him.

Nick strode up to him, stopping beside the table and staring off at the far wall, chewing on his tongue.

"Yeah." he said, as though confirming something with himself before he began shrugging off his jacket, setting the foot-long butcher's knife down, resting it on Burke's thigh.

"So I was in Mexico, right," Nick said as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up with care, "In this city called Tapachula? There was this Canadian tourist who had gone missing there and I guess you could say I was doing a sort of inquiry. This was a while back, one of my first jobs, you know? So my Spanish was kind of rusty, but I knew enough to get me to this little back alley grill, the sort of place that's run out of a trailer - the grease was so thick that when it was hot enough, you could see fat dripping off the steel siding. You could have used the thing as a candle."

Nick rubbed tiredly at his eye,

"So I sit down at the little table, I have a drink because it's pretty hot out. The guy behind the grill, he's watching me the whole time. I'm pretty big, I'm not exactly a lightweight, but this guy - he was huge and I'm not sure how he even fit into that tin can, but he was watching me because I'm pretty obviously a foreigner and I'm young and stupid-looking."

Burke was staring, unblinking; the ecstasy made the words swirl around him in different shades of black and grey,

"He starts talking to me, speaks English better than I speak Spanish but I try a little anyways, for the look of it. He thinks it's funny, gives me a few more beers, says they're on the house, tells me about the gangs in the area and says I should be careful, because guys like me, we're easy targets. He seems like a decent guy, like a friendly waiter you'd meet downtown, but he's got that - "

Nick waved vaguely towards his own face,

"- look. And I know you know what I mean. That thing in his eyes that tells me I'm at the right place. I stick around until the sun's almost down, and he's asking me where I'm from. I tell him I'm from Canada. He says that's funny, because he just had another kid from Canada a couple of weeks ago. He asks what part I'm from, I tell him Quebec. He says 'how about that', because the other kid, he was from Quebec too. He asks what my name is, I tell him it's 'Erin', and he goes pale, right? I say 'It must be a small world, because I'm going to bet that was his name, too'."

He pulled up a chair - the same one Burke had been tied to earlier - and swung it around to sit on it backward, leaning his arms onto the back of it, his chin propped onto his wrists,

"So he's reaching down and I know he's going for something, so I smash my beer on the grill and the fire goes up in his face, takes his eyebrows off, and I'm going around behind it, getting into this hot metal container where this guy spends most of his time and I kid you not, the floor's got about an inch of grease on it, you could have probably peeled it off. He's clutching at his face and still reaching down, he grabs - get this - he gets out a machete. He can barely move inside this trailer, but his weapon is a machete. As luck would have it, he gets a swipe in."

Nick gestured to his neck,

"Right across here. Surface wound, nothing too bad, but it left a nice scar to remember him by. So I'm bleeding and I'm kind of annoyed with the whole thing because I'm standing in this dripping hell, so I play a little dirty and I go for the eyes, you know the bit - ram your thumbs in and just wrench a little. He drops the machete and I'm asking where Erin is. He's not too keen on answering and suddenly his english isn't so great, so I put his hand on the grill."

He sat back in the seat, eyes a little distant and unfocused,

"Turns out Erin was long dead, though. Traded on the market like meat, probably hacked to pieces like it, too. I think his fingers were like, medium-to-well-done by the time he told me, not because he held out on me, but it's just hard to focus while you're cooking. Being cooked. Anyways, by the time I was done, he wasn't really friendly with me anymore and I guess I can understand that. So I broke his shins - I was kind of an amateur, but I'd seen the Halloween movies and I just wasn't keen on this undead Mexican chasing after me with a machete - and I turned up the gas just a little."

Scratching at his chin, Nick squinted in thought,

"It's funny because I'd heard people say it before, but it kind of did smell like a pork roast; can't eat the stuff now, still makes me cringe. In fact, just a little while ago Mikey, you know the guy you stabbed? He was having a hot dog and I started dry heaving, had to tell him I must have been coming down with something. It's funny how shit like that stays with you. But I guess, you know, long story short here, Burke - I did that because it was my job. When I first got my hands on you, I was doing it for a job then, too. But this - it's sort of personal now, you know? I just had to put twenty stitches into Mikey because of you. I told him MDMA was tylenol. That's kind of fucked up."

Nick stood, carelessly pushing the chair out of his way before picking up the cleaver,

"So right now? We'll call this a freebie. I won't even ask you any questions." he said.

Michael is fifteen years old. He's in the food court at a mall he doesn't recognize, eating a Double Quarter Pounder that tastes inexplicably like whipped cream and caramel. There's someone sitting across the table from him, someone watching him patiently, but Michael can't get his head to cooperate and turn.

"If anything, it's adorable," says a voice, sort of familiar. Sort of not. "This little crisis of yours."

Michael tries to respond, but his mouth is full. He chews and chews, but he can't seem to swallow the burger. It clings to the roof of his mouth, and in between his teeth and cheeks. Across the food court, he watches a bored redhead scoop ice cream.

He knows that he's dreaming. Maybe hallucinating, come to think. But it isn't real. He's sure of that. Mostly.

This is one boring ass dream.

"You're not anorexic, fashion forward, or stupid rich."

Michael chews.

"You drink domestic beer from a can. You don't have a passport, never mind a dozen."

He senses the mystery guest shift closer, so Michael changes tactics and starts spitting out the burger. Only water comes out and it dribbles down his chin.

"And speaking of that passport situation," the voice says and the man steps around to face Michael. He still can't turn his head, even though he wants to now more than ever.

It's Nicholas.

Or, it's kind of Nick, but not really. It's a man who looks in every way like Michael's best friend, but the voice doesn't belong to Nick, and neither do the words.

Not-Nick is dressed just like Nick would be, in deep brown slacks and a shirt that's almost yellow--buttoned up to the collar, naturally--and holding a gleaming silver knife. It's small and serrated on one side, like a hunter's tool. In the other hand, he holds a cigarette, which he sticks between Michael's lips. It's just as well because he's forgotten what he was fighting so hard to say.

The lookalike fishes a lighter from his pocket and Michael obediently sucks in when the flame meets the tip of his cigarette. They lock eyes and Michael finds it impossible to glance away.

"I suggest you make a genuine effort."

Michael shifts his lips carefully around the filter and says, "At what?"

"Too late," Not-Nick says, and lunges at Michael with the knife raised.

Michael finds his legs and leaps out of the way. As he sails through the air, in the moment before he hits ceramic food court tile, he thinks to himself, I'm going to die.

He doesn't die and he doesn't hit the floor. He just keeps falling.



"Mother of Christ," Michael moaned when the world--the real world--came hurtling back to him. He didn't immediately recognize his surroundings and he had no idea how long he'd been out. What he did know was that he was still all jacked up on warm fuzzies and sporting a serious case of dry mouth.

"Hello?" he called out, not really any louder than a normal inside voice. It was dark in the room and there was some vague, looming sense of paranoia that he couldn't pin down. It made him hesitant to yell.

In response, Michael heard hysterical screaming.

Well, that's not entirely true. He heard the remnants of hysterical screaming, filtered through pipes and vents and wood, up through the floor, until all that really reached Michael's ears was a muffled, toneless roar. It was a man, he thought. A man dying somewhere in that very building.

Details of his evening flooded back at once, hazy but concrete. Michael's heart sank into his gut even as it gave a painful pause and proceeded to pound thunderously.

"I am so dying tonight," he whispered woefully into the shadows and struggled to sit up.

Nick stood with his arms crossed, one hand lifted to his mouth, forefinger tapping at his bottom lip as he stared down; his other hand was loosely holding the butcher's knife, it's razor edge smeared and reddish.

"That went through a lot faster then I thought it would." Nick admitted, eyeing the meat grinder thoughtfully. Behind him, Burke had fallen silent, slumped back against the table, his breathing shaky, eyes glazed; Nick glanced back at him and recognized the signs of shock. He rolled his eyes and moved back over,

"Hey, no, you don't go anywhere." he said, prodding Burke in the forehead and then patting the side of his face none-too-gently, "Listen, look, if you go unconscious, I'm just going to cut off another while you're out, and if I get really bored, I might just start on your other hand."

Burke's eyes went a little wider,

"So you can see why you should stay with me here." Nick said, pulling up a seat "But this is the part where I need you to start questioning your motives here. I get that by protecting your supplier, you think you're covering your own ass, but, you know -"

He laughed; it was a tiny, giggly noise that bubbled up from somewhere in his chest, something that he had to clear his throat to cut off mid-way as though it had arrived against his will,

"- you're not even going to be able to do up your own shirt soon, nevermind handle merchandise."

Burke let out a low whine; he didn't seem to find the humour in it.

"The thing is, I'm supposed to be on a plane," Nick said, "And heading to Russia. I'm supposed to be doing terrible things over there right now - I haven't really missed many deadlines before, but I've got the feeling this one is going to come back and bite me in the ass. But for now, I've got all the time in the world and I'm pretty stoked on focusing all of my energy into making you suffer. I mean, I'm still not going to like you very much, but you can probably redirect my attention to someone else."

"I don't know who makes them!" Burke bit out, his voice on the edge of hysteria, "I don't know who makes the videos!"

"Then give me the middle man or i'm taking your thumb this time."

"You're going to kill me anyways!"

"No, I'm going to keep you alive for as long as possible if you keep getting on my nerves, and that might seem ideal, but I can guarantee that you'll want to spend as little time with me as you can, because there's just going to be less and less of you. You're pissing me off, I'm going to take your thumb now."

"Jesus Christ!"

"I'm almost positive he's not the one I'm after." Nick said, moving to get out of the chair.

"There's this French guy! Down on Bloor street - Girard-something! He hands me the envelopes, I hand him the last deposits, then I get paid! I'm not fucking around!"

Nick hesitated, hand on the knife, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek, staring down at Burke,

"See, that almost sounded sincere."

---

A voice drifted from somewhere behind the desk that Michael had been gracelessly splayed upon:

"You are not dying for some time, I think."

A light flicked on in the corner of the room, throwing Csardas into sharp contrast; he was sitting on a rolling chair, a large, greying book open in his hands,

"I think you live long, healthy life, just no more bar fights, yes?"

He rose from the seat, moving over to where Michael was unsteadily sitting up,

"Here, I show you my Gryta." he said, gesturing with the book, which he moved into Michael's vision; he pointed with one large, calloused finger, to the image of a girl - the same girl in all of the pictures hanging on the wall above them.

"Nineteen years old." Csardas said, tapping on the picture; a more grown-up Gryta smiled back from the image, a rubenesque girl with her hair braided in a crown around her head, flowers sticking from it at strange angles, "My little baby. Good girl, very good girl."