Who: Drake and Russ What: Card games and fights. Where: Some bar in Vegas. When: Recentish. Warnings/Rating: Violence and some cursing I think.
Some might say that gambling was irresponsible, especially for a guy who was barely scraping by and lived day to day in run-down motels on the edge of town. So maybe Drake didn’t exactly have a steady income, and he had no real place to call his own, but that was mostly by choice. He chose to live the way he did, because he just didn’t give a damn. Who needed a house, or even an apartment, when he moved around every few weeks? A bed and a roof over his head, that was really all he needed. Card games and horse races and slots, they were a hobby, a way to keep himself sane and occupied when he wasn’t hunting down arsonists and killers. Sometimes he liked cheating the big cats out of a little cash, but most times he was content to drink and smoke and play cards with a bunch of strangers to test his skill set and see who was the shrewdest player; or the best at cheating, either one. And given the way his time in Vegas had gone already, he needed the damn distraction.
A grand buy-in was a lot, but he had some cash stashed and was currently of the why-the-fuck-not mindset. So there he was, Friday night in some back room of a place he didn’t pay much attention to, a little buzzed and a little wound up and not in the mood to lose. Calm, though was what he needed. Reckless and impulsive only worked in a game if he got lucky, or if he was good, and admittedly he was a couple weeks rusty.
The room was crummy, same as any of the rooms that played host to this kind of game but none of the guys crammed into it gave a shit. They were there for the cards on the table, for the beer and for little of the conversation - and the men crammed around the baize didn’t look like they were there for anything but. There wasn’t a damn one of them that looked like he pulled down more than minimum wage and if he did, he kept it to himself. Russ was folded into a corner, broad shoulders and the scrub of two days without shaving a gold kind of shade across his jaw and he wasn’t paying any fucking attention to who had come through the door and where. He was well-washed jeans and a hand of cards in his right hand and a beer bottle loose between the fingers of his left, and he was smiling, the gleam of teeth behind the beginnings of the beard something vaguely feral. He didn’t give a damn that the buy-in was high: he had money enough to burn because of a stupid billionaire, and the chips on the table were stacked in front of him, a color-collision that said he was playing well.
It wasn’t the garage and it wasn’t the nagging knowledge that one co-worker hadn’t shown up as she fucking should, it was the sprawl of men-as-men, the low hum of talk stilted in the beginning, mellowing as the beer began to kick in. Russ laughed, bold and strong and he raised his chin across the table at the stranger in the corner, the stranger who might have got a bid in at his own suggestion.
“You,” Russ said, and it was lazy-slow, the drawl of beer and of relaxed certainty of his place in the room, sand-blond head above those around him. “You new?”
These were his people. Well, if Drake was the sort to have people and not move throughout life as a solitary being only interacting with the world around him on the surface, the men gathered around the table would be them. Booze and cards and money, they were things that didn’t require thinking. Didn’t require much thought, either. Skill was key, and maybe a little luck thrown in. He didn’t have a lot, if any, of the latter, but he remembered days gone by where his dad and his pals taught him how to play, how to cheat, how to win, in a room that smelled of smoke and booze. He remembered feeling thrilled that he was being treated like a real man, and while it wasn’t exactly a happy childhood memory, it was one of his better ones. This far in and he wasn’t doing too badly; at least he wasn’t tossing back beers like that might somehow help, or trying to act like the glaring absence of chips in his corner didn’t bother him. He was somewhere between the guy who was grinning like some kind of shark who smelled blood in the water, and the others who had begun to sweat under the dim lights.
He was the epitome of casual, sprawled out in his chair, cards held in one hand as he chugged a beer at various intervals. There was something about him that just screamed I don’t give a fuck, but maybe that was all an act. He lifted his gaze from his cards when the blonde guy laughed, eyebrows raised as he was singled out. “Me,” he confirmed with a smirk. “Yeah, I’m new. Was I supposed to introduce myself?”
“Don’t hurt,” Russ said, quick as a skip on the tongue and it wasn’t witty - it wasn’t reparte they tossed over the table along with the chips, but that didn’t matter none to the people around the baize. There weren’t no one to impress. All the men in the room were worried about the Benjamins on the table, they didn’t care about no one who wasn’t dead and lying face-up on green. But Russ was the casual of comfort, of being amongst people he knew - if not friends then those who’d stand back from blows and let it all play out and give a warning if the cops were called.
Russ was tall, sandy-colored and dirt-grimed; he looked as though he hadn’t taken even a minute between winding up at the garage and coming straight over with his scuffed steel-toed boots and the loose-worn shirt, unbuttoned over stained white. He looked a little like he was used to being a threat in a small room except so many of the men around the table looked like dark alleys and a hand of cards were both real familiar. Russ leaned back, not forward and the metal of the chair squeaked with his weight.
“New faces,” Russ said now, and he tapped the baize, anted-up, tossed in a couple more chips like they were nothing more than plastic, “Gotta roll out the fucking welcome mat.” A grin. White teeth in sun-dark skin.
It might not have hurt, but Drake wasn’t all that inclined to give up his name to a group of strangers unless he, for whatever reason, felt like it. His paranoia didn’t stretch far enough to think that one of these men were on Ian’s payroll, though the thought might have crossed his mind once or twice, and really, he wasn’t trying to hide. A name was just a name. The people he counted as enemies would already know his. He dragged his introduction out, a sip of beer, a casual brush of fingers over his splayed-out cards. None of the men here particularly intimidated him, but he’d been through much shit in his life that he’d become numb to fear, at least when it came to himself. And these days, he didn’t feel fear for other people either, since the only ones who might evoke such emotion were far, far away. But this was just a card game, and in the end, money was just money. He liked winning, but he wasn’t enough of a sore loser to get riled up over not having the game go his way.
“The name’s Drake,” he said, casual and unconcerned. The other man’s grin made him laugh, and there was a rare hint of humor in the sound. “No need for the welcome mat.” After a second, he gave a half shrug, a non-verbal what the hell, and tossed in a couple of his own chips. There was none of that alpha male challenge bullshit; he wasn’t in the mood for that. Just a good old fashioned game of cards.
Faces and names were, to Russ, like a pack of cards -- largely interchangeable, worthy of note only if marked in some way, well-worn and folded corners. Drake and Russ heard it in the same way he heard most of the journals’ names, the shortness and strangeness of it as familiar-fitting as anything he heard over the metallic clatter of the garage. “Drake,” he said now, slow and careful-like, trying it out as he sat back in his chair, a heavy sprawl of muscle, of long limbs spread wide in occupation. Russ did not duck notice, he did not court it. He was simply him in the all-encompassing self that made itself real comfortable and waited, you to come to it.
“I know you,” he said now, and he laid his cards on the baize like an afterthought, all that calculation and counting and sheer dumb luck laid out on green - it was a high hand, the one he’d had close to his chest, the winks of royalty within it and Russ didn’t look at it nor did he look at the faces of the other players. He was squinted blue eyes, very bright in so much tanned face, “Different kind of fucking welcome mat.” No challenge, no anger - just a recognition of a place in common, a place all doors and no rooms.
Once upon a time, in a memory too hazy to be complete and more feeling than actual sound, his mother had explained why she’d chosen Drake, why she’d chosen Sid and Spencer too, but it was the story of his name that clung after all this time. Sometimes little things like that came back to him at the strangest moments, but there was never any outward sign of what went on inside his head. He just raised his eyebrows when Russ repeated his name, as though to say yep, right in one, all without words. He didn’t mention the journals, because he was pretty damn sure this wasn’t a gathering of people with keys and books and voices in their heads, and he wasn’t opening that can of worms just then.
“You know me,” he repeated, but it wasn’t suspicious or hostile as those three words usually were when they came from his mouth. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what context he meant the statement in. “You the guy who extended the invitation?” If it could be called an invitation, the public acknowledgement of a game looking for a player who could buy in at the right price. Drake laughed when he said it was a different kind of welcome mat, because yeah, he’d figured, and then he dropped his gaze to the spread of cards. It was a damn good hand, but he grinned, and there was something good-natured in the curve of lips and teeth. His hand wasn’t bad, even good, but here it was close with no cigar. He didn’t seem to mind, though. “Welcome mat is still a welcome mat, no?”
“Could say that.” Russ didn’t extend invitations at the best of times, not if you weren’t leggy and blond and a promise of something sweaty later. He was calm-casual now, eased back in his chair and his knees spread wide, the kind of calm that was good cards on the table and control, knowing when others did not. Russ liked knowing every damn thing he could, right upfront where he could decide what he did with it. He nodded across the table, and the wave of cards folded began, until it sat up against Drake who didn’t look like he gave a damn about the money in the pot, didn’t feel a real need for greenbacks on the turn of a card. It was interesting, same damn way he smiled like it was pissing sunshine.
“Depends what’s offering the fucking welcome,” and Russ’s teeth split white through the smile, all cocky shit, elbows leaned back on the chair and the cards and crumpled bills discarded in front of him like he didn’t mind one bit, “Careful what you get yourself into, kid. This game got bite.”
The funny thing about straight answers was that while Drake rarely gave them himself and could appreciate that same trait in certain people, most of the time he wanted his questions answered exactly like he’d asked them. Luckily, this was one of those times when he didn’t mind. An invitation to a card game was nothing all that important. He made a sound that might have been interested, or vague acknowledgement, as though Russ’ answer was enough for him and he was altogether unconcerned by what was happening in the room.
Maybe it was an entire life spent as an older brother, but kid wasn’t a word he’d ever heard used in reference to himself, not since his old man had died. “I’m no kid,” he said archly, “and I don’t mind bite.”
Russ liked straight answers fine, he liked them from other people with the same one-two cleanness of a punch to the gut or a kiss to the jaw, but he laughed solidly, desert-dust rough and desert-sun warm. Everyone was a damn kid, and he didn’t think much on when that had happened, when he’d gone from sunshine young and full of spit and bile to seeing the world fold itself up and fade. “Play like a man,” Russ said, eased back in his chair and the faded, stained denim of working dirty every day and the cards folded like a fan between his fingers, “Ante up,” a pause, “Kid.” There were bills on the table, crumpled from a world of blue-collar back pockets and money in envelopes, paid into hands rather than bank accounts. It wasn’t taxable, pay on green baize, but it bought milk in cartons and coffee and burgers and if you felt like burning it, the kind of shit to shove up your nose to forget you had nothing at all.
He would have been wittily cutting, Russ better with the vocabulary once he’d sunk a beer or three and the idling engine of his own interest in his eyes, but there was a crash beyond the door, the thud of something large and meatily man-like thrust up against cheap plyboard and the crash of broken glass. Backrooms off a bar made for quick drinking and beer on tap, but the generosity of vitriol, broken men free with their fists and cheap glasses broken over women, said game was called on account of time. The crash again and the door flew open, barreling in the body of a man bruised like a good cut of meat. His friend followed, all fists, and someone after that, hurtling into the table which folded like a cheap whore, green baize sliding those cards all over.
A raise of his eyebrows coupled with a lean back in his chair was enough to constitute a wordless challenge accepted, and Drake pretended like he didn’t mind being called kid as much as he did. Kid was his brothers. Kid was an old endearment now belonging to the dead, save for one who was too far away to count. Not even his old man had ever called him kid, and that was incentive enough to make a comeback. Honestly, anything he won would probably be blown on booze and takeout; to hell with shopping for clothes or something to make his motel room less dingy and borderline crack den.He prepared for another round, tossing in his own collection of crumpled bills to make things more interesting and work in his favor if he was lucky, but then it seemed interesting had plans of its own in a whole other way that had nothing to do with a mean game of cards.
He was no stranger to bar brawls, having started his fair share of them for a number of reasons. Sometimes he’d join in just for the hell of it; boredom was a bitch. One crash, then two, and the door was open and whatever had been going down outside suddenly took over the room. The table folded and Drake shoved away, chair skidding on the ground before he stood and knocked it to the side. He was all annoyed curses and a scowl, and the decision of whether or not to become involved was made for him when someone’s ill-aimed punch connected with his shoulder. Fuck that. He didn’t care if his knuckles split, didn’t care if there was a little blood; he’d always had a penchant for violence, after all.
Well hell. It put paid to the card game quick-smart and it didn’t matter none if he’d been ten grand up or down the damn river because there weren’t cards on the baize to say so and the chips were scattered to fuck. Russ walked away before he lost big, unless he’d walked in and sat down intending to lose grand, and the cards folded down on the table in a fan weren’t anything that would swing his own stash into the red. But it was done, weren’t nothing to fight about with the men or there’d be no more card-games in the back of a bar, beer at his elbow and cigarette in his teeth and winning like no casino ever let you.
A fight weren’t bad either, blood flooding on up like a lady ready to give it up in a back alley. Russ whistled admiringly, all low appreciation for someone who dived on in like he weren’t scared of getting hit, and he ploughed on in himself. It had been a while, getting hit, and he hit on back, wild and hard and vicious right up until he realized he weren’t getting hit none because they were trying but because they were trying to hit anything that moved. Blood coursed down his face from his lip, and his nose stung like the devil, and he was damn cheerful, all grins and wild blond hair and the kind of punches thrown that weren’t learned in a damn gym.
The money didn’t matter. Not too much, at least. Drake still had it in him to care about a few things and money wasn’t one of them, because he’d learned ways to get money when he was younger, slick tricks and shortcuts that might not please the cops or the rich but served his interests just fine. He didn’t need fancy things; booze and cigarettes were enough, and clothes, and a place to sleep and linger about in during the daylight hours. Simple tastes, that was him. And maybe the game was over and cards and chips crunched and crumpled beneath their feet, but he had a feeling there was no settling back down tonight. Not with black eyes, split lips, and bruises galore to be worn in the aftermath. Cards were skill and luck, but this? This was no luck at all, and he’d been getting in fights since middle school and he learned how good it felt to use his fists instead of words.
He didn’t keep score, but he did note with a wild sort of satisfaction that he was giving out more than he took and it filled him with a sort of freedom that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Grown men sent sprawling and brought to their knees, blood smeared and splattered on the floor, and Drake was in the thick of it, where he caught sight of the cocky bastard from the journals who felt more like a kindred spirit than most others in this place. He grinned at him across the room, a crooked, bloody smile, and gave a thumbs up as though to mock those around him.
The men jammed in around the table weren’t real likely to sit back down and find sobriety again, smooth out cards and lay out a hand. Game interrupted meant game gone, and it would be a hell of a while before things calmed right down, a pot as big as this one sprang right up again, edge of legal where it sat. Most of ‘em had one reason or another to feel like the law wasn’t best friend and partner, and Russ got a knock in the ribs that felt like getting punched by a truck and threw one right back, a guy who had tats that said he’d spent a score of days behind bars and looked like he’d been tossed out for trouble. Drake W, kid across the room, grinned scarlet at him, and damn if he didn’t like the man more for it, handling himself fine in the middle of the mess. There were guys all around, scooping up cash where they could, and guys fighting like they were in the middle of the mess, and it blurred for Russ, caught in a moving mass of muscle that hit as furiously as it was hit, a twist of fuckers that didn’t want to go down and if they fucking had to, would bring everyone else with.
It was the squeal of a siren, the blare of blue that painted the walls and Russ heaved against the shoulder of one fucker who tried hauling off after him. He didn’t look long and he didn’t scrabble for cash, he reached across the room and shoved at the shoulder of the guy who looked like he could cope with most things, if he coped with a hotel, and he slammed hard against the door, the battered ‘EXIT’ sign above that didn’t so much as flicker a little.
“Get,” Russ’s voice rasped like stone over steel, “Less you want to get fucking arrested.”
In the midst of fists and blood and sweat, Drake almost missed the telltale sound of sirens and the color that washed the walls in shades they weren’t supposed to be. For every hit he took, he gave back tenfold, and while he knew he’d sport bruises and split skin in the hours afterward he didn’t give a damn about the aches and pain; he welcomed it. To hell with the money, the thrill he got from a good fight was worth whatever he’d lost in the rumble, and he could win it back. Another punch thrown, something snapped under skin and his knuckles, and he thought he heard something that didn’t quite sound like angry voices over the fray. He paused, lifted his head, but before the truth could register someone was shoving at his shoulder and suddenly his line of sight was filled with the blinking brightness of an exit sign. Then the sirens reached his ears, so loud he couldn’t believe he’d missed them, and the flashing lights became more prominent. He was no stranger to run-ins with the law, and he’d spent some time behind bars, but he’d always scraped by without landing himself in serious trouble and he’d never been actually labelled a criminal. No hard time, nothing more than days, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Being arrested wasn’t part of his plans, not here. He nodded at the guy, Russ, something like gratitude beneath discoloration and blood he licked from his bottom lip. Assuming the guy would be just as interested in saving his own ass, he shoved through the door and out, leaving behind the still-writhing fray to deal with the cops and whoever else was going to come storming into that back room within a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
The dirt was hard, out back. Packed deep and scorched to stone, the blister-red of trailer-park summers and long days in desert heat. There was a flimsy, chain-link fence - weren’t much, a nod to security but the real security came from the men who owned the fucking place, the kind who’d defend themselves not with guns but fists, and who knew where you lived. Russ hurled himself at it, all blunted-muscle body and the deftness of something done many times before; the links rattled, sang like escape. He landed heavy, hard on booted-solid feet and steadied himself with his hands.
“Head over,” gruffly, like he weren’t used to being accompanied, like escape was a one-man deal, every fucker for himself. But he’d held out the invite, brought the guy along to a game now scattered bills, sticky with spilled beer and blood, and damn if he didn’t feel even the vaguest bit guilty. “Less you want ‘em to come out and get you.” And he stood beyond, the shadow cast by chain links over his face like prison bars and he scowled, like invitations that weren’t meant at all, like hands held out and snatched on back.
A chain-link fence was nothing compared to the obstacles Drake had faced in the past. When it came to escape, he was willing to do just about fucking anything, and he only paused for a moment, long enough to watch Russ scale the thing himself with something like amusement before taking a few steps forward. Sirens wailing and shouts at his back, yet he didn’t appear to be all that much in a hurry. He grinned at the head over, like he needed an invitation to save his own ass. “Gee, thanks,” he drawled, tensing like some big cat prepared to spring before he climbed chain-link and rattle, and it was clear this wasn’t his first time. One last heave and he was over, landing on his feet in a crouch that he rose from with only the barest, most fleeting of winces, like his limbs had begun to feel the strain of his antics after all this time.
“Keep moving, right?” He raised his eyebrows and, as he suggested, moved, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the cops before they gave thought to giving pursuit.
The chain link had pressed grooves into his hands, narrow stripes like prison bars dimpling over thick white callouses. When he’d been a kid (jumping fences, the snap-snarl of dogs at his fucking shins, the softened soles of his sneakers like running on tar) it had burned. Now the fence swayed, belled out like a sail as it rattled back into place, two men’s weight sinking sideways. Russ’s boots scurfed up dust, the sluggish pump of adrenaline pounded along with his feet; it was as familiar as black and white Wayne movies on TV, as cold baked beans from the fucking can. The southward lurch as his belly dropped away like tipping over the edge of a coaster, the ocean rushing into his ears, rhythmic as his heartbeat. Run, or fight. Same thing. Always fucking had been. Keep moving Drake said and Russ was long legs pumping like the pistons in an old, smooth running engine, like that was how things were.
He could come back for the bike. He could feel the beer like oil on water hazing over thinking, smooth and warm, like rolling back into bed; wiping out on the side of the fucking road would take weeks to put right, weeks of tinny Latino music and walking five miles to the garage whenever he had work. Russ ran like he didn’t know where he was running to, like putting dust and dirt and inches between the chain link and himself was as natural as growing up, until the street lights faded from dirty orange to the kind of neighborhood boarded up and locked down, blank windows like eyes staring blindly out at a street empty as the ones he knew.
The skirl of cop-cars was still there, but a different low moan, ever-present. Few streets away, dealing with something different. Places round here, find some fucker hitting on his wife, cooking shit in his kitchen, getting high. The sound of feet on sidewalk slowed, Russ leaned forward with unused momentum, the toe of work boots gleaming under the light. “Find somewhere with a real fucking beer,” he looked back over his shoulder. Out of the gloom of the back room at the bar, Drake didn’t look like he was young. He looked like hands of cards and enough dirty living to have been around.
There was no car to worry about going back for, not that Drake was in the mood to worry about much of anything. Brawling came with a thrill, but so did running. Even if the cops weren’t giving chase it still got the adrenaline pumping, fleeing the scene, and it felt good in a way few things did anymore. Past the fence and onto dirt, the kind of cops around this place weren’t interested in them. It was enough that they could slow to a trot, moving without any real direction. With the threat of arrest long behind them, running didn’t seem to hold the same purpose anymore. Young wasn’t a word that applied to him anymore; hadn’t in a while. He wasn’t old, still in the realm of thirtysomething, but he looked like he’d lived a long, hard life, done too much, seen too much. Experience left its mark in ways no one could remove.
“Real, fucking beer,” he repeated. “Is that all?” He grinned, like it was all one big fucking joke, like he hadn’t followed a monster here, like he didn’t have a deathwish. A pause, and then Drake rolled his shoulders back before turning, eyeing the buildings lined along the street, most with boarded up windows and not too many looking open for business. He walked, didn’t run, hands in his pockets, along the sidewalk.
Russ by contrast was clay that had been worked hard, smeared fingerprints maybe but nothing that said time in that roughened, hard-baked kind of way. His knuckles were split and bloody and the corner of his mouth was streaked with something dark, his teeth a white gleam above but he looked young in that moment, like thirty some years of living had tried to leave a mark and hadn’t got their teeth in. The adrenalin punch to the heart had ceased, it was a dull ache, a sluggish crawl out of his veins and Russ figured the minute the adrenalin was done, he’d be set to hurt. If he could get enough beer down his fucking throat first, he wouldn’t hurt so much.
“You looking for something else?” Russ’s voice outside the bar and the back-room and the game of cards was less gravel and grit, was trailer-parks hunkered down outside cities in the kind of desert where people survived because they didn’t know any better, smoothed out with living. He sounded surprised, like maybe girls and something a little more entertaining than a game of pool and a cold one hadn’t occurred to him. And maybe they had, but he figured you could either fight, or fuck in a night and he’d done the first pretty good.
“Got a walk about half a mile that way,” a lazy pointer finger shot down the street, “And there’s a bar. Ain’t pretty,” Russ shrugged like no one could want pretty, “So who the fuck are you, Drake W?”
“Me? Nah.” Drake shrugged. He knew the soreness would set in later, but he didn’t care. Pain was an old friend. Reminded him that he was alive, even if he didn’t always want to be, and that as long as he was alive, he was around to make sure Ian wasn’t for much longer. Once upon a time he’d considered a night wasted if it didn’t end with a warm, very female body next to his in some motel room, but dead family and an obsession with vengeance took precedence and didn’t leave much time for picking up women in bars. Didn’t leave time for much of anything, really, save for things that happened after dark, like card games or underground rings no one talked about. What he was looking for couldn’t be found on the streets; it could only be found at the end of a gun or a knife, blood and light fading from inhuman eyes. But he didn’t talk about that, not with anyone but Sid, and even then it was more of an unspoken understanding between them.
He was more sober than he usually was around this time, so getting good and loaded sounded just fine to him. “I don’t do pretty,” he said, disdainful, “and I’m sure as hell not looking for it.” The prospect of a walk didn’t bother him. The question of who he was made him laugh, and he rubbed a hand along his jaw where bruises were already beginning to form. “I’m just a guy. Who the fuck are you?”
Had Russ known where Drake’s former predilections lay, there would have been further common ground to base whatever shifting-sand agreement was beginning to build, but he did not. The slow, wet drip of his lip and nose rolled down his chin and tasted like old pennies. He sniffed damply, and he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, the salty streak of it coloring the back of his hand. Pretty covered just about everything that wasn’t the back of a bar with a dubious-looking liquor license when the cops came to call, that didn’t serve anything that came in a fancy glass. Russ gave a rough jerk upward with his chin, like Drake’s answer went some way to putting another wobbly step along the bridged gap. Company was normally someone he disagreed with the notion of, or a girl who liked it mostly silent, rough without a promise of a next time.
“Russell,” and he dabbed the thumb of his right hand against the sluggish drip of his nose, gingerly, like poking it too hard would make it bleed all the faster, “Campbell. I ain’t nobody.” A shrug of one shoulder, loose as any drifter come unknotted from the world. Russ knew Vegas’s bars, the places on the outskirts that didn’t have time for tourists like someone with roots in the dusty red soil, but spent less time there than anyone should.
“Get in a lot of those?” A thumb jerk over the shoulder, presumably in the direction of the bar-brawl. A grin, all white teeth glinting bloodied-red in low light.
Drake sized him up there in the open, the two of them bruised and bloodied and trekking along the sidewalk like they had all the time in the world and hadn’t left sirens at their backs. Russell Campbell who wasn’t nobody, huh? In comparison, he was, or at least he wanted to be. Instead he was a lot of things; a dead man walking, a brother, a son. A criminal, a killer even, but being nobody might be nice. Might’ve meant his family would be alive for starters. “Wallace,” he said. “The W’s for Wallace.” Not like there was any point in trying to keep his last name a secret now, and he doubted it would mean anything to this guy anyway.
“Used to. That was my first in a while.” He returned his grin. “Felt damn good, though.”
Russ laughed. It was a sharp bark of sound, thick with the blood in the back of his throat and it tasted coppery in his mouth, like one tooth was maybe a little loose from the fight. He was surprised by the laugh and he sounded it, like Drake W didn’t seem like a funny fucker but that he was, right then in the middle of a street cops probably crawled looking for trouble when the night was quiet. “Yeah,” and that grin was all broad contemplation and he slapped one hand against Drake W-for-Wallace’s shoulder, a clap of sound and dust from that fucking backroom into a gasp of night air. “You got right into the fucking swing of it. Old pro, yeah?”
Drake had heard that kind of laugh before, and even if he’d tried he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. Most days he didn’t feel a lick of normal, and the memories of what his life had once been made it all the worse. Funny how a little violence and a little booze could soothe some of the wounds, at least for just then. No need to live in the then when he was living in the now. “You could say that,” he said, of being an old pro, and he almost said something along the lines of my dad taught me before wising up and keeping his mouth shut. He didn’t want to go down that road, and instead he shrugged. “You weren’t too bad yourself, Campbell.” The bar was ahead, the cops were behind, and for once he didn’t feel all that bad.