another winters/nixon, as promised. this was going to be a fill for a prompt but my laptop is screwy as fuck when it comes to livejournal so that's how that went.

i dont own anything and i mean no disrespect towards any of the real men, their families and friends, or the actors.

She took the dog.

She took his goddamn dog. Nix throws his helmet across the road.

Later he empties a bottle of something-or-other down his throat. He prefers his usual VAT 69 to it any day of the week but tonight he's not going for taste, just escape. Maybe he's angry at himself, he wouldn't know. It's Dick's job to stay sober and analyze him- then he remembers, he's an intelligence officer, so he's pretty thoughtful himself. Ah, well. Details. But those are his job too.

Cautious rapping at the door.

"I'm alive."

He makes no move to get the door, but Dick pushes it open and steps into the room, shedding his authority as he approaches. Nix can almost feel the badges falling off like a molting bird, or an onion. Damn, he's got a headache from this whole thing that the alcohol isn't drowning out. That's probably where all this philosophy's coming from.

"Nix," Dick says evenly, a tiny particle of amusement quirking one corner of his perpetual frown. "Don't tell me you've settled for something other than-"

"VAT 69, I know," Nix interrupts him, swishing what remains in the bottle. "Apparently I went through the world's supply already."

He gives a bitter chuckle and Dick's aforementioned perpetual frown deepens. After a moment the bottle's plucked from Nix's fingers and taken somewhere he's too lazy to retrieve it from.

"You know, Speirs shot a guy once for being drunk."

"'Zat so?" he slurs. "Thinking about that right now?"

Nix's head tips back until it hits the back of the chair he's seated in and he spreads his arms, makes his chest available in a joking offer. He's kind of warm but his arms are cold, and there's this heavy weight in his chest that's both crushing it and expanding it at the same time. On one hand, he's got basically a quarter of his possessions left to his name and no dog, no goddamn dog, but on the other hand he's free, he can finally…

Dick just looks at him patiently. Maybe he's the one who took his whiskey, he's the only other one in the room. Nix blinks back at him through his eyelashes.

"Well, don't talk my ear off," he sighs. "Pull up a chair, kick your feet up."

"You're in your underpants."

Nix looks down at himself.

"That I am," he agrees, patting his chest and then smoothing the front of his underwear. "Care to join?"

"Any reason for your-" Dick clears his throat sharply- "state of undress?"

Nix gives a world-weary sigh and tosses the letter across the table to Dick. He watches his eyes scan over it and- yup, his frown can get deeper after all.

They're both silent for a while after Dick finishes reading, and he's the one to break the silence.

"I'm really sorry, Lew," he says, and unlike the condolences of a lot of the other guys, he knows that this is heartfelt. Lew shrugs. Dick doesn't have a bad bone in his body. Lew's not sure whether or not his own bones are bad, but he's not about to put money in his favor.

Dick's not standing beside the table anymore, and Lew's disoriented for a moment before he sees Dick standing next to him. He feels kind of embarrassed now, from his state of undress and his drunkenness and his vices. Hoo boy, has he got vices, but Dick doesn't need to know their extent.

"Maybe I oughtta stop," Lew comments lazily, uncorking a bottle of wine. Dick just looks at it and doesn't try to stop him this time.
"Yeah, maybe you ought to."

He sounds a bit wistful and Lew doesn't feel like pondering that, so he pours himself a glass. Before he raises it to his lips, though, Dick's pulled it from his grasp.

"What did I just say, Nix," he says rhetorically. It's not a question.

"I dunno, it's sort of a blur, you know, with me being drunk off my ass and such."

Lew leans heavily into Dick's side and this gets a surprised face out of him. He feels some form of satisfaction at that, knowing that Dick's still himself even after all the shit they've gone through. Maybe because of the shit they've gone through.

He hardly feels the arm come around his back, but he hears Dick's voice afterwards saying "c'mon, let's get you to bed."

"Yours or mine?"

It's a joke.

"Yours."

That isn't. Lew nods blearily, standing up on unsteady feet and bracing himself against Dick as they head to his bed.

It ends up being a hell of a lot less than he'd hoped for, but Dick's always been the virtuous one.

i'm going to beg for feedback again. i feel like i'm getting more comfortable writing these two, what do you think?

thanks for reading~