Disclaimer: I do not own the characters depicted in this fanfic.
One Last Drink
Never in all of his years as a cop did Max Payne have such a rough day sitting in an office. He'd let the paperwork pile up and didn't have the will to put a dent into the mountain until the lieutenant told him if he didn't get started,
"It'll be your fucking ass!"
To everyone in the department, that meant you'd be wearing paper bags and forced to feed your family beans from a tin can every night. So he sat at his cubicle all day, his back hunched over the gray desk in front of him. It wasn't until a shadow, followed by a pair of legs, had approached his desk did Max notice a darkness had engulfed the entire office; only a few rays of setting sunlight sneaked through the blinds on his left side.
"You still here, Payne?"
Max raised his chin just long enough to recognize the person as his only friend in the department, Chris Sullivan. "Yeah, Sullivan. I screwed myself over and now I've got about a billion of these fucking forms to fill out or Callaghan says,"
"'It'll be your ass'." He and Chris finished in agreement and laughed.
"Yeah, fuck him. You're the only one still here; there's no way you're gonna dig yourself out of this tonight." Chris snatched the black pen out of Max's hand and chucked it on the desk. "Let's go get a drink or something."
Both men laughed hysterically at a joke they soberly would not have found funny in the least, and slapped each other on the back; their voices sounded over the music, mostly carried by a bass line, that thumped through the club. Everything was dark, except whatever the rainbow lasers decided to land on as they shot aimlessly around the room.
"Next round's on me!" Max shouted, taking another tequila shot and slamming his palm on the bar.
The small group who had joined them for drinks cheered. "Good on you, Payne!" His old friend, Alex Balder, chuckled.
"Fuck Callaghan!" Max bellowed, raising another shot glass into the air before downing that one, too, and causing laughter uproar among them.
It didn't take many more shots later for Max to become aware that he was completely out of his mind; the bar was spinning and he struggled to stand upright. "I need to get home to my wife and kid." He realized at once. It came out more like a slur. "They'll... they must be wondering about my whereabouts."
Balder laughed. "I'll see ya around, man. Go... Go..." he appeared to vomit a little bit before re-opening his mouth. "Home."
Max got the bartender to call him a cab and told him his address. Just the bitter smell of coffee wafting from the paper cup in his grip had begun to sober him up. Sullivan bought him the drink so he wouldn't be so wasted by the time he got home to his wife and newly born daughter. The thought of his beautiful girls made Max's heart feel light, and he couldn't wait to see them again, especially after this hard day.
Call it luck or coincidence, Max wouldn't have cared – as long as you didn't call it 'good timing'. As the cab pulled up to what was unmistakably his house, his breathing grew ragged. The door had been kicked in and there was blood smeared noticeably all over their white walls.
"No!" Max shouted, feeling thankful the bartender had prepaid his cab bill. He ran as fast as he could without stumbling over the cold, dewy grass in his front yard. Practically falling into the front door to open it all the way, he found himself gasping for air at the sight.
His wife lay, slaughtered along their pure white living room carpet. Their baby had obviously been in her arms before she was taken, because her tiny figure was sprawled next to the tall, young blonde that was her mother.
"Fuck!" Max's curse stretched as long as his breath could hold. "Bastards!"
If Max Payne had one last purpose, it would be to get revenge on the people who seized his life away from between his very fingers. All he could do was kneel in a pool of his family's blood, wondering if things would have happened differently, or if he'd have joined them in their gruesome demise, had he not stopped off at the bar and asked for that one last drink.