A/N:

Hullo, I'm back with something new.

Thank you to all of those that PM'd me suggestions or who left them in a review. A few people asked for post season 6 stuff and whilst I'm not averse to it, and may likely do it in the future, I think it would be more one shot territory for me, rather than a multi.

Anyhow, here's the first chapter of this new fic. Title and opening line of the last paragraph taken from the Arctic Monkeys. Reviews welcomed with a tip of the hat.

Enjoy.

It looks worse than she had hoped, a laceration of around two inches just above her left cheekbone, raw and oddly sordid in the unforgiving strip lighting of the gas station rest room.

Fuck.

She buys Advil, pops three (an extra one for good luck) and washes it down with swigs of flat, slightly warm Pepsi she'd bought yesterday and throws the empty bottle back into the passenger side foot-well.

It's the first Monday of the month and Alex is pretty sure she's already screwed. So she does the only thing she can think of right now. She calls Fahri from a payphone.

He doesn't answer straight away and she's on the verge of hanging up, jangling the remainder of the loose change in her right hand, watching the curve of the road in the distance, get swallowed into the purplish black of the night, until he finally picks up.

'Yeah?'

He sounds distracted, music bleeding into the foreground, some club track she vaguely recognises.

'It's me,' she says, her voice sounding much less solid than it did in her head.

'Vause?'

'No, Cindy Crawford,' she says, hoping a joke will pull on the thread of familiarity between them.

'My luck isn't that good,' he laughs. 'Shoot.'

She starts at the only place she can remember vividly. The bad part.

She'd delivered the kilo of uncut blow to the agreed spot, near an abandoned mill around 20 miles from the hotel. Alex had driven past it a few times before, even stopping there with Nichols one Labor Day weekend. They'd gotten a little high, counting stars pock marking the night sky, watching smoke drift away on a languid curl.

The guts of the building had been scooped out long ago and all that remained was a graffiti riddled skeleton. But Alex never had the inclination to examine it in any more detail than that, the air around it always seemed stagnant, even for the Nevada desert.

But the familiar SUV had pulled up on time, all metallic black and tinted windows and she remembers chuckling to herself about just how cliché ridden it had seemed- the car and the goon sliding out of the vehicle, beckoning her over.

He's about 200 pounds of solid muscle, buzz cut, clean shirt, face set into a permanent scowl and she approaches him with the indolent ease of someone that's done this more than they should have-especially for a twenty two-year old.

She hands him the messenger bag with the package and he takes it in a meaty hand and tosses it into the half open window of the passenger door.

'Do I at least get my bag back? It was a gift from my valet.'

Obviously it's a joke, as if a low level runner like her could afford a fucking decent ride, let alone one that requires the expense of a valet. But the muscle doesn't even grace her with a response, just turns and walks back around to the driver's side.

'Hey,' Alex says, all traces of humour and pleasantries dissipating. 'Aren't you forgetting something?'

The muscle looks up, momentarily perplexed and Alex feels herself relax a little. Clearly he's just forgotten; maybe he's having a rough night? She figures his job isn't exactly a bed of roses.

'Oh yeah,' he says, in an over exaggerated 'I'm Having a Light Bulb Moment' kinda way. 'Mr. Ribero says this covers last time.'

'Last time?' she replies, her brain desperately trying to slot to together the pieces of the last drop that she had made and fashion them into some semblance of sense.

But last time had gone smoothly, the package neatly exchanged for the plump envelope of cash. All over in less than two minutes. And then she'd driven back to the Hotel, completed her evening shift and she and Nichols had gone out for the night, getting shit faced in a sports bar run by her buddy Owen.

Alex had fucked the barmaid in the back room (it was becoming a regular Friday night thing, whether she cared to admit it or not) and she'd handed the cash to Fahri early next morning- still hungover and barely conscious.

But the muscle just grins and says, 'you'd better speak to your boss,' and makes to get into the car.

And now Alex is all impulse and fear. She rushes towards him, grabbing the handle of the SUV as he slides inside the car and she yanks the door back, so it bounces on its hinges slightly.

'What the fuck man, you owe me $70,000, this isn't some fucking joke!'

Her heart feels as though it's jammed some place in her throat and she's pretty sure the pounding in her head is going to rip through her brain if she's not careful.

But the goon just laughs, unperturbed, repeats that she needs to speak to her boss and when she tries to grab his arm (another impulse, even more stupid than the first, especially since she's now pulled the flick knife from her back pocket) he stands up, grabs her by the throat and tosses her into a ditch. She catches her face on something and inhales a lungful of dust. But by the time she's back on her feet, with something like her regular bearings, the SUV is long gone, leaving nothing but tyre tracks, disrupting the desert sand.

…

Fahri is silent for longer than Alex has ever known and for a second she's waiting for the wail of the dead line to kick in. But then she can hear the distorted sounds of movement and the music eventually fades. She guesses he's taken the cordless somewhere quieter, not that it matters, she figures what's coming next isn't going to be pleasant.

'Fuck,' he finally says, in a pained sort of exhale. 'Fuck Vause. This is not good. This is so not good.'

She could make a joke about stating the obvious, as ill advised as that may be, but her brain can barely fashion basic sentences right now, let alone fully-fledged wise cracks. So she remains silent, clinging on to each second of the empty crackle of the line.

'You better get over here,' he finally says, the words lacking their usual lustre.

'Okay,' she replies, feeding the coin slot with more change, almost as if she cannot bear to leave the conversation there, on something so final. 'But you get that this wasn't my fault right? There wasn't anything I could have done.'

But this time there's no mistake.

The line is dead.

…

Graduating Smith hasn't given Piper the sense of achievement that she was hoping for. And that simple truth is completely unpalatable to her parents.

They argue endlessly about her future, her father even offers to get her an internship at a local newspaper. 'A guy owes me a favour,' he says one night, over slightly tough steak, eaten off Carol's favourite china. 'It'd be low level stuff to begin with, some admin duties no doubt, but if you show willing and some initiative, I'm sure you could work your way up in no time.' He doesn't look up from his plate the whole time, as if Piper's agreement is a given.

But the summer has been and gone and the earth smells damp and fresh, as if it's been reborn. Green has given way to rust, light to dark and everything seems a little more complicated than it should, her mind a tangle of things she cannot fully comprehend.

So she asks for time. Suggests a couple of months away, volunteering Polly as her companion (she can smooth over the details with her later if needs be). And to her surprise, the agreement comes remarkably quickly, as if the last month or so of arguing has finally broken the backbone of their resistance (temporarily at least).

They agree to transfer some money to cover a road trip and as Carol scoops ice cream into pale blue bowls, Piper is already thinking of Santa Fe and Jazz bars in Chicago, the Nevada planes and the debauchery of Vegas; the cargo of her mind threatening to come careering off track with the rapidity of her thoughts.

But it feels glorious nonetheless.

…

They're sipping cheap wine in Polly's apartment, taking advantage of the fact her house mate has finally left the place for the first time since her boyfriend broke up with her.

'I mean if I have to listen to 'With or Without you,' one more fucking time, I'm gonna choke her with my bare hands,' Polly says. And Piper isn't entirely certain she's joking.

'And you know the worst part?' She says, refilling both their glasses, 'she doesn't even know the fucking words.'

'Why don't you tape the song lyrics to her door?' Piper says grinning.

'Asshole,' Polly says, but it lacks bite and she's kind of smirking. 'Do you actually have any useful suggestions?'

And so Piper seizes the opportunity.

She skims over the practicalities of the road trip, such as an actual route, or even a definitive purpose- instead choosing to focus on a whole, Bright Lights, Big City kind of theme. And maybe it's the wine, or the mentally unstable housemate, but within twenty minutes she has Polly Harper's word (confirmed with a business like handshake) and a head full of a whole lot more.

And that's all that she needs for now.

…

Fahri meets her outside his house. He's standing on the gravel driveway leaning against the silver Mercedes, his casually unbuttoned shirt at odds with the furrowed brow. He's smoking and judging by the number of cigarette butts scattered around his feet, he's a good way through a whole packet.

He only looks up when they're almost face-to-face and then he stares at her with a vehement despair.

'This is a fucking shit storm,' he says, flicking the cigarette butt into the shadows beyond. He regards Alex a little longer and points at the wound.

'Did the pick up guy do that?'

'Kinda,' she says, not wanting to clarify the embarrassing details- that she'd cut her own face with the flick knife as she'd been flung to the ground.

But Fahri doesn't ask anything else, he just shifts his position so he's standing more upright and says, 'you're lucky you still have a face if you tried to do something that made him hurt you.'

And this pisses Alex off so much that she can feel the immediate flush of heat rising to her cheeks, despite the relative cool of the late evening breeze.

'Are you fucking kidding me? What else was I supposed to do? The guy was trying to drive off with the blow and leave me empty handed.' She's so angry, that the statement leaves her a little breathless, as if she's been winded. And really Fahri has some fucking nerve. Spending an evening with booze and women and lines of his own product, leaving Alex to do the donkey-work.

He'd told her at the beginning she had potential, she just needed to do as she was told, keep her head down and the money would follow. And her record for the last six months has been impeccable.

Until today- until this.

'What did you want me to do?'

'Nothing Vause. Jesus…' He says, placing another cigarette between his lips, the flame from the match offering a soft, forgiving light. He inhales deeply, as if it's replenishing him and then offers her a drag. She declines, deciding it could exacerbate the feeling of nausea that's presently settled in her gut.

'It turns out Ribero thinks the last package wasn't kosher,' he says wearily.

'Kosher?'

'He thinks it wasn't pure, some other shit was mixed in it, plaster, brick dust, I don't know, whatever the fuck. But either way we're not getting the money.'

'And what? He's banking on Kubra's goodwill to let this go?'

'Kubra doesn't know anything yet,' Fahri says, taking another drag on the cigarette and blowing out a strong plume of smoke. 'I only spoke to Ribero around fifteen minutes ago. We need to be careful how we play this, otherwise…..'

'Otherwise?'

'It's probably best we don't dwell on that for now Vause. I've got Raoul on the case, he's going to get me some more information…details.'

Alex doesn't ask what these details entail, she figures they may involve more than a basic flesh wound. She instinctively touches her fingertips to the cut on her face.

'Just get back to the hotel for now okay, get some rest and we'll speak tomorrow.'

Alex nods and turns back to her cherry red Plymouth Barracuda, noting a new patch of rust bubbling under the paintwork near one of the headlamps.

She slides in and watches Fahri make his way back into the house. The sound of light chatter escapes as he opens the door and for a moment, she wonders what it would be like be lost in a throng of relative strangers, the gentle buzz of easy come, easy go conversation.

But instead, she has beer, a night off and Nichols.

She figures it will have to do for now.

…

"Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, Mark speaking, please tell me how I may direct your call?'

'Reservations please,' Piper says.