A/N: Short Multichapter about Drunk dialing besties that are secretly (or not so secretly) in love with one another. Happy Birthday Michelle :P.

Ice. He needed ice, something to dull the burn as the amber liquid splashed down his throat. How could there be no ice in his fucking apartment? Apparently Alex hadn't planned that particular aspect of her dinner party, their guests emptying out the tiny ice maker in his freezer.

He shrugged, hefting the nearly full bottle in his hand, the cool green glass slipping against his fingers as he brought the beveled lip to his mouth. Fire cascaded down his throat as he took the longest gulp he could manage. He didn't really go in for hard liquor, not usually. One mistaken binge in his early teens, Stevie along for the ride. It was the first and last time he'd stolen anything, sweating bullets as he helped his friend pry open the hinge to his mother's liquor cabinet. What had it been? Sherry? Something she cooked with no doubt. He shuddered at the memory.

In his entire adult life, he could count on one hand the number of times he'd turned to whiskey and the like. Only when he was angry, when the only option was getting really drunk really fast or putting his fist through a plate glass window. He was a doctor, the first thing wasn't really an option.

He slumped on his couch, kicking his feet upon the coffee table, wincing as the soles of his shoes scuffed the edge. If any guest had done such a thing, he would have ushered them straight out the door immediately. It didn't matter, though, not now. His whole apartment was a mess, cups and tiny paper plates littered every available surface. Even his piano. Did no one have any sense of respect?

He seethed. The memory of Mindy trying, repeatedly, to sit on his piano grated on him. Mindy, Mindy, Mindy. Everything always circled back to her. She brought a fucking male prostitute into his home, and she wondered why he was upset. She hadn't even been invited.

The muscles in his hand flexed against the bottle, reflexively trying to form a fist, the knuckles turning white. The son of a bitch had sat at his piano, playing it infinitely better than himself. Had Mindy known that Adam, if that even was his real name, could play piano better than him? Probably. It was exactly the sort of thing she would do, bring some piano playing gigolo (is that what they were called?) to show him up at his own party, just because she was mad.

And she thought they were friends. How ridiculous. A friend wouldn't blab about you to your girlfriend, and ruin god damn everything. The bottle made it's way to his lips again, clinking against his teeth in his haste. Alex, right, she was the one he should be thinking about. Not Mindy Lahiri, party crasher extraordinaire.

Guilt crashed over him in an unexpected wave. He hadn't thought about Alex since she'd stormed out, focused entirely on the person he deemed to be the source of all his problems, so focused in fact, that he'd somehow failed to notice the sensation of relief when Alex walked out the door. A bitter laugh tumbled from his lips. He was an ass.

The bottle in his hand felt noticeably lighter, and he peered at it, blinking hard as he tried to clear his blurry vision. Half gone. Setting the bottle aside, he collapsed back onto the couch, his inability to feel his lips cluing him in to his inebriated state. Now he remembered why he didn't drink liquor. At a certain point, it's numbing effects backfired, and things became all too clear.

He'd yelled at Mindy, and not for the offensive things she'd actually done, but for telling Alex something she should have already known. He'd rationalized not telling her, it hadn't come up. But really, how often did someone say, "Hey, are you divorced?"

His face felt hot, surely a combination of alcohol and shame. No, it wasn't Mindy's fault that Alex had broken things off with him. It was his fault, as always. Alex was a nice girl, she only grumbled a little when he didn't want to go do things, she kept the bathroom tidy when she was over, she didn't snore. But of course, he screwed it up, as always.

And then he'd yelled at Mindy, who was just… being Mindy. Sure, he'd specifically told Alex not to invite her, but he'd known as soon as she'd found out about it, that she'd show up. But he really hadn't wanted her to come. She stirred up things he wasn't prepared to analyze, an unfounded sense of betrayal when he saw her with Brendan, a flash of burning jealousy when she stepped into his apartment with a blond Adonis on her arm. The constant dickhead parade through her life set him on edge.

It shouldn't bother him. It bothered the hell out of him. He groaned, feeling dizzy as he sat back up, his head in his hands. The alcohol remaining in his stomach began to make it's way into his blood, pumping through his body. Why did it bother him? They weren't friends, damn it.

He swallowed, the walls coming down a little. It's just… so he didn't like it when she was mopey, or when she came to work looking haggard because she'd spent the night in a bottle of wine and didn't bother to run a comb through her hair. And maybe he did like it when he heard her tinkling laugh, when he could sneak a glance and catch her smiling, a big full smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. That was normal, wasn't it? Normal human behavior, caring about people in close physical proximity…

God, now he couldn't think about anything other than the mortified expression on her face when the prick had declared his profession in front of everyone. The absolute hurt when he'd hurled his angry words at her, even if they were true, they were beside the damn point. It didn't matter what he'd asked for, it never had.

He'd been staring at her face on his phone for the past ten minutes, some ridiculous picture with ten different filters (that's what she'd called them anyway) so she was basically unrecognizable, which totally defeated the purpose of a contact picture.

His eyes were heavy, the whisky swinging into full effect as he clumsily fumbled with his phone, his fingers finally finding their way to the call button. It rang and rang, eventually going to voicemail. Nope. He wasn't drunk enough for that. He hit 'end' and stared at the screen some more. Maybe it was for the best. No matter what he did, people always left. This budding affection he felt for her would only lead to disappointment.

He finally let his eyes crash down, only to be rudely drawn out of his melancholy by the sound of some horrible pop song buzzing in his hand. E'erybody getting krunk krunk, boys trying to touch my junk junk.

He scrambled to answer it, dropping it down under his coffee table in the process. Gonna smack him if he gets too drunk drunk. He dove after it, rapping his forehead against the polished cherry as he grasped the phone, anything to stop the racket.

"Mindy?" His voice was scratchy, a little raw from the cigarettes he'd smoked tonight. He cleared it, but before he could continue, she jumped in.

"Of course, it's Mindy. How many people are you calling at three in the morning?"

His head was spinning, and he absently wondered if maybe had a concussion. The alcohol was making it too hard to concentrate. "Mindy, my phone is singing to me. What's krunk, and why is e'erybody getting it?" The words slurred as they echoed in his apartment. Oh god, he sounded shitfaced… he was shitfaced.

"Oh my god, Danny, are you plastered?" She sighed hugely, sounding entirely put upon. "I suppose you get a pass, since you just got dumped."

"No… yeah… maybe. I kind of fell." He reached up, cautiously brushing his fingers across his forehead. There was definitely a lump, and a wetness that was not sweat. "... and there's a huuuuuuuuge lump on my head… and blood, Mindy, there's blood too."

He heard a rustling in the speaker by his ear, some disgruntled mumbling. "Seriously, Danny, are you drunk, or do you have a concussion?"

"Drunk… and probably not a concussion, probably."

She sighed audibly, the rustling getting louder. "So… were you calling for anything specific?"

Danny swallowed, suddenly liquid courage wasn't enough. He was quiet.

"Damn it, Danny, talk to me so I know you're conscious."

"I'm sorry."

"It's ok, just keep talking."

There was the faint sound of a car honking in his ear, and he could hear the slightly thready quality to her words, like she was a little out of breath. "No, I mean, I'm sorry for yelling at you… earlier."

"Yeah, that was a dick move, Castellano." She paused a millisecond before rushing on. "But, I suppose, if we're tossing apologies around, I'm sorry I overstepped my boundaries and told Alex about Christina, and maybe also the prostitute thing."

He lapsed into silence again, dropping his head back against the floor. This time he heard the definite sound of a car door slamming. Where the hell was she?

"Come on, Danny, talk. I'm almost there."

"What?"

"I have to make sure you're alive. You can't call me at three in the morning, drunk and bleeding and not expect me to come over and check you out."

He smiled at her choice of words. "I always knew you wanted to check me out."

"Lame."

"Are we okay, Mindy?"

She didn't answer him. By the time he asked the question she was already standing at his door. "Can you get up and let me in, or do I need to drag your super out of bed?"

"Coming."

He dropped his phone on the floor and hauled himself up, feeling incredibly dizzy as he walked toward the door. It had been years since he'd been this drunk, and he was in danger of throwing up like an overenthusiastic frat boy. He grasped the handle and jerked it open with a little too much force, wincing as it bounced against the wall.

Mindy strode across the threshold without preamble, guiding Danny back to his couch. She sat with him, one hand palming his cheek as she checked his pupils with a tiny flashlight. "There's barely any blood here, and I wouldn't call that quarter sized lump 'huuuuuuge.' So my diagnosis is, utterly schnockered, and not concussed."

She patted his cheek and he collapsed back into the couch, a long breath sighing out of him. "Why can't we get our shit together?"

"Hey, don't lump me in with you. I'm very together."

"Adam the prostitute?"

"Okay, okay…" She arched one eyebrow at him curiously. "Why didn't you tell Alex about Christina? You have to admit, it's a little weird to not mention it for so long."

"Mindy… I just… I don't know… it's a failure… and Alex never asked… about anything really."

Mindy nodded, deciding not to comment. Instead she reached for the remote, flipping through the channels as Danny slumped further down into the couch beside her, his eyes drifting shut. He was snoring in seconds, shifting even closer to her. She took the opportunity to take a closer look at him.

He was flushed, his skin ruddy with the heat of alcohol, a fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead, making the hair where he'd ran his fingers through it stand on end. She reached out, instinctively smoothing it back down. Without thinking she pressed a quick kiss to his temple, tucking herself against his shoulder. "We are friends, you idiot."