Barney yanked his protesting body from the bed where he laid, the sour and sweat stained shirt stuck to a body that resembled the frame of tweety bird- a puffed up chest and under-worked stick-like legs. Do you know if you work out your upper body too much, you end up looking disproportionate? Barney doesn't know, and it's already happened to him. You can see how his joints are all stiff in the morning, how he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize the face staring back at him. You can see it plain as day. Watch this- now he's going to sit down on that hard wooden chair in the dark and hold his head in his hands. If he didn't sleep with it, swim with it and run with it, everyone would assume his hair was a hairpiece. Age hasn't been good to Barney Ross, but in the end, is it good to any of us?
When you step back from the window and stop spying on your boss, take a drink. You've been pathetic enough this morning, already pissing away whatever intellect you have left.
Still, you're back like a dog returning to its vomit and you're looking through the blinds again. Maybe it's because you want to catch him during a time when he's almost as fucked up and vulnerable as you are. Sure, it's in different ways, but it's the same thing anyways.
Fuck.
He saw you through the shades, you think, anyways. It was a trick of the light. Go back to bed, pretend it didn't happen, slide under the filthy covers of your bunk in this shitty Russian hotel with your bottle of cheap scotch and make sure not to spill any on the bed, goddamnit!
You wait and wait, but the gentle rap on the door doesn't come. You're waiting so long you fall asleep and maybe that's for the better.
"Gunnar! Get up mate we're out at 0400 hours!" says the twat named after the holiday. You groan and roll over, pathetic. They all know you're not using again, you don't have that slimy look to you and your hair isn't as greasy, that doesn't stop you from being a slob though. Get the fuck up, haul your ass out of bed, no one wants to open the door and see you laying here under the thick comforter with your hair all a mess. Really, it'd be embarrassing.
You assured yourself you were going to get up in a minute but now Hale is kicking in your door. Somewhere deep inside you realize that these men must genuinely like you, that you must mean something to them. Other mercenary teams, they would have left you here and been happy about one less way to split a paycheck. Maybe other teams would have killed you dead when you were about to throw one of their own on a bunch of spikes. You're contemplating this in your own foggy sort of way when a large black fist closes around your ankle and drags you out of bed. All 6' 5" of you, to be exact, and an 11 inch bottle of the cheapest scotch around. It's made of recycled plastic, you checked.
When there's a job in twenty minutes and you're laying on the floor half naked and hung over, take a drink.
In slow motion you get dressed under the supervision of Caesar, yanking your body into motion and feeling just as stiff and derelict as Barney looks.
If you look up pathetic in a dictionary, you'll see a picture of Gunnar Jensen putting on a Kevlar vest under the gaze of an irritated black man. You want to be pissed off and take it out on Hale, but you also know that he's just doing his best to make sure you're able to board the archaic plane and fight. It's a simple hostage extraction mission, not that you care very much.
When you're walking out of a hotel to get in some shitty plane, take a drin- oh wait, you left you're cheap scotch in the hotel room. Is your flask still full? No, the one under your hat. YES, the one on your hip. You don't have it? Well tough luck buddy, you're old enough to be taking care of your own shit.
Next think you know you're boarding the plane that's older than dirt and you can feel the cold stares of some of the guys who are supposed to have your back. You're guessing that not everyone was as up to the idea of waking you up as Hale was.
"You gonna tie me up again?" you ask to Christmas and only receive a cold stare in return. Okay not funny, you get it. The half smirk on your face falls into a sigh as you sit down. Being the liability isn't fun and it's not easy either.
Barney doesn't even look at you when he does the briefing in his drawling voice. You absently wonder what the fuck is wrong with his face but let it go. There's no reason to think about it, not while you're supposed to be trying to pay attention.
Still, it looks frozen by injections and facelifts. It's no secret to the team that Barney and Tool spend at least some of their cash on trying to look youthful. Botox only lasts six months or so, then the swollen face droops down. Vertical scars across the hairline? Sure sign of a minor facelift. Botox causes cancer. Tango long enough with the plastic surgery and you'll end up with a face full of fuck and a scrotum fill of tumors. How long until Barney sees that yanking skin over his aging bone structure isn't going to make him look younger? Maybe he already knows.
"Krokadil is a drug that's got 10 times the kick of heroin at a third of the price." Barney starts. It sounds so rehearsed. Don't scoff, you're already skating on thin ice. He's trying not to look at you because he knows heroin will always pique your interest, no matter how many times you kick it.
He dyes his hair. What a sad sack of shit. You can tell, you've looked into what you've dubbed the pseudo-hairpiece enough to see that the scalp usually isn't botched black in some places. Your own gray blonde hair, unwashed and probably teeming with gently respiring bacteria, isn't dyed. You feel a firm sense of pride, especially when you look into Barney's right eyebrow, the one that looks permanently surprised, or when you watch Barney run like a marionette.
"These guys dunno how to make it right without robbing from pharmacies and using the red part of match books. That's where our guy comes in, chemist Doctor Hans Damme of Germany. He was kidnapped by the cartel 5 days ago and negotiations have not gone well. The junkies are demanding far too much money, and we charge less than they want. That's why we're here." Barney finishes wanting to sound short and concise, implying some sort of master plan and methodical thinking style.
You want to talk about the chemical makeup of the heroin offshoot, how it rots your skin and creates a sore as soon as you miss a vein, how it creates a gangrene that ends in amputation or death. You want to describe what it's like for the addicts to simply not be able to get out of bed in the morning, their blood poisoned by the drug they made from iodine, red phosphorus and codeine. You're bursting with this information; you can feel it coming out of every pore. You also remember as time and time again you've been looked down upon for bringing up who you were before you joined all this. You want to clear your throat and tell everyone, but there's no one who will care.
You know they're all jealous. If you had to stop doing this, stop killing for pay, you could. With your degree you might be able to land some shit pharmacy job and work until you drop dead; these guys? If Barney ever stops working, if he ever wakes up one morning and can't run anymore, if arthritis creeps into his hands and he can't shoot his dumb little pop pop pistols, he's done. How long could he ride out on his savings? Five years?
Smirk, Gunnar, you've earned it.
