The customers in the bar looked up at the crashing and cursing noises coming from just outside the door.
"Bloody ... buggerin' ... useless ... WHY ARE THESE THINGS SO HARD TO STEER?!" A louder crash and a thump. "Oh, fuck it Stuart ya soddin' useless lump!"
Amid much clattering, Murdoc Niccals backed carefully into the bar, clumsily pulling a wheelchair in which a blue-haired teenager was not so much sitting as heaped haphazardly in a tangle of his own limbs. Judging by the noise and the rising bruise on the boy's face, he'd just fallen out of the wheelchair.
Ignoring the stares, Murdoc shoved the wheelchair up to the bar and flopped down on a barstool. "I need a drink. Usual, please."
The bartender stared in horror at him and pointed at the clearly-unconscious wheelchair-bound boy. "Um, did that kid just knock himself out?"
"Nah, he's been out for ages. One more knock on the 'ead won't do any harm."
The bartender decided he didn't want to know and busied himself getting the beer. If it had been anyone other than Murdoc, he'd probably have questioned further. This was actually not the weirdest thing Murdoc had done, but if he thought too much about all the other incidents his ulcer started playing up and he just did not need the hassle.
Murdoc took the beer, leaned back on the bar and glanced down at Stuart. Huh, the kid was probably better off with Murdoc than with his parents, they couldn't really love him if they inflicted him with a name like that. You'd think if your surname was Pot you could come up with something, anything, to name your kid other than "Stu". And hey, he was certainly attention-grabbing, even if it was a pain hauling him around; everyone in the pub was looking at them now, which was fun. Maybe having him around wouldn't be so bad ...
His eye caught five very familiar faces in the corner. The gang were sitting at their usual out-of-the-way table, gawking unashamedly at the kid in the wheelchair. He put the beer down and stalked over to them, the drama of the moment spoiled somewhat when he stopped halfway there and turned back for the wheelchair.
"Hello," he said coldly.
"Uh, hi. Nice t'see you," chuckled Billy-Boy nervously. "So, uh, you got off then?"
"Well, I'm not in jail, as you can plainly see, no thanks to you lot. But no, Billy me lad, I did not get off unpunished. See this?" Murdoc pointed at Stuart. "Thirty thousand hours of community service – yes, thirty thousand hours, you heard me – plus no less than ten hours a week of looking after this long streak of misery. He's in a coma, he needs watching round-the-clock, and yours truly got roped into that happy little job. And frankly I'm startin' to think jail would have been better."
Munch blinked at the comatose Stuart. "Why did you bring him here?"
"Well, I'm not going to let my routine get messed up by some dozy little bugger who broke my car with his head, am I?"
The lads stared and shrank away from him.
Crusher broke the silence. "Um. Muds? You're ... you're hauling around a dead guy."
"He's not dead. Well, maybe brain-dead."
"Even so. That's just beyond fucked up, man."
"Fucked up nothing. You know what's fucked up? You leaving me alone to face the music!" Murdoc snapped, banging a fist on the table.
Billy sniggered. "Hehehehe, 'music' ... see, it's funny 'cos it was a keyboard shop ..." He saw the others glaring at him and wilted. "... I'll shut up now."
"You do that." Murdoc turned back to the others and resumed bitching. "Do you have any idea how much shit I went through because of this stupid plan?"
"'Stupid pla-' ... it was your idea!" Tiny spluttered.
"Damn right!" Crusher stood up, looming over Murdoc, grabbed him by the collar, and hissed into his face "Your band! Your plan to st-" he remembered he was in public and quickly rephrased, "-get the stuff! And it was def'nitely your idea to stay behind when anyone with any sense would have run like we did!"
"And it's only because I stayed behind that that little bugger in the wheelchair's alive!" Murdoc snarled back. "Well, sort of. But if I hadn't stayed, you would have murder on your consciences, murder! Maybe I don't care about the kid but I did you sissy bunch a bloody favour! Always were squeamish about death, you lot!"
"Hey, it's not our fault you can't drive!" Rocky objected. "That kid's hurt because of you, not us, and he's not our problem! Why did you bother? You don't never help nobody unless there's somefin' in it for you!"
"Y'know, my mum knows someone who works at the police station," Billy said, looking nervously sideways at Murdoc and shuffling closer to the door, ready to run, "an' she says when they came in you had yer tongue down his throat."
Murdoc spluttered incoherently, his usual ready wit paralysed completely at this outrageous claim. Well, not so outrageous, but ...
The others looked at him incredulously and shrank back once again. Crusher wrinkled his nose and said "Eeeeuurgh."
Rocky grimaced. "Now that is a new low. Even for you, Niccals. And this is me sayin' that, an' I saw that thing you did with the cat and the watermelon and the box of fireworks."
"Hey, we agreed we were never going to mention that agai- what am I saying?" Murdoc attempted to redirect his train of thought. "Why the hell would you think I'd do something like that?!"
"Because it's you," Rocky pointed out. "So did you?"
"No!" People were staring again, but this time it wasn't the good kind of staring. Murdoc really, really hoped that they couldn't hear what was going on, and that Billy-Boy's mum's friend hadn't been spreading that rumour around too much. "I thought he'd stopped breathing, so I-"
"You snogged him because you thought he was dead? You think that makes it better?!" Munch looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or run.
"That is NOT what I meant! Never heard of mouth-to-mouth rescusiwhatsit?"
"Hey, I heard a joke about that," said Tiny, demonstrating a knack for horrendously bad timing which could probably be put down to the numerous drugs in his system. "How do you tell someone you're into gay necrophilia? In dead Ernest."
Everyone in the pub who wasn't already staring promptly started staring when Murdoc yelled "I AIN'T GAY AND HE'S NOT BLOODY DEAD!" The room then emptied rather rapidly.
Munch chuckled awkwardly. "Uh, yeah, so we'll just be leaving ..." The lads got up, backing away from Murdoc as if he was about to attack them, which he may in fact have done if not for the small sensible part of his mind reminding him that he was in deep enough shit already. Rocky petted Stuart's head as he left and said "G'bye, Sleeping Beauty," with a snigger.
Murdoc groaned and rested his head in his hands. Well, he'd really done it this time. He glanced up at the barman, not really expecting sympathy and not surprised when he didn't get it. The barman simply continued to stare at him, finally breaking the silence with "Something's wrong with you. Seriously wrong."
"Took you that long to notice?" snapped Murdoc, grabbing the wheelchair and shoving it towards the door. "Ah, we don't need 'em, do we, dent-head? Just you an' me now."
Hoisting Stuart into the car, he continued to talk to the comatose boy. "First order of business, I think, is a little revenge. Next time we see the probation officer he's gonna be very interested in certain things the lads have been doing. Hehehe."
He drove off, not bothering to strap either himself or Stuart in, shoving Stuart back onto the seat when he flopped forward and hit his head on the dashboard. Murdoc glared briefly out the back window.
"Second order of business? Find a new pub."
(Author's Note; "In dead earnest", geddit? ... Look, I didn't say it was a GOOD joke. I picked up the gang's names from other fics, and I don't know much about them – if anyone has a link to a picture of them or something I'd appreciate it. No, I don't know what he could have done with a cat, a watermelon, and a box of fireworks, but there's gotta be something.)