What's up? I'm back. Sorry about the long wait, school is really intense and a first priority so writing this story went on the back burner for a while. This chapter is a little short because only a few things needed to happen to get the story back to where it would have been if none of this had happened. Does that make sense? I mean that at the end of this chapter the story syncs up with the book Deathwish for a while. I'll let you know next chapter where I am picking up and what went down.

Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope you guys like it!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Cal Leandros series, it is property of Rob Thurman.

Chapter 7: Ideas

People make mistakes. It's a fact, universal and unchanging. But sometimes you make little ones and sometimes you make big ones and the one I had made was mother fucking huge. Just about as massive as the raging hangover I had.

I opened my eyes into slits and the meager amount of light coming through already felt like it was after my retinas with a pickaxe. I quickly snapped them shut. Je-sus. Why In the hell had I decided to drink what Goodfellow gave me?

I liked to think of myself as a pretty world weary son of bitch. I learned early on that people never really change. If you're an asshole, you're an asshole your whole damn life, maybe you just get better at hiding it, but you are still an asshole. So why in the world had I decided that Goodfellow was no longer a conniving grade 'A' asshole? Fuck if I know.

And then there was the singing. I could feel my face heat as I fought the desire to face dive in my pillow and pray for suffocation.

I had gotten up on stage at the bar I work at, the bar I would have to at some point return to, and I had sung the Beatles. I thought: hey, why not? It will cheer Nik up, the Beatles are his favorite band, he loves that shit. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Yeah, FAMOUS. LAST. WORDS.

That was all you could say about that.

To top it all off I was not only totally mortified, I was also disturbed. I had been pretty damn good (from what I can remember… though let's face it drunk people always think they're the shit at karaoke, it's like a goddamn rule or something). I couldn't be sure if it was because I inherited my mother's honey and rum voice or if this was another unwanted gift from the time Darkling had spent ruining my life and keeping me prisoner in my own body.

All I could be sure of was that I sure as hell didn't want to be able to sing and whether or not I sang well that wouldn't save me from the righteous ass kicking Niko would give me for getting loaded while the Auphe were hot on our tails or the face melting shame I would feel if I ever got up the cojones to walk back into Ishiah's bar again.

On the bright side I now highly doubted we had to worry about clientele being afraid of me now… just that they'd laugh me right the fuck out of the building.

Great.

This is why I didn't do optimism.

As I was wallowing in my own idiocy, something I do a lot more than I'd want to own up to, Nik walked in.

"Get dressed. We're going running." And that was even less funny than my throbbing wounds, pounding headache, and mouth that tasted of eau de shit.

I briefly debated the pro's and con's of hurling myself out of the small window on the side of my room. Instant death vs slow death. Hmmm….

I lolled my head back over in my brother's direction and looked up at his way too cheerful to be good for me face. This was about to suck out the ass.

"Cyrano, I hope you have a nuke buried somewhere in those sweatpants because that is the only way you are getting me out of this bed." I groaned throwing an arm over my eyes. I regretted the words as soon as they left me lips. Niko sure as hell loved a good challenge, especially when they involved me, pain, and humiliation. Retrospect. What a bitch am I right?

I could practically hear the vicious smile tug at his lips as his hand settled gently over my arm.

"How wrong you are."

Yes, I was really really wrong (surprise, surprise. Insert sarcasm). Nik had kicked my ass out of bed and I didn't have much to say about it, well that's a lie, I had a lot to say about it…. Several terribly graphic, horribly vicious, anatomically incorrect, and creative linguistic things to say about it, but I knew better than to whine to an angry Niko. When it's an extra mile per sentence you tend to be pretty succinct.

I knew I should have chosen the damn window option.

I was dragging my feet like a B-movie zombie extra by the time I hauled my ass back up those stairs. Those many, many flights of stairs. Just thinking about it made me want to go curl up in my bed.

I collapsed gasping on our couch instead. It was closer.

"Cyrano, there's tough love and then there's just tough." I wheezed out. Despite the wounds and the hangover the run had been almost the same length as our usual one. I swear he had never heard of the phrase "cut some slack". What the hell were they teaching at college's these days anyways?

"Yes, well right now we are working on the tough part, the rest can wait." He said dryly before shoving a glass of water and two Tylenol into my limp hand. I quirked a suspicious eyebrow at the offered drugs. Niko was pretty tight fisted with the drugs, and I hadn't even asked for these ones. I had good cause for suspicion.

"Is this a test or are you really pushing the drugs?" I muttered as my breathing began to even out.

"You're wounded and hung over, I thought perhaps you might appreciate them. However, if that is not the case-" I threw the Tylenol down my throat before he could snatch them from he. Gift horses and their mouths and all that shit.

"So what's on the agenda today?" I asked after chugging the entire glass of water. Nik shook his head at my antics before getting down to the point. Forget beating around the bush, Niko went right at the thing with a goddamn chainsaw.

"We need a plan to deal with the Auphe." Suddenly wounds and hangovers didn't sound so bad. Reality, the bitch, slapped me across the face. I was always thinking about the Auphe, but I liked to pretend that I wasn't sometimes, to make things easier. But nothing would ever be easy for us. Nik and I both learned that back before we could crawl. Life isn't a beautiful thing to be enjoyed, it's a violent struggle that goes on pointlessly and then ends abruptly and without dignity.

No wonder I'm such a cheery guy.

"Yeah, the Auphe." I responded eloquently. What was there to say anyway? We were going to lose. We were going to die. I knew that, and no matter what I tried to convince myself of, I always knew that. Me coming back to Niko didn't mean I had faith that we could come out of this alive, it just meant that I recognized that Nik was going down with this ship no matter what I did about it, so we might as well spend whatever time we had left together.

"You can sense them, you can sense their gates, you can shut their gates. There must be something we can do with these facts." His voice belayed his frustration. We had too few pieces of one big ass puzzle. Niko was smart, as smart as they came, but even a genius couldn't think their way out of a hopeless situation. There was no way we were going to be able to see the solution… if there even was one. And I had serious doubts that there was. Sometimes there really is just no good answer, no way to win.

"Nik…" I trailed off as I rubbed the back of my neck. Didn't he know how hard I thought about this? Didn't he understand how many sleepless nights and distracted days I spent racking my brain for a solution? I had only left because I had known that there was no answer, there was no way to win. We were stuck in a bitch of a catch-22 and all we could do was put up, shut up, and give the hell up.

I hadn't come back because I thought we had a chance. I came back because if we were going to die we had to do it together, because Nik would follow me if I died. It took me awhile to accept it but there was no point in denying it any more. Cal and Nik, we were a package deal, and we would leave that way too. I suppressed a bitter laugh. Yeah, I spent my whole damn life dragging him down with me. That wasn't about to change now.

There was no point in telling him any of this though, it would only upset him. The poor bastard only had a few days left. Let him think we have a chance. A long time ago, on a cold beach in the wake of the Auphe attack, I decided that I would do my best to carry the load this time… the last time. And I would, even if this time the load was just the knowledge of our inevitable death. If brainstorming made him happy then, hell, I would brainstorm.

Unfortunately most of the storming would have to go on in Nik's head. He could whip up a mental hurricane whereas the best I could do was partially cloudy with a chance of rain.

I valiantly fought the stupid grin off my face.

"What's wrong with your face? You look like a constipated revenant" Goodfellow, ever the life ruiner, asked as he strolled into our apartment without so much as a knock. I groaned loudly and gave Nik an accusatory glare.

"Cyrano, you gave that bastard a key?" Worst idea of the century.

"Why Caliban keep up like that and I might think that you don't absolutely adore my presence." He snarked, a wily grin adorning his fox like face. I repeat: worst idea of the century.

"Yeah and Buddha forbid you actually have a right thought for once in your life." I ducked when he picked one of Nik's books off the table and threw it at my head.

"Good one." I smirked sarcastically, thoroughly enjoying how much I was annoying him. The bastard deserved it, he was the one who got me absolutely shit faced yesterday. Asshole, seriously who the hell just hands somebody absinthe and doesn't tell them what it is?

"You're just pissed that you have the tolerance of a 13 year old girl. Not my fault you had a sip of alcohol and went all American Idol on us." Goodfellow plunked down on the couch like he owned the place and put his feet up on our coffee table. His arms were crossed contentedly behind his head.

I scowled and seriously considered finding that book and chucking it back at him.

"I have great tolerance, but you gave me fucking absinthe and I haven't been drinking for the past millennia." I snapped back. "And so what? I sang the Beatles-" cue bright red blush of shame "-you would do some stupid shit too it you had a blood alcohol level of .5" So that might be an exaggeration but I had my dignity to defend! Well… not really but I liked to pretend. Denial is the shit and no one can tell me differently.

"Aw are you embarrassed? It was pretty good actually. Grow a unibrow and you could be one of Beatles band members." Goodfellow smirked, once again way too happy with himself… but this time he had gotten in a little over his head.

"What are you implying about the Beatles Robin?" Niko said impassively at my shoulder clutching his carelessly throw book. Haha, sucker. Time for someone else to endure the wrath of the legendary Niko.

Goodfellow took one look at my brother's face and decided that a change of subject was in order. Coward. Though honestly I couldn't really blame the guy. Who in their right mind wouldn't back down from Nik when he's pissed?

"Right, well uh…. So has anyone cleaned up the Auphe bodies at Rafferty's? We didn't have time to do it before." That wiped the smile right of my face. I had enjoyed (well enjoyed is a strong word…) the banter with Goodfellow because it was better than anything else on my mind. When your past present and future all suck the only thing you can do is bury your head in the sand ostrich style and deny the existence of anything but the suffocating sand.

Hm, I may have an issue with denial and avoidance… I gave it a moment of thought… nah.

"I called the vigil earlier, Sam and his buddies have hopefully rid the place of them by now." Nik's response suddenly made all the puzzle pieces fit. It was a fucking miracle, like randomly spinning a rubik's cube and getting all the colors to match up.

I felt my face split in a nasty dark grin as I got an idea. An awful idea, I had just gotten a wonderful awful idea.

Does anyone know where I shamelessly lifted that last line from? Kudos to you if you do!

Review! And let me know you still love me even after my prolonged absence... absence makes the heart grow fonder.... right? ;)

Hopefully the next chapter will be up much more quickly than this one! I hoped you guys liked it, sorry it was so short. So at the end of this one my story follows Deathwish until right after the Auphe are defeated. It will be more clear when I start the next chapter. I promise!

-Traveler