Alright guys, we're back! This chapter just sort of ran away with me. I wrestled with it, trying to alter it, and the Muse just dug his heels in and said NO. So, here it is. I hope you guys like it!

Jouetdedestin: I always wonder how much the Saints would stick their "No Women or Children" rule if the woman in question was just as bad as a mafioso

It's such an interesting question to play around with. I don't think the Saints would ever lay a hand on a kid, but a grown woman…I think that they might, depending on the crime…because women can commit some pretty heinous crimes too…

pony832987: Aaaahhhhhh! More more! I kid you not I re-read and re-read that chapter a dozen times and every time I get to the end I try to go to the next chapter but it's not there! This is by far the best boondock saints fanfic I've come across! I think you should go to the Comic-Con in Columbus Ohio and show this to Troy Duffy and the whole cast they're all going to be there and if you showed them your story it might turn into a movie! Let's not forget the fact that you would be taking with Norman Reedus. Anyway keep up the awesome work!

Awww you are really too kind! I'd love to go to the Comic-Con, believe me, but there's no way I can afford it, I live all the way in Hawaii, so there's just no way to swing it. Man oh man, the ever so teasing, tempting, wishful thinking, amazing day dream of being a screenwriter for Troy Duffy. God wouldn't that be just a dream freaking come true. And of course, getting to meet the boys. Holy cow. I would not be able to keep a straight face, I never can when I'm too excited to breathe…

"I'm A Fire, You're Gasoline, Come Pour Yourself All Over Me"

I woke up just like I thought I would. Sick as a fucking dog. But I didn't expect to be naked and tangled up in the sheets, my limbs splayed everywhere. I pushed myself up on my hands and immediately wished I hadn't moved because the room began to spin.

"What the fuck happened?" I muttered. I searched my memory but everything was very hazy. I remembered the boys, the cops, Jules, guns, whiskey, and the smell of the ocean. I tried to roll over but my arm and shoulder got caught up in the sheets and I gave up halfway through the motion before sliding back on my belly and just laying still.

"You passed out and after about an hour you took off all your clothes."

I all but screeched. Flailing like a fish on a hook hoisted out of the water, I pin wheeled and crashed off the bed, smacking my head a good one on the floor, adding to the arm's length list of all the other things on my body that hurt. My stomach rolled violently and I clenched my jaw shut.

Willow Schmitt, you will not puke all over this floor. No, you will not, under pain of the most embarrassing moment of your short, miserable life.

When I managed to force back the bile in my throat I looked up and saw that Murphy was standing over me, his head cocked to the side, a cigarette hanging off the corner of his mouth. He was dressed already and I could tell he'd showered because I could smell the faint hint of soap and steam. His rosary hung around his neck, dangling out of his shirt.

"Ya alright there, girl?" he asked me. His brogue was thick but his voice a gentle purr. Nothing like the hard growl last night when he'd threatened me. That nugget of memory came roaring up to greet me like a kick in the gut, or maybe that was just my pickled liver's way of telling me I shouldn't knock back whiskey like they were closing down the Bushmill's factory tomorrow.

"Do you fucking mind? I'm naked here for God's sake." I shoved his shins but I had about as much strength as a wet noodle. He took a step back and huffed with quiet laughter.

"Aye, I can see dat, girl, and it's a mighty fine thing." He dropped into a crouch as I pulled the sheet around myself as much as I could, yanking it off the bed with a sharp jerk. When I turned back to glare at Murphy he was holding out his cigarette.

"Thanks," I managed as I took it from him and inhaled. I lifted my head and blew the smoke over his skull to avoid hitting him in the eyes with it.

"Ya don't remember anything, do ya?" he asked me gently.

I rolled my eyes. "I remember a little. But the fault doesn't lie in the fact I drank too much."

I managed to haul myself up and back onto the bed. I twisted over to look at Jules and saw she was still sleeping soundly on the other bed. Connor was sprawled out on the floor itself between the two beds, tangled in the blanket he'd stolen from Jules, shirt off but jeans on, the toned, hard muscles of his chest rising and falling slowly with each breath he took. He looked perfectly content to stay put and I was reluctant to wake either of them.

I turned back to Murphy who I could sense was still watching me. Now more for show than unwillingness to move any further, I crossed my legs and stared at Murphy, still only wrapped in the sheet. I'm sure I looked like shit, my eyeliner smeared everywhere, my curls standing on end like a rat's nest on my head, but Murphy kept watching me with that sideways look and I couldn't help but shiver. His eyes reminded me of the ocean, deep, roiling, and yet somehow so calm right no that even amongst this sea of uncertainty, I felt at ease.

"Where does it lie then?" he asked.

I took another drag on the cigarette but the smoke went down wrong and I sank into a coughing fit. I doubled over on the bed and my free hand clenched onto the edge of the mattress. My whole body was shaking and my head began to pound. Nausea rolled up through me and thanks to the incessant hacking, I couldn't take it anymore. I pulled the sheet with me and went stumbling into the bathroom, just making it to the toilet before I proceeded to heave my guts up over and over again.

I don't know if I was more surprised, or embarrassed, when I felt Murphy's presence behind me. He dropped down to his knees behind me and laid a hand on my naked shoulder blade. The touch was warm and soothed the aching shudder still running through me.

"Easy," Murphy soothed. He rubbed my back gently, his hand stroking over my spine and dipping into the small of my back before coming up and then pulling the ragged mess of my curls away from my neck. "You're alright."

I didn't expect to feel grateful for his presence, and yet that's exactly what I was feeling when I managed to suck down a deep breath. I almost said thank you but I felt too weak to really talk with any kind of coherence. I flushed away last night's evidence of poor self control and got up shakily to my feet and retrieved my toothbrush from the sink.

"Use the shower. I'll have coffee ready," Murphy told me. He nudged me further into the bathroom while he made his exit, shutting the door behind him.

Standing under the spray of warm water felt wonderful, but the whole time I had to question why he was being so gentle with me. Fuck, last night he'd held a gun at me, finger on the trigger.

The hammer wasn't cocked though.

What the fuck does it matter? You're going to help him, and hopefully he doesn't get you and Jules killed.

I furiously scrubbed my teeth for at least five minutes while I was in the shower, and as he'd promised by the time I was finished he had a pot of strong coffee made. He dutifully turned around and didn't peak when I got dressed, dark blue jeans and plain black T-shirt. Most of my wardrobe was very plain, it helped me better blend into a crowd when I needed to make a clean getaway. My hair settled around my face and neck, already tightening into mussed waves even as I sat down at the kitchen counter. Murphy nudged a cup of coffee towards me, along with a tall glass of water from the tap. "You do this often?" I asked him.

He arched a dark brow at me. "What? Nurse the hang-overs of naked girls with memory problems?" There was too much sass in him for him to be able to keep a straight face and I found myself snickering as well.

"No," he finished as he poured himself his own cup of coffee. "Mostly just a partially naked twin brother."

I tipped my head to the side. "Who's the older?"

Murphy rolled his eyes. "Isn't it obvious? Me."

I snorted. "Says the guy who noogied his brother like a ten year old when he poked you." I remembered the incident clearly from yesterday while we were in the car. Most of the memory from yesterday was coming back, but I knew that whatever happened during the evening I probably wasn't getting back.

"Bastard deserved it," Murphy muttered. He took another sip of coffee and glanced at me, his tattooed finger tracing the lip of his mug. "Actually we don't know who's older. Ma never told us."

My eyes went wide. "You're shitting me."

He shook his head. "Ma's a right evil woman. Always did like to have her fun with us." He tipped his head to the side again and I saw his eyes flicker down to my tattooed wrists. "What do they say?"

I held out my left wrist. "Don't think," I murmured. I laid my right down and flexed my fingers. "Just breathe."

"Now the better question might be what do they mean?" His eyes were dark but his voice was gentle. My head swam with the heady look he gave me and I was trying desperately to figure out if this was his way of coming onto me or if I was just kidding myself and getting away with it because I was so hung over I couldn't tell the difference. To give myself a second I took a sip of the coffee and found myself pleased with the flavor- full and rich with just a small amount of bitterness.

"I have a bad habit of jumping into things without thinking about it. Getting caught up and doing things I regret." I traced the lip of my cup and dared myself to look up at him. His eyes were hungry, the twitch of his lips curious, not judgmental. A weight lifted off my shoulders and a nervous tingling settled into my stomach and chased away my sick feeling faster than I knew was humanly possible. I tried to look away from him, because I felt myself drowning, so tempted to do exactly what I just said I had a bad habit of doing. My heart slammed against my breast bone like thunder on window panes and my brain rattled inside my skull, making it so hard to think straight. With so few words he said so much and I desperately wanted to know what it would be like to touch him. Not just physically, but mentally as well.

"What would you have to regret?" He held my gaze, his dark blue eyes smoldering like sapphire coals. The soft husk of his voice melted away any last thought I had about controlling myself. I wanted it too much, and I knew all too well how soon I'd probably never see him again.

I got up from my seat and stepped around the barrier of the counter that separated us. He stood up straight from where he'd been leaning on the counter and looked down at me, a soft yet knowing look in his eyes that made me hold my breath.

"A lot of things," I murmured.

It was like he could read my mind. He reached his tattooed hand forward and cupped my jaw, his fingertips calloused but his skin warm. Just that soft touch drove me mad and I turned my cheek into his palm, unable to hold the weight of his gaze any longer. He slid his hand back and dipped his fingers into my curls and until my nose was brushing against his wrist and then I turned and looked back up at him again.

"Like what?" There was the sparkle of gentle humor in his eye, telling me in so few words that he liked where this was going and he was encouraging me. It was all that I needed. He really shouldn't have encouraged me, but I couldn't help be glad when he did.

"Like not doing this." I arched up on my toes, his impressive five eleven a good six inches more than my own stature, and pressed my lips onto his. The touch was chaste but warm and deep when I felt his hand press a little harder on my jaw and the nape of my neck, tipping my head back slightly. He pressed a little more, asking for more, making me want more. My brain melted and I lost all capacity for rational thought as his scent filled my nose, a heady, intoxicating blend of smoke, whiskey (which permanently clung to him) as well as that earthy aroma that reminded me of the wind blowing through a car when the windows are down just before it rains. I was lacing one arm around his neck right as he slipped his tongue forward and gently tested the boundaries. I was shaking when I let him in, but he held me steady. He didn't need to tell me that he had a hold of me and wasn't going to let me drop, he said it all with his body language. He closed the distance between our hips, one hand on the small of my back, the other still in my hair, holding me firmly against the broad breadth of his chest, and I found myself amazed and overwhelmed all at once. When Murphy kissed, he kissed with his whole body, leaving no part of himself idle against me. His tongue was languid and gentle, but still coaxing, but since I was the one who started this, I was determined to finish it, one way or another. I kissed him back and I found out that if just his scent could melt my brain, his taste could liquefy my bones. The flavor of whiskey and smoke was strong (making me wonder if he'd done a shot this morning or if it was just perpetual) but I licked my way past it into something deeper. He tasted like rain after a burning hot afternoon, like relief and hunger and power and I thought I heard myself moan. My head was spinning

I didn't want to let go but my lungs were burning. My fingers were tangled in his short dark hair and I was hard pressed to ever let him go. It unsettled me a little bit that I barely knew him and yet I wanted him this badly, but I couldn't stop the feeling. In the end it was him that pulled away. He didn't go far, just lightly leaning his forehead against mine. His eyes glimmered as he looked down at me.

"Breathe, Will," he murmured, his fingers lightly curling through my hair.

I did as he said, breathing in and exhaling for the first time since before we'd started kissing. "That's why I have reminders," I teased gently. I let my fingertips slide their way from his hair down his shoulder and arm to tangle into his tattooed hand.

"Aequitas," I rolled the foreign word on my tongue. "What's it mean?"

"Justice," he murmured. He twinned his fingers with mine and lifted my hands up and ducked under my arms so they were around his neck. The one word was enough to make my blood scorch through my veins. If there was one difference between Jules and I and how we saw the world, including all the shit that's happened to us, it was that she just wanted peace. She just wanted resolution and some kind of relief, a weight to be lifted off her chest. But me? Even after all this time, sometimes the only thing I could think about was wanting justice for what we had gone through. It took me a second to get my head back into the present moment; I was so caught up in wondering if the God I didn't believe in was throwing me a bone only to jerk it out from under my feet later, as he was so oft to do in my life.

"What are we doing?" I asked. I didn't know how to make him understand that as amazing as his touch was, this was only going to screw things up in epic proportions. I already had. I'd kissed him, and now I wanted so much more, and I didn't know how I was going to live without having more.

He grinned a little half smile at me, which just brought out one of my own. "Does it matter?"

"Well I mean, kinda, yeah. We don't even know each other, Murphy." Still I couldn't stop grinning like a fool and he bent down and caught me in another kiss. I shivered at the feel of his lips on mine and pressed myself close to him again. His shoulders rippled underneath my hands and I wanted to feel his skin beneath my palms.

"I don't have to know you to know I like kissin' you. Or that every time Con and I take a step out the door we might die, so getting creative in here isn't a bad way to spend a morning." His tone was grave but the seriousness lifted easily at his next words. "Sides. I do know you. More than ya think I do."

I snickered a little at his bravado. "You know nothing about me." I didn't say it unkindly, and I think if he'd been another kind of man it would have hurt him but Murphy took it as a challenge, and I loved that.

"I know you still taste like whiskey. I know I scared you last night but you didn't let it get the best of you like it did Jules. And I know you like me." This last line had a smirk attached to it and I snickered again.

"You're quite confident about this."

He ducked his head and kissed me again and this time it was more playful rather than serious. His teeth nipped my lower lip and his hand dropped from my hair and fell onto my waist. "I've got a reason to be." His voice was husky and his hands began to become insistent. Everywhere he touched set me on fire and I desperately wanted to feel his hands on my bare skin. If he wanted to pour gasoline all over me and set me alight like a human torch that was fine by me. I'd never felt so alive as when he was touching me. My control slipped and I grabbed at him, pulling myself deep into his chest even as he closed the distance between our hips again. Now he was serious in his kiss, his teeth nicking in without meaning to as we proceeded to devour each other. I could hear myself panting now, my head was spinning wildly like I'd had two or three shots back to back. I gasped for air as he did the same and now he was pulling on the hem of my T-shirt. When his palms slipped beneath the fabric I trembled. My whole body quivered violently and I groaned into his mouth as the heat of his hands flushed over me. I barely noticed that my fingers were clawing at his shoulders and back until I heard him hiss. His mouth left mine in favor for kissing and nipping on my neck, placing very gentle bites and kisses on my skin. My head fell back as pleasure bloomed in every crevice of my body. When he picked me up and held me against the wall of the hall between the main room and the bathroom I barely noticed, except for the way his grip made me feel overwhelmed and ready to come apart at the seams.

"Murphy," I panted in his ear as I held onto his hair and then his shoulders.

"What?" he huffed. His lips were on my throat, his hips against mine and I dare say I could feel him getting hard. I loved the idea of him wanting me this much, but I had to try and hit the breaks. Maybe I couldn't stop the car from crashing, but maybe I could prevent the fire ball of an explosion at the end of it.

"Murphy, stop."

I felt him stiffen. He set me down on my feet looked down at me with a careful look in his eyes. "What? If you're worried about waking Jules or Con, trust me, that's not likely…" he trailed off when he saw me shake my head.

"It's not that." I paused and tried to get my voice to stop shaking. "I just…I don't do things like this."

He looked down at me again and his eyes were hard. "Why you trying to lie to me?"

The curl of my normal cynical sneer came back. "You're smarter than you look." I was surprised when he didn't take a step back away from me in anger, or even disgust. Instead he just stayed where he was, almost predatory, but he left me room to escape if I wanted to. Fine time for me to be unsure about one of the only things I'm really good at- running away.

"Murphy, I don't do things like this…anymore," I emphasized the last word. "There's things I've done I'm not proud of. Things if you knew about you'd…" I trailed off. How much could I say? How much was even safe to say? How much did I even know was the truth? I bit the rest of the words back and changed up the formula. "Plus…we won't…I mean how long are we even going to know each other?" I sighed quietly, trying to push the sadness away. I barely knew him and already I didn't want to think about never seeing him again at some near point in the future. He'd been one of the few strangers who'd ever been kind to me. Shown any sort of interest in me, and regardless of his motivations or where that interest came from, it still counted for something in my book. But I couldn't let that lonely ache in the twisted hole in my heart screw everything up. "I'm damaged ok? I'm sorry. I made this harder than it needed to be."

I pushed his chest so he stepped back and I slid out from under him. I expected him to accept my explanation and let me walk away, probably angry at my rejection and thus screwing up any chance I had for any sort of reconciliation, but just like since he'd shown up in my life, nothing was as easy as it was supposed to be. He grabbed my wrist and spun me back around to face him.

"Will, whatever happened to you…whatever you've done…I'm not a priest, aye? Not even a Saint, despite what South Boston might think. You don't have to confess your sins to me. But don't let the past fuck up the future." His grip on me was tight but not threatening. I could still get away if I wanted. And that was the huge fucking problem.

I didn't want to get away.

"Murphy, don't make this harder than it has to be." I could have kicked in my own head for being stupid enough to kiss him. I knew better. Of course I knew better. I was just a moron with hormones and had been seduced by the yearning look in his blue eyes. That look that said he was curious about me. Wanted to know something about me, about a girl with shadowed eyes and tattooed wrists. I couldn't get over how a man like him had any sort of interest in a lying street con like me. And I made the really stupid mistake of looking at him again and finding his gaze, and if I had any hope of getting away cleanly it vanished the moment our eyes met. Because it wasn't just a challenge there, it wasn't just a curiosity, it was something more. Something he wanted to tell me, and it was exactly what I wanted to hear.

"Time has a way of putting things in perspective. We don't know how long we have, so why don't you trust me and enjoy what we do have."

"Trust you…" I looked up at him and I swore I felt tears brimming at the edge of my eyes, but I held them back. "What exactly does that look like?"

He shrugged his shoulders a little. "You. Staying here. Not running every time someone besides Jules asks you what's going on."

I paused for a while just watching him. I couldn't riddle him out, but I wanted to try. But it was even more than that. There was a voice inside my head warning me that this might be my last chance to ever bond with someone who wasn't Jules. I felt a sense of foreboding deep in my veins, a warning that was digging its splinter all the way to the marrow of my bones, telling me that there was a reason these boys had showed up in my life, and a reason that Murphy's eyes could hold me hostage the way they did. I didn't know what that reason was, but I had a feeling that even if we crashed and burned, even if we melted down worse than fucking Chernobyl, I was never going to undo this riddle by running away. It didn't mean I wasn't scared though. Because the deeper I dug into him, the deeper he was going to dig into me, and that was a whole ball of very tangled worms that I wasn't wholly prepared to deal with yet. Still, I couldn't stop myself, but I could at least warn him.

"Seulement parce que si je le fais pas, je vais souhaiter que j'aurais." (only because if I don't I'll wish I would have.) I echoed Jules' words last night and approached him again. I laced my fingers with his and squeezed lightly. "Go slow, Murph. And handle with care."

As a man of few words, I didn't expect a long winded assurance, and in the end, he answered me in the best way he could have. He pulled me in tighter, enveloping me in his heat and I swore I stopped breathing again. He kissed me again, robbing me of all the breath I'd ever had in my life before he pulled back, leaving me aching and trembling all at once, and about to fall apart with curiosity when he leaned his lips into my ear.

"Ne pensez pas. Il suffit de respire." (Don't think. Just breathe.)