A very special re-welcome to jamiekwilliams9 (FF won't let me use the dots in your username, or it messes up your format);I had a problem with a story-eating troll who can't seem to differentiate between the word "similarity" and the word "plagiarism." My sincere apologies for losing your folllow and favorite, and I'm SO glad to see you back on board!

Also, a double-super-top-secret THANK YOU to the talented, bold, and peerless nattiebroskette, whose opus "Shielded" is absolutely the reason you're seeing a Randy/Meg hookup. Without her, the arc in the past three chapters wouldn't have been possible. My bestie, my muse, my virtual-drinking-buddy: With you, all things text are possible, including ways to say the (p-word) that aren't, y'know, actually saying it. Because I'm bashful.

Down the hall, Randy turned off the shower and stepped out, wrapping himself in a towel and heading for the kitchen. He rummaged through the fridge just long enough to make a mental note to take Meg to help him grocery shop, and grabbed two bottles of water before moving to the den. 'I don't hear them arguing; that's got to be a good sign.' Meg, looking exhausted but pleased, stood as he entered the room.

"I'll let you two...work it out. Turn the heat on in here? I'm freezing." She squeezed Randy's arm and slipped past him before he could do much more than turn toward her, but the smile she threw over her shoulder was reassuring. He watched her sway down the hall, and waited until he heard the door of the bedroom click shut before he squared his shoulders and faced Dave, tossing him a bottle of water and uncapping his own.

"Go ahead."

"Go ahead what?"

Randy opened the water, looked into it as though looking for an answer, and then continued. "I'm an asshole, I'm taking advantage of her, I could hurt myself doing-"

"You're a professional asshole, and you might be taking advantage of her, but it looked pretty much like she was doing all the work. I don't think you're gonna throw your back out. "

Randy's bottle of water fell from his fingers, bouncing open across the carpet, and Dave reached for it before more could spill, not bothering to suppress the grin on his face.

"Well, if you're going to be dumb enough to make the setup, I'm going to make the comment. Plus, I'll take the chance that you won't hit me in front of her. You gonna drink this, or am I gonna hold it for you all day?"

Slowly, Randy reached for what was left of his water, unable to wipe the shocked look off his face.

"Oh, stop." Dave tossed his ice onto the couch and ran his hand over his face. "Look...I really thought about it, especially after Meg tore me a whole series of new assholes. You two have always had some sort of fucked up thing together, and no matter what, it stays together. Friendship, war, near-death experiences, tactical maneuvering, whatever you wanna call it. It's always been right on the edge. You said it changed for you, and guess what? At some point it changed for Meg, too. Only it's Meg, so she was too dumb, or too stubborn, or both, to see it or admit it."

"Okay...but I still didn't say anything to her. That's the one thing I did listen to you about."

Dave plowed ahead, as though he didn't hear Randy speak. "Jackson was a familiar waste of space. She didn't have to think too hard. Joe was Meg's...way of trying to figure you out, maybe? I don't know, I still don't understand that one."

Randy still looked completely confused, but felt a bit less like Dave would poison him the next time they ended up alone together in triage. Dave shook his head. "And I'm the one who walked into a door. Look, dumbass. She's always known you fit into her life. I just don't think she knew what to call it, or what to do with it, because she's never had it before. Which is probably why she put up with so much shit from those other two."

"So...you're not going to kill me?"

"If she ends up having a breakdown and, I don't know, running off to Idaho to become a potato farmer because you fuck with her head, then yes. I'm going to kill you. I can't keep dealing with you two. You're going to give me a stroke. Or a concussion." Dave reached for the ice, pressing it to his face and then abruptly turning his back to the hallway. "And for fuck's sake, will you find her a longer shirt? Or her underwear?"

Meg materialized, her clothing in hand. "Dave, I'm not putting on the same underwear two days in a row. Speaking of which, Ran, can I throw my stuff in the wash? I can't drive home in just a t-shirt." She watched his shoulders fall. 'Guess he was expecting me to...stay?'

"Oh. Yeah, uh...laundry room is back that way." Randy's eyes were lifeless, and Dave winced to see them flatten.

Meg trotted to the couch, tossing her clothing on the floor and kneeling in front of Randy. "Hey. C'mon. I've got Sarah's car; at a minimum I've got to get it back to her. Plus, I don't have any clothing here, I kinda have a job I've got to make arrangements around...Ran, look at me." He shifted his eyes by millimeters, but was looking more through Meg than at her. She arched an eyebrow at Dave, who made a lopsided shift off the couch, muttering something about looking for more ice in the kitchen. 'At least he can take a hint.' She waited til he was distantly gone and banging things around far more loudly than was necessary before she continued.

"Randy. Be reasonable. I have no clothing, a car that isn't mine, and no more days off that I know of. And...kinda no idea what we're doing, other than making it up as we go along. Right now, it's okay. You're still home on rehab, I'm not going anywhere-"

"Promise me." His look could have cut glass; his eyes were frozen on her.

"- I'm – what?"

"Promise me you won't go anywhere. I want to hear you say it."

"I'm not going to leave, Ran. I'm staying. This is home. I promise. Doesn't negate the fact that I've gotta pay rent and do laundry, though." She smiled and leaned in, kissing him gently. "Have I ever left you? I mean, really left you? I'm practically invincible."

Smiling through the kiss, Randy acquiesced. "Fine. For now, anyway. But what happens when-"

"We talk about 'when' when it happens." Feeling him press against her, Meg started to rise from between his knees. "In the meantime, since we have company, you're going to find some pants and behave yourself."

"Not possible unless you find some pants."

"Not possible til I do laundry."

"We just have all kinds of problems, don't we?" Randy laughed and swatted at her as she gathered her laundry and headed in the general direction of his washer and dryer. Dave poked his head out from around the fridge door as she passed.

"Safe out there? Because in here...the fridge is terrifying."

"I think he'll live. It'd help if you talked to him, though. He's...sorting shit out."

"And you?"

Meg snorted. "Fuck. We both know I'm never gonna be right. Car accident took care of that, didn't it?" She breezed past Dave, set her laundry, and joined the two in the den, where ESPN ruled the afternoon. Once programming cut to a commercial, she decided to help Randy into a pair of track pants, with even Dave agreeing that he shouldn't be in just a towel or bending quite that far to dress himself – but warning them both that the idea was to get in to the pants, and not out.

Once the washer and dryer had cycled, Meg declared herself sufficiently put-together for the drive back to her apartment. Dave and Randy wouldn't let her go until they were convinced she'd call them once she got home, and Dave waited at the steps while Randy walked Meg to her car, whispering something to her that made her eyes widen and her hand fly to her mouth to cover a smile before she got in.

Surprisingly, Meg let him open the door for her, and their kiss before she left was almost chaste. Dave had to admit, he was shocked at the level of restraint they showed. 'That was actually appropriate. I never thought I'd use that word in relation to those two.' Both he and Randy watched as she pulled off, Randy waiting a bit longer on the porch than was necessary, the taillights of Meg's car long since having disappeared before he came back into the house.

"I know she's gonna come back, but fuck...I really didn't want her to leave." Well past dejected and firmly into morose, Randy threw himself down into the sofa hard enough to draw a grimace onto his face.

"Well, that was smart. Whatever she did to fix your back, you just completely fucked it."

"Shut up, Dave." Randy had to grit out the words; he'd landed much harder than he meant to. He was still for a moment, then chuckled. Slowly, the chuckle turned into a laugh, then became positively uproarious. "Oh, shit, Dave...Do you think she'd buy it if I called her right now and told her I needed her to come back because I slipped another disc?"

"She'd have a panic attack trying to get back here." Dave shook his head. "Besides, I think you gave her enough to think about for the night. You, too. Any beer in that empty cave you call a fridge? Because I was going to see about pizza, since I know you're not even going to consider eating something easy on your stomach..."

"You're my babysitter for the night?"

"Looking that way, unless you'd rather be your own company."

"Throw me the house phone. I can send my neighbor's kid out. He's back from college and can grab my usual. Number's on the fridge, green paper."

Thirty minutes later, Randy was passing a gangly, bored-looking twenty-something a palmful of bills in exchange for pizza boxes and several paper bags. Kicking the door shut, he passed most everything to Dave, shuffled to the kitchen for mismatched plates and glasses, and returned to the den.

"If that's tequila in those bags, I'm going to punch you."

"Doubtful. I'd hit you back harder. Besides, you need me to open the beer. Can't find the bottle opener." Randy eased back onto the sofa, dragging his legs slowly up over the edge of the cushions. His lower back was on fire, and he dearly wished Meg was there to work everything back into place.

"I don't know how you find anything in that shitpile. Or how you cook. You better keep Meg around; if nothing else, she can organize it, stock your fridge, and make sure you don't get botulism."

Randy cracked the bottle of tequila and smiled distantly, deciding he could drink before he ate. "Yeah. Sam fucked it all up when she left, and I never fixed it. Just didn't care, I guess. Meg is gonna do a better job, anyway – Sam couldn't cook, ordered out for everything, didn't even try...I've gotta work on that whole car thing with Meg, too. She can't keep borrowing Sarah's. Really, she should just stay here."

Dave dropped his pizza slice onto the lid of the box, tried futilely to get the cap off his bottle of beer, and passed it to Randy, who snickered and opened it as easily as flipping a lightswitch before passing it back. Dave couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"Stop trying to make her stay here." He drank heavily after saying it, knowing that looking down into his beer bottle was going to be better than meeting Randy's glare. "Please?"

"Come again? You just told me to keep her around. Now I'm not supposed to keep her around?" The ire in his voice jumped up several levels with each word.

"Calm down, kid. Hear me out, okay? You act like you forgot everything I said earlier. She came home, right? She said this is home. That doesn't mean you need to go overboard, either. You try to tie her down, and what do you already know is gonna happen?"

"Run. She's gonna run." Sulkily, Randy drank again. Dave shoved a box of pizza at him, and reluctantly, Randy opened it and took a slice. "I feel like I screwed up, then. I got all shitty when she said she had to go."

"If you make a habit out of it, yeah. Randy...she spent all that time digging you out from under Sam, then she put herself under Jackson...she's not gonna dig you out from under her, on top of it all. You need to be there for her, because she doesn't know where she is, yet. Are you hearing the difference?"

"She knows I don't care about what's in those reports. She knows I want her here. She knows I...care about her. I know she doesn't need to hear the rest right now, but I think she...I think she knows, anyway."

'Aaaand I'm just gonna leave out the little detail about me and Joe telling her you're in love, because you'd lose your shit.' "Randy, to a point, you can say you don't care about those reports. You have to care about what's in those reports, because it changed her. Whatever's in there."

"Honestly? I couldn't read all of it. Some of it...was like the hospital hurt her worse than Jackson did. What Jackson did to her made me sick. You've seen me dislocate my shoulders, open up gashes that were how many inches long, crush discs, all kinds of shit, and never even blink, but...what she went through..." Randy tilted the bottle of tequila from one side to the other, watching the liquid slosh back and forth. "Some of it made me throw up. Cold sweats, throw up. Meg's tough as shit, I know she's strong – you've seen her haul all of us around backstage, and we're huge compared to her – but everything he did, before the wreck...I am never going to understand why she went down there...to him, for that."

"But?"

"But I understand why she ended up playing turkey timer with his leg. Fuck, I wish she could have done more. I wish-" He stopped short, trying to pull his mind back from the flinty, brittle place it was playing in.

"I'm gonna regret asking this, but..." Dave swallowed, hard, and sent up a silent prayer that his pizza would stay down. "What's the short and dirty on what happened to her?"

Randy winced. "Dave, you really don't-"

"No, I don't. But I'm gonna fuck up and say or do the wrong thing at some point if I don't know."

"Before...before or after the accident?"

"Before. After a car accident like that...I worked emergency response for a while, I can guess."

"The best the hospital could guess was that he'd been beating on her for a couple of months. The pictures...she was all yellow, purple, green...her skin was all just bruises. Fingers, hands. Grip. You could see his shoes on her back, in some of them. I remember one looked like a belt buckle. Nothing on her face, though, it was all shit she could cover. Her wrists were all cut up. Not like she did it to herself, but like she was tied up somehow. Ankles, too. Some stuff looked like he was bored and just slicing on her. The reports – and get this, the one thing he pussied out on, after all that – said there were implied burns. They couldn't be sure."

Dave looked queasy. Randy just shrugged. "You asked, don't be a fuckin' princess now. Remy said some of the broken bones were...fuck, what did he call them? It's this tequila. Hard edge impacts, I think? That asswipe was throwing her into things or hitting her with things, I don't know. As many screws as she had in her ribs, he was probably throwing her over things to fuck her. Anything he could have done to her, he did to her, far as that goes. It wasn't like he was asking her for permission or what she liked in bed...but...I don't wanna talk about her like that. Fuck knows she doesn't talk about it. After her head went through the car window, maybe she doesn't even remember any of it. The side airbag failed, go figure. She should be dead; the car should've ground her right across the pavement."

"I get it, now."

It was Randy's turn to blink and be still. "Get...what?"

"Why you...all of it. Why you get afraid, whether or not you like that word." Dave tried to organize his thoughts into something that sounded coherent without being overbearing. "She's still gonna take a slow roll, Randy. Real slow roll."

"Don't be doing that shit, Dave. Don't even. I admit I started it, because I was grabbing at her shirt, but I stopped, too. I stopped because it was more important for me to talk to her than to strip her. She kissed me." Randy shook his head, hard. "I need to not say shit like that. Like...she kissed me, but we did...that. Not like that's her fault, or she did something wrong. I mean...I went with it, but it wasn't like I was directing it. She...this is so weird, telling you this...the thing I wanted her to do was what she wanted to do. Let her tell me-"

Dave flicked one of his beer caps at Randy to get him to stop, smacking it off the side of his face, earning a sour look in response. "You and Meg had a relationship from the start. Friendship counts, and you two have always had...more than that, no matter how you look at it. Yeah, it was platonic, but if two people could ever figure out a way to be emotionally fucking each other, you guys did it. On the one hand, she just got in to bed with someone she's been with for a long time. And on the other hand, she just got in to bed with someone she kissed a red-hot minute after she pretty well murdered her long-term boyfriend and her short-term fuckbuddy didn't want to take her back. Even you, mister ring rat quick-dick hookup, can see how that's got to be a mess in her head."

"Part of me wants to hurt you, Dave, but I can't move that far. I hate the fact you're right about shit, but fucking hell, did you have to say it like that? That...hurts. I know I did some low shit. Meg watched me do some low shit. Why do you think I'm so fucking terrified she's gonna just leave?"

"Randy, you don't listen to shit that isn't balls-out like that." Dave rolled his eyes. "Why have you always listened to Meg? She gives you a choice when it won't make the situation worse, and the rest of the time, it just is how it is. Things just are. And thank you, by the way. For finally saying it. But give Meg more credit. No matter how awful you think you were, she still said she came home to you."

Randy chewed his next slice thoughtfully, his tequila forgotten for the moment. 'Meg just needs to come back. I know why she wants her own space, but...this is a craving. Dave's right. I've had her forever, but now I can really have her. So I want her. Need her. I'm afraid she won't need me. I'm afraid Joe's gonna show up and fuck it all.'

"What I don't get is why she didn't-"

"She went down there so he didn't come up here. So we didn't have to watch, basically." Dave passed a second bottle to Randy, who opened it on auto-pilot and passed it back. "And, so you didn't get your hands dirty."

Randy's head snapped over to Dave. "Uh, 'scuse me?"

"She loved Joe, or she thought she did, whichever. But when it gets right down to it...whose room did she always fall asleep in when he wasn't around? Who bought her coffee the morning she found out she wasn't losing her job? And for that matter, who was happier that morning, you or Joe? Because I'm pretty sure Joe just sat there, and you were the one who hugged her. I saw you, Randy. There was never a time when you weren't focused on her, and not just for what you'd get out of it."

"What does all this have to do with now?"

"Everything. You're still angry at Jackson, and you can't do shit about it because there's nobody to do anything to. You can't fix Meg, and you can't protect her from what's not there. Whether or not you like it, he's in her head, and probably permanently to some degree. You're angry at Joe, and you absolutely cannot pull any more shit like what you just did, because you completely fucked up her headspace – and depending on what kind of an asshole he's feeling like at the moment, it's gonna impact your job."

"Right, and like it was so easy for me to watch her walk away."

It was Dave's turn to sound dangerous, in that he was tired of the damage jealousy seemed to cause Randy to inflict on everyone around him. "You need to sit down and talk with her about Joe, and get all that out in the open. Beyond it, I'm only gonna say this once, because it shouldn't take more than that for you to understand it – and to understand that you need to stop harping on it. Meg doesn't want him back. She left with him that night because she was scared and she was trying to bail you out. If you killed him, you were only kinda gonna be in some deep shit. Meg was gonna do what she had to, like always, to save your ass. Just like with Sam, just like with your shoulders, your back, with the company and Jackson...are you seeing a theme?"

Randy sighed, stretched, drank far more of the tequila in one pull than he should have, and sighed again. "I...yeah. With Meg, everyone else comes first."

Dave cringed, given Randy's choices of words, but knew it had to be brought up. "This is the world's most awkward segue, but I have to ask. You two...earlier...please tell me one of you was thinking ahead and grabbed a condom, or Meg's on the pill, or...anything?"

Randy just shrugged. "No, and not that I know of. Why?" 'Oh well. I'm clean, her hospital reports said she – thank God – was clean, and would it be the worst thing in the world if I had another kid? And did I really just have the world's calmest reaction to that question?'

"Jesus Christ, Randy, are you kidding me?" Dave was incredulous. "I'm not even thinking in terms of disease, because I know you're both probably fine, but in terms of kids, Randy...just...Randy. Oh my God. What this would do to Meg..." He dropped his head in his hands.

"What? You're acting like it's the end of the world. Statistically..."

"Oh, shut the fuck up about statistics." Dave flicked another beer cap, this one hitting much closer to Randy's eye. "Picture, for just a minute, Meg feeling obligated to go to a doctor once a month or more to throw her legs in the air and be prodded at. Until, of course, she's actually birthing a baby, in which case it's a never-ending parade of doctors, nurses, techs, and God forbid there's a c-section, because-"

"Okay! Okay. I get it." Randy drank, again. 'Oh, I fucked up. I fucked up, so bad. And I can't fix it now, and even if I could it's gonna sound like I'm saying she's dirty or there's something I don't want, or...Jesus Christ, this is all just so fucked up.'"And...if it happens, I'll figure something out. We, me, Meg, we'll figure something out. Women have kids without hospitals all the time. Don't they?"

Dave shook his head. "Of course you have an answer. How about you have a conversation with her, too?"

"Oh, sure. How about 'Hey, Meg, I know the sex was great, but in the interest of not getting you knocked up, either you need a no-baby-tic-tac or I have to wrap it up. Whatever you think is less gross, your pick.' Dave, you know she's got to go to a doctor to get a script for the pill. That's an exam right there. She's not gonna go for that after all that shit in the hospital."

"I can't believe I'm about to say this, but if I can find someone who will just write it for her, no questions asked, and I get you the name, then will you have the conversation with her?"

"Yeah, but in the meantime?" Randy looked lost; it sounded for all the world like Dave had just volunteered to help him get laid.

"In the meantime, the next time you two are feeling like being caught in flagrante delicto, you need to be prepared, Boy Scout. Or find something else to do, or some other way to deal with it. I don't know. Shit, I don't even want to know, just handle it."

Randy tilted his tequila at Dave, who clinked the neck of his beer bottle against it, before both men laughed heartily at the absurd turn their conversation had taken. Both of them cared deeply for Meg, and for brief moments, both were seeing thin rays of sunlight across her sky. They fell asleep in their respective spots on the overstuffed furniture, both feeling more hopeful about the future than they had in a while, and only one of the two of them answering their phone when it rang.