Still R.

Cars drove by noisily that evening, rumbling heavily over the streets. Not many people really noticed how loud automobiles really were, but that's because very few ever got the perspective that Dennis Farthing - better known as Denny - was getting.

His perspective was from a manhole on a busy street, and he had watched three cars come at his head and nearly decapitate him in the last five minutes. No one had any respect for pedestrians, but he wasn't so sure he counted as one at this point.

Every few seconds, Denny would look down the grubby ladder he was balancing perilously on and nervously finger a revolver in his pocket. He knew those great thugs were still after him, but whether they'd gone the right way or not wasn't something he was planning to stick around to find out – if only a goddamn car would stop and let him out.

Experimentally, he lifted the cover of the man hole again, only to have it suddenly bashed off of his hand and plastered into the front of a honking station wagon. He ducked back down, deciding that it was suddenly safer down there.

Two men, one by the name of Brent Hensley, the other as Chester Cleave, ran through the muck of the sewers, the cuffs of their dark trousers turning very interesting shades from the very interesting chemicals in the sewage. They were the sort of men that went by their last names, wore sunglasses in the dark, and often referred to themselves in third person.

Both of them worked for the Government, but felt no need to specify for what particular branch and both of them carried professional looking guns fitted with fancy gadgets that were supposed to help improve the grip and targeting – this was because they both had very bad aim.

Hensley and Cleave stopped somewhere along the sewer tunnels where, predictably, it forked out into three different pipes. Their suspect had gone through one of these, though which one, they were unsure. Through their dark sunglasses, they looked at one another, privately squinting through the shadows.

There was a moment of silence as the two considered this dilemma, and at the same time, Cleave walked to the left tube, while Hensley headed for the right, and both collided somewhere in the middle.

There was splashing and quite a lot of cursing before the two stood up again, adjusted their serious-looking ties, and decidedly walked into the centre pipe.

Another car screamed a high-pitched noise at Denny as he made another valiant effort to escape a manhole. As the car passed by over head, he stuck his hand out and gave the driver the middle finger.

"Well fuck you too!" he shouted, and quickly pulled his arm back as an eighteen-wheeler blared at him. Denny ducked under, staring up meekly as the enormous transport trundled along. If this kept up much longer, he knew he was fucked – and not proper fucked either, no such luck.

As fate and irony would have it, the transport hit a red light as it moved itself over top of the open sewer just as Hensley and Cleave were only a few metres away from the ladder.

If there was one thing a person would learn about Denny, it was that he was resourceful, something he'd learned some time ago. He took advantage of the truck's high undercarriage, grasped the iron bars beneath the storage, and pulled himself up and out.

Thunk Thunk. Thunk.

Again and again, the knife hit the chopping block as Soap progressed with a steady rhythm through the few vegetables he had managed to salvage. He was halfway through a cabbage before he stopped and let out a low, dull sigh.

It was a bit monotonous, he knew, but that's the way he'd wanted it. He wanted boredom, not excitement and adventure and exciting car chases and what not. He just wanted peace and quiet.

But he was also uncomfortably aware that Bacon had probably been right, he usually was. Being a chef didn't offer the complete solitude Soap desired – in fact, he'd been getting a lot of flak recently from certain customers he catered to. A majority of them were high class, and were becoming increasingly picky and specific about food preparations, and it offered stress that everyone knew Soap didn't need.

No one quite understood why Soap was so twitchy all of the time, but it wasn't pretty when it got out of hand. He'd had break-downs before, the worst of which he'd ended up sick for an entire week after drinking enough alcohol to kill a horse – the others had been surprised at the fact he hadn't died; up until then, they hadn't known how much alcohol he was able to retain and still stand.

He set down the knife he'd been using, and leaned back against the counter, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, eyes sealed shut. He didn't know what he was really doing anymore, or if he even wanted to do his job anymore, things had been getting a bit off-colour for him.

Then there was a creak, and a shuffling footstep – it was the sound of someone trying to be quiet. Soap listened carefully, being sure not to move.

Creak, shuffle, creak, shuffle.

Then there was an unnerving click, one that cause a chill to creep down Soap's spine – a revolver's cylinder spinning on its pin.

Soap moved so fast that his arm became a blur as a knife was hefted up in his hand and hurled with deadly accuracy in the direction of the perpetrator. Denny just barely managed to move as it struck point-first into the wall beside his head and wobbled a few times.

"Jesus Christ!" Denny shouted, managing to pull his eyes away from the knife and the hairs it had pinned to the wall.

From his spot at the counter, Soap squinted at the figure. It was wearing a former camelhair jacket and about three layers of dirt.

"Dennis?"

"No, it's Queen fuckin' Mary." Denny said. Soap continued to squint at him, but this squint showed signs of flipping the bird. "Look, I didn't mean to startle you,"

"Like hell you didn't, the way you came in, you sounded just like -"

"Alright, alright, sorry, don't say it. Jesus. Travis was right about you, Alex," Denny said, a grin evident somewhere under the mess as he approached the counter, tracking mud along behind him.

"Right about what?" Soap asked suspiciously.

"You really are a mess. I'd been told you'd gone a bit off after that lovely little incident, but I'd never have believed it." Denny said, the smile having faded a bit. The two considered one another for a long moment, and Denny was the first to look away. Soap crossed the room after a moment, locked the door, and pulled the knife out of the wall, inspecting how deep the cut was. "How've you been, Alex? I mean, a chef of all things,"

"Why are you here, Dennis?" Soap asked flatly, not bothering to look up from the knife as he walked back to the counter.

"To my knowledge, we were still on speaking terms last time we saw one another."

"That was years ago. Things are different now." Soap spoke in a voice of nonchalance, though the curiosity was evident, and he repeated himself, "Why are you here?"

Denny opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He repeated this motion several times before he could get any words out.

"Because I need your help," Denny said finally.

"You know I don't bilk anymore."

"Yeah, I know, it has nothing to do with that. This isn't a job I'm talking about."

"Then what -?"

"It's about Travis. He's in trouble right now, and it's because of me." Denny said hurriedly, not wanting Soap to interrupt before he finished.

"What kind of trouble are we talking about here?"

"Serious," Denny said meekly, looking down at his hands, "Charlie Marker serious."

"Charlie Marker? Oh fuck, Denny, you don't mean Charlie the Coffin." Soap said, staring down the other man.

The silence told Soap everything he didn't want to know, and he slammed his knife down into the counter. "How the fuck did you manage that? Charlie the Coffin is a mob boss, Denny, a mob boss. He's known to bury men alive, but not before torturing them half to insanity. He's one of the most elusive underworld figures that ever existed, and it's not like you'd try to pull a con on him, so how the fuck did you manage that, eh?"

When Denny continued to look down at his hands, horror dawned on Soap.

"I can't believe this. I can't believe you! You tried to pull a con on him. What made you think you would get away with it – no, don't answer that. I don't want to know. I'm just surprised you're still alive." Soap said, pacing back and forth, his hands fumbling together.

"Look, we screwed up, alright? We screwed up, and right now, as we speak, God knows what's happening to Travis."

"What? You don't mean that they've actually caught Travis, do you?" Soap asked, turning suddenly to look at Denny, chewing at one of his nails. He reached suddenly over the counter and grabbed Denny's collar, shaking him viciously. "Do you?!"

This question remained unanswered, however, when there was a knock at the door.

"Think he'll be alright?" Ed asked, sitting in the passenger seat of Tom's car as they drove away from the kitchen.

"I don't know." Tom said, "I mean, it is Soap, after all. You can never quite tell with him – but he's getting that vein popping out on his neck again, and every time that happens, you know he's due for quite a break down."

"'Quite a break down'? You've a talent for understatement all of a sudden, Tom. That vein is the size of Arabia. Any more, and his head is going to pop off." Bacon said in his usual blunt fashion.

There was a long pause between the three friends.

"Why Arabia?" Tom asked slowly, and Bacon peered at him through the back-view mirror.

"What do you mean 'why Arabia'? Why not?"

"Well, I know what you mean, but Arabia seemed like an odd comparison." Tom shrugged, then after a moment, "I left my hat at the kitchen."

"I'm sure Soap will take care of it." Ed said off-handedly.

"It's below freezing out, Ed," Tom said, "So I'd prefer to have my hat with me so I don't freeze my fucking ears off."

"So get a new hat."

"I like that hat, that was an expensive hat." Tom shot back, doing an illegal U-turn, causing the other two to grip their seats.

"There is something very wrong with you, Tom." Bacon said, and muttered under his breath, "'Why Arabia'?"

"Alright, look," Tom said, turning in his seat, "When you said - "

"Tom, eyes on the road!" Ed shouted as the car began to swerve, hit something, did a complete spin, and screeched to a stop half a street from the kitchen, smoking quietly as cars honked and roared on the street.

Author's Note: I have a single, solitary review. Please kill its lonely.

Thanks for the friendliness, Rayezin, you make a writer happy. No, there is no slashiness within the walls of this story, not to say I am against it, but I have some difficulty seeing any of the fellows in this story having any sort of relationship with one another outside of platonic.