Reno and Rude showed up the next day, Rude silent and brooding, Reno lively yet so deeply immersed in keeping the details of what he saw and heard that he was little better than Rude. The guard at the door greeted them curtly and let them enter and Scotch met up with them in the room he had shown them the day before.
"Doin' alright guys?" Scotch asked as he leaned against the doorway.
"Doin' fine yo. What we up to today?" Reno asked as he bounced lightly on one of the two beds in the room.
"Just making sure the girls don't get hurt by any of the crazies down at Honeybee Inn." Reno almost laughed, this man was calling someone else crazy.
"Sounds like a plan yo." Reno got up and stretched his arms behind his head.
Scotch turned towards Rude, "Don wants me to thank you for him. We got Crowlman last night, we'd been searching Sectors two and three thinking he wouldn't be stupid enough to be this close to us but, turns out he was that stupid."
Rude nodded in reply but inside he was almost frantic with glee. Crowlman was gone!
Scotch led them to the weapons room which he dubbed 'Curly's place' and threw each of them a gun and a box of bullets. "Just in case." He said with a manic glimmer to his eyes.
Their first shift at Honeybee Inn was fairly uneventful. Rude's presence was enough to quiet down any rabble-rousers and Reno could out talk any man who dared try and go in without showing a membership card. They fortunately didn't have any of the 'crazies' Scotch described try and go in but, much to Rude's amusement and Reno's embarrassment, some of the men took quite a liking to Reno in their varying drunken stupors and Reno spent half the night trying to fend off men more interested in him than they were in getting in.
After their shift was done Scotch took them back to the mansion where they met up with a small group of Corneo's men. They then headed straight for the nearest bar and prepared to initiate the two new guys.
Rude remained fairly sober as he watched Reno down shot after shot to try and keep up with Corneo's thugs. Reno kept it up until even some of Corneo's men were in awe and even managed to continue tipping back drinks for the rest of the night. Rude wasn't exactly surprised at Reno's ability to hold his liquor and he held his own as the men pressed drinks on him, he was determined to stay merely buzzed so that he could remember most of the nights events.
Reno took everything they had to throw at him. He participated in every drinking game imaginable and even won a few of them. He had several women and even men buying him drinks the whole night in half-hearted attempts to get in his pants but Reno kept enough sense about himself to keep most of the people advancing on him away from that particular area. Most of them, Rude laughed as more than a few women managed to get more than a little indecent on Reno's lap and even some men tried their hands at undressing the red-head. Rude himself had a few offers thrown his way for one-night stands but he dismissed the advances with curt 'no's' and disinterested grunts. He wasn't interested in casual sex, well, he was interested but he wasn't going to do anything about it, he had his reputation to think of.
When he woke up the next morning Reno wasn't exactly sure what had happened the night before. He remembered brief flashes of tipping back beer, a girl or two sitting on his lap trying to get his drunk as hell body interested, and he also vaguely remembered a guy named Mukki trying very hard to get in his pants. He also remembered why he usually kept his drinking binges to a minimum. His head was pounding and his tongue felt faintly furry as he sat up with a groan, placing his face in his hands. The pain hit him immediately and he yelped loudly at the sudden sensation shooting through his brain. He tenderly felt his cheeks and was convinced that he had been punched out which, along with the copious amounts of beer, would explain the severity of his current hangover. He got up and walked past a sleeping Rude to look in the gaudy mirror hanging in the equally distasteful room at Corneo's that he had somehow managed to stumble into after his night of heavy drinking. He almost screamed at what he saw. Across his cheek-bones were two vivid red tattoos that matched his hair color exactly. He walked over to Rude and gave his shoulder a shake as he tried to subdue his panic.
"Fwhag?" Rude was barely coherent as Reno tried to make his thick tongue form words.
"What happened last night yo?" His voice was panicked but he didn't bother trying to hide it.
Rude sat up, holding his head. "You drank everyone under the table, had every female in that bar between the ages of sixteen and forty flirting with you shamelessly and got dragged to the tattoo parlor by Scotch and Abner and a couple of other guys I can't remember." Rude looked up, "I'm guessing those are tattoos?"
"What the fuck do you think they are shit-head? Birthmarks?" Reno grabbed his pounding head as he forced his eyes to focus on the large swooping marks just below his eyes. "Where the fuck where you?"
"I was behind you in everything." Rude rubbed his eyes as his head began to clear slightly, "I was behind you in number of beers drank, girls wooed, and poor decisions made."
"Fuck Fay's gonna kill me!" Reno collapsed on his bed with a groan.
"Don't say my mom's name and fuck in the same sentence Reno." Rude got up and started to dress.
"Sorry." Reno followed suit as best he could but it seemed he had lost his socks during their outing along with his shirt. It took him a moment to locate the bag of clothes he had brought with him and even longer for his clumsy fingers to figure out how buttons and buckles worked.
"What the hell is in my ears?" Rude nearly yelled as he clutched at the appendages in question.
"Holy fuck! Boss piercings yo!" Reno examined Rude's now heavily decorated ears with a look of triumph, "Just how behind me in poor decisions were you?"
"Not very far behind." Rude grinned and jabbed at Reno's left ear, "You got one too!"
Reno felt his ear and, sure enough, a small hoop was dangling from it. "Holy shit! Your mom is going to have a hissy fit when she sees us yo!" Reno tugged at the hoop and winced in slight pain, the wince causing him more discomfort as his slightly inflamed and swollen cheeks moved. "Remind me not to move my face today."
"Remind me never to go drinking with you again." Rude felt up his ears with a look of extreme distaste etched onto his face.
They left the mansion and made their way home dragging their feet knowing that once she saw them Fay was going to be one hundred percent pissed.
It wasn't as bad as Reno thought it would be. Fay had opened the door and let them inside before staring in shock and horror at their appearances. She didn't seem able to speak for awhile as Reno and Rude both shifted guiltily where they stood.
When she had collected herself she simply asked, "What were you thinking?"
"We weren't. To tanked to really form any good thoughts Fay." Reno fixed his eyes on his shoes.
"Obviously! I didn't want you boys in this business at all in the first place and now you come home looking like this after your first night of work? You boys are in so much trouble! If you were still small enough to bend over my knee you wouldn't be able to sit for a week! As it is, I have few options left to me in the punishment department so for now, go to your room and think about what you've done until I can think of something truly fitting your disgraceful behavior!" Fay pointed them to their room with a shaking finger and they both obeyed without question. They might be well on their way to becoming dangerous thugs but when Fay issued a command they didn't dare refuse.
"I like your piercings Rude." Reno said quietly as they both laid back and stared at the ceiling.
"Your tattoos are actually pretty cool. You can hide your wimpy little piercing pretty easy though if you want." Rude smirked as Reno sat bolt upright in his bed.
"It's not wimpy! It's awesome yo! Your ears may resemble pincushions yo but my piercing is tasteful." Reno playfully sneered the last word, hoping to incite Rude.
Rude simply laid on the bed and smiled, "Tasteful my ass Reno. At least now you'll have some kind of intimidation factor with those tattoos. The piercing is going to make you even harder to believe when you tell those freaks at the Inn you're a guy."
"Shut up asshole! It's not my fault they're leeches with hormonal issues!" Reno threw his pillow at Rude.
Rude laughed as the pillow landed on his face. "Mature Reno, mature." He placed the pillow under his head and Reno snatched it back from him.
"That's mine yo! Keep your head off it!" Reno stroked the pillow as if to remove germs before placing it gingerly on the bed.
"You shouldn't throw it at me then." Rude sat up and stuck his tongue out at Reno.
"Since when do you stick your tongue out at people?" Reno was amazed, he had never seen Rude do anything so immature in his life.
"I guess your childishness is rubbing off on me." Rude chuckled.