A/N: And here comes the slash! You've been warned. Thank you for reading and ConCrit is always welcome/very encouraged UuU
They return to the present in a flash, Droog's vision blank and white as the whiplash makes him nearly pass out. Clover stands behind him, cowering, the crowbar still held in his grubby little fingers. They're outside of the vault, barely a few feet from where Droog had pried the safe door open.
Slick is limp in his arms.
"Boss!" Boxcars's booming voice interrupts the few moments of silence, both he and Deuce rushing over when they notice the blood and, more importantly, Slick's missing limb. "What the hell happened? You two were gone for barely a few seconds."
"More like ten minutes for us. Found him like this at some sort of… command station in the vault."
"Sorta like the one's we found before? With those horned kids?"
"Yes. Deuce," Droog turns his gaze to the shortest crew member, who's attempted to wrangle up Clover again, "leave him alone."
"But—"
"Just leave him be. I'll explain later." Droog turns his attention back to Slick, just now noticing that he's gone still. His mouth is sort of slack, eyes half-lidded and looking off at nothing in particular. "Hey. Hey!"
"Calm the fuck down," Slick wheezes out, lifting his left arm and touching Droog's torso in some sort of attempt at slapping him. "I'm awake."
He sets his mouth into a thin line and nods stiffly. "Okay." He turns to Boxcars. "Can you carry him?"
"Fuck no, I am not going to be his goddamn damzel in distress." Slick groans as he sits up, Droog obliging with a little push on his back. "I'll walk."
Droog's brow creases. "But sir—"
"I'll. Walk." He gives him a commanding look with his good eye. This is an order. He's being stubborn about it, refusing to look like some weakling that can't walk on his own two feet around the crew, blood or no blood. Or maybe it's a plee. Don't let them see me like you saw me back in the vault. Please. I'm stronger than that.
Droog sighs. "Fine. But I'm helping."
"Fine."
Slick, very slowly, rises to his feet, Droog's hand beneath his arm as he struggles to stay upright. Both Deuce and Boxcars hover around them, completely oblivious to Clover as he chuckles and finally slips out of the room.
Their leader wobbles as he takes a step, sort of like a child learning how to walk. Whatever tough guy act he was trying to pull is lost with that one action. He realizes it too, slumping over and forcing Droog to carry all of his weight. I give up. I give up.
"Okay, come on," Droog grunts as he slings Slick's arm over his shoulders again.
"You gonna be okay, boss?" Deuce's little voice squeeks with worry. He's staring at the sleeve crudely wrapped around his stump of an arm, already soaked in blood.
"Yeah, yeah, just get me out of here."
They put him in the hospital under a fake name. Not for any set amount of time. In fact, he can leave whenever he wants. They would avoid it altogether if that was possible, but it isn't. Slick needs blood, and unfortunately they don't have any lying around.
The Crew visits him now and then, seperately. Deuce brings him little hand-drawn get well cards, which Slick promptly rips apart with his teeth. Deuce is okay with it. He thinks that's his boss's way of saying he likes it. Boxcars doesn't bring anything, but takes on the full brunt of Spades's yelling and grumbling and complaining.
Droog? The two times he visits, Slick is asleep, oddly enough. The first time he stays for a few hours. The second he gives up after one. There's only so much patience he has to sit there, watching over his leader with nothing to do except listen to the monotonous beep of the heart monitor. So he places the backup hat full of Scotty Dogs that he brought for Slick on his side table and leaves.
Deuce brings both back empty.
It's the middle of the fourth night when Droog wakes to the sound of music drifting from outside his room. At first he thinks he's dreaming. It isn't unusual for him to dream of music. But it's crude, like a children's song. It grates on his ears. He grumbles and stands, throwing on a white collared shirt. He attempts to button it up but puts the top button in the wrong hole, making the shirt lopsided. He doesn't notice, or doesn't care. He's too distracted by the simple music echoing through their hideout.
The mobster tiptoes out of his room, thinking maybe the record player's hand had slipped. But as he peaks into the hideout's main room, he knows that he's wrong.
Slick's door is open.
Intrigued, Droog approaches his leader's room, pushing the door ever so slightly to look inside.
And there's Slick, sitting at his piano in the dark, slouched over as his left hand drifts across the low octave keys of the ebony instrument. When he brings his hand down it's only his index finger that plays a note. And slowly he does this, until eventually Droog recognizes the basic tune of a lullaby.
A lullaby that was once accompanied by chords and harmonies played like a masterpiece with Slick's surprisingly artistic fingertips, reduced to the simplest form. Weak. Empty.
Droog hates it. He's adjusted to Slick being angry and frustrated, and even on the rare occasion, silly. But not this. Not sad. Not lost. It's so very not Slick and he hates it.
Slick's finger slips up on the last note, making him swear under his breath and mash his fist against the ivory keys. The cacophony of noise that erupts forces a gasp out of Droog. And then he knows. Even the sway of Slick's empty right sleeve seems to freeze with him.
The silence is deafening.
"What do you want?"
Droog exhales, not realizing he was holding his breath. Slick doesn't even turn. He just sits. Waits. But for the life of him, Droog has no idea what to say.
"You just gonna stand there? Come on, out with it." His voice sounds slurred and somewhat forced. Droog walks into the room, eying him. Slowly he notices that Slick is rocking back and forth a little, trying to keep himself upright. Even in the darkness, he can see that the man's eyes are half-lidded. The meds, most likely. He must have just walked in.
"I… heard music. I didn't think you'd be back yet, sir." He pauses, looking at him sternly. "Why did you walk back here so late?"
And Slick laughs—an ironic, humourless laugh that stabs Droog right in the goddamn heart. "The better question is, why the fuck did I come back at all?"
"… You don't mean that."
"Yeah? I don't?" The shorter's eyes seem to ignite. He lifts what's left of his right arm, but with the jacket covering it, it looks more like a shrug. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with this, huh? Nudge the bitch to death!"
"Slick, you—"
"Don't Slick me. I know I have another arm. But come on. Do I look at all intimidating to you? No arm, no eye? Half-broken?"
Broken. No, Spades. You look like a man who's been through plently more than anyone will in two lifetimes and live to kill another day. And that's intimidating. But he can't say that, because Slick's still on a tangent.
"Who's going to be scared when they're told the leader of the Midnight Crew is some one-armed, one-eyed midgit? Who's going to run screaming from a guy like me?"
They'll underestimate you.
"Who the fuck is going to look up to a leader who can't even play a fucking kiddy song on this fucking piece of shit?" he slams his fist against the piano keys.
Me.
But maybe not. Because with every word he's hating this Slick more and more. This broken, whining Slick. Self-loathing. Melodramatic. This isn't the man he knows.
"So tell me, why did I come back? Why did I bother?"
Droog slaps him.
They stay like that for what feels like minutes, all of the things Droog wants to say bottled up in that one hit. Because it's your job. Because you chose this. Because you're stronger than that. Because you have a crew that would miss you, goddamnit.
Hundreds of emotions cross Slick's face, starting with the obvious why the fuck would he do that and ending with why the fuck did I say that. He slumps on the piano bench, bringing his hand up to rub at his temples and the place where Droog had slapped him. There's still that frustration and pent-up anger from what he's going through, but the self-loathing is gone.
The air is stagnant, neither knowing exactly how to break the silence.
Tick. Tock.
Droog finally fills it with a sigh. "Do you want to…" he trails off, not needing to voice the rest. Slick will understand.
"No," he replies, standing abruptly as he says it. He tips forward, and Droog readies his arms to catch him, but he manages to steady himself. "I'm going for a walk." He pushes passed the taller crew member.
"Spades—"
"Shut up."
Droog watches him leave the room, not moving as he hears Slick clumsily climbing up the ladder and out onto the street. The hideout is quiet. Slick's keyboard smashing didn't wake the two other members, it seems. He sits on the edge of the piano bench rather than returning to his room. He takes a cigaratte out of his shirt's pocket. Lights it up. Puts it in his mouth.
And he waits.
Five cigarettes and half an hour more later, Slick still isn't back. This wouldn't concern Droog any other time, but right now, he himself is getting drowsy, it's the middle of the night, and Slick is stumbling around, high on medication and likely to show the next person he sees his stabs.
Probably time to go fetch the poor bastard.
He exhales long and harsh before standing and tossing the butt of his smoke into the garbage in the corner of Slick's room. He won't be too happy with the smell, but it's not like their entire hideout isn't permeated with it anyway. He'll get over it. Hell, if anything, he'll be mad at Droog instead of himself.
He returns to his room momentarily to put on a proper pair of pants, then climbs up the ladder.
"Slick?" he calls out, hoping the man is close enough to hear it and return. Fat chance. Even if he could, he'd probably just turn the other way.
The streets of Midnight City are cold and quiet and menacing, in that time of night when party-goers and trouble-makers have just gone to bed and working civilians are hitting the snooze button, hoping for those ten or twenty extra minutes of sleep. Half of the street lights are off, having lost sync with the others a long time ago, the light of the ones that still shine interrupted by the occasional flicker. A car chugs down the road, disappears around a corner. Silence once more.
A shadow darts into an alleyway.
Droog watches the alley's entrance, just yards from where he's standing, with a furrowed brow. "Slick…?" No answer.
Wary, Droog takes out the deck of cards in his pants pocket and pulls out the ace of diamonds. He wields the cue stick with one white-knuckled hand, relaxed but still somewhat prepared in case it's someone looking for a fight. Like Clover.
The crew member approaches the entrance, silent, steady. Even the slightest flinch of movement in the corner of his eye will set him off.
He's not quick enough.
A hand whips out of the alley just as he's about to turn the corner and grabs his collar, pulling him into the darkness. His cue stick clatters on the pavement, the assailant pinning him against the wall.
It's Slick.
"Slick, where did you—" but he can't finish, because the shorter pulls him down and slams their mouths together in a very violent kiss. And Droog, very calmly, gives in.
It's bloody, and vicious, and there's absolutely nothing good about it. His razor teeth tear into Droog's mouth like it's butter, hand letting go of his collar to shred through his shirt and into his arm. Slick's breath is hot as he laps up the red velvet dripping through the gashes, but then he's biting, again, and again, and again.
"Open," he demands, and Droog complies. He pulls him down not by his collar, but by the cuts in his arm, digging his fingers deeper, clashing teeth against teeth, tongue against blood-craving tongue.
Hate-snogging.
Or rather, Slick's way of coping. It's not that he hates Droog, per se. This is just the way he's resorted to letting out his frustration.
At first it was through desecrating their hideout. They disallowed that after Slick broke his own piano, which wasn't exactly the easiest thing to replace. After that, the boss got a little too… reckless. He stuck his head out way more often, killed more than he had to. Droog, being his right-hand man, offered him a punch to the face. Slick would eventually snap on one of them anyway, and like hell he was going to let that person be Deuce. Boxcars would probably just absorb it so Slick wouldn't even try.
So he threw a punch. It wasn't long before that became full-on beat-up sessions, complete with visible bruises and cuts. The other two saw and knew, but didn't question it. Until one day Slick broke Droog's arm. That's when they drew the line.
And now it's… this. Yeah, Droog has little scars on his mouth, and yeah, the other two know. At least this way he doesnt have to worry about a broken bone. It still hurts, and still calms Slick down.
But it always seems to end in a… tender sort of way. Slick gradually slows, like always. His ravenous gnawing becomes gentle lovebites, then nibbling, and Droog can never tell if he needs to do this gradual thing to stay sane or if its his way of apologizing. He stops but keeps his face hovering close, eyes shut. Like always.
"Done?" Droog asks. Like always. Slick just nods. The taller member, out of habit, brings his thumb up to wipe his own blood off of his leader's mouth, and he lets him, because somehow that's become routine.
It's only after that that Slick darts away, striding with purpose back to their hideout. And Droog watches him go, spitting on the pavement and wiping his mouth on another ruined shirt.
Like always.