Meat slumped down against an empty beer barrel and heaved an exhausted sigh. It had been another long night of work at the Seven Seas of Rhye bar and tonight had felt endless. Last orders had been called well over an hour ago, yet the last stumbling customer had only just left, his feet dragging behind him as he muttered and slurred about his annoyance at the closing time. "S'not nearly late 'nuff to stop-" he hiccupped loudly, "-drinking. Th'night's still young."

As far as Meat was concerned, three in the morning was a more than generous closing time, especially as it was now nearing half past four.
Resting her head back against the barrel she emitted a wide yawn and let her heavy eyelids fall.

She awoke with a start as Pop shook her shoulder violently. "Oh!" he looked sheepish, "Didn' mean to give you a fright, love. Jus' you came down here fifteen minutes ago and never resurfaced… was starting to think you'd fallen into a barrel and gotten stuck." He gave a wheezy laugh and lowered himself to the floor, taking a seat adjacent and offering her a rolled cigarette and a lopsided smile.

She took it from him gratefully and returned the smile with a quick flash of teeth. "Cheers Pop," she leant forwards towards his ignited silver Zippo lighter and drew the cigarette towards her mouth to light it. Inhaling deeply she closed her eyes again, opening them slowly as she blew the smoke slowly from her slightly parted lips. "Christ, talk about a long night, ay'?" she rolled her eyes and crossed one outstretched leg over the other. "I thought we'd never finish!"

Pop nodded as he lit his own cigarette, the smoke falling from his lips as he spoke. "I told you to leave earlier didn't I? I'd have finished up on my own, you know I would. You're working yourself too hard these days kid; you'll run yourself into the ground if you're not careful."

Meat raised a pointed finger at him, "Firstly, I'm not a kid! I'm nearing thirty Pop."

"Oh ye'?" Pop chuckled, "You're a kid compared to me!"

Meat chuckled, "Yeah, but that's because you're an old git!" she snorted softly and continued, her hand falling dejectedly to her side, "Secondly- I need to work. It helps to take my mind off… well, you know." She lifted her hand to her mouth and began to gnaw at her once long nails. "Keeping busy is the only way I can keep going at all."

Pop tried to give her a sympathetic look, but it appeared awkwardly on his creased face so he directed his gaze to the patch of floor beneath him and rolled the end of his cigarette lightly across the concrete to knock the ash from it. "You need to be careful." He told her, "It might be easy to avoid thinkin' about it now, but it'll only make it worse to come to terms with when you do have time to yourself."

"I have come to terms with it!" Meat snapped, stabbing her own cigarette against the concrete floor to extinguish it. "I know he's dead Pop, I know he's not coming back! Just excuse me if it's not my most favorite topic of thought." she frowned deeply and brought her legs into her chest, wrapping her arms around them in a tight embrace.

"That's not what I meant…" Pop trailed off and flickered his glance up to her briefly to see a tear now rolling down her cheek. "I just think you need to give yourself time to adjust to him not being around, not just work every damn hour of the day and night in order to avoid thinking about it." He shook his head and removed a tobacco tin from his pocket. As he began to roll another cigarette he added, "It's not easy losing someone, especially under the circumstances that Brit' went."

Meat clamped her hands over her ears childishly and shut her eyes tightly. "Don't Pop! Just don't alrigh'?"

Pop shrugged and placed his half rolled cigarette into the hands of Meat. Fishing his hand into his left sock he produced a small clear bag. "Don't say I didn't offer you support." He fiddled around with the bag and only looked up when he felt Meat's eyes boring into the top of his head. "Oh," he grinned sheepishly, "I suppose you want some?"

Meat shook her head, "Not for me ta', I think I'm a bit old to be smoking pot, besides Brit' always said it killed your brain cells."

Pop stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he began to roll, deep in concentration as he turned the paper back and forth. When he had finally finished he twisted the end as he spoke, "Brit' only said that because he was high on life. He didn't need this stuff. We however-" he gestured between the two of them, "need a helping hand sometimes."

Meat looked uneasy, "I've not had that stuff since I was sixteen, I couldn't handle it then so I doubt I'd cope so well with it now." Her mind cast back to a memory of three giggling girls sat in a clearing in the woods near her old home. She'd never been a Gaga. Her family had always been described by the neighbors as 'hippies' because they'd insisted on dressing themselves and their children in clothes they'd fashioned themselves. Nor had she ever been to school, her parents had disagreed with the military fashion in which they were run, so chose to home tutor their children. She rolled her eyes as she remembered her friends holding back her matted hair while she vomited into a bush, all of them still in hysterical fits of laughter.

Pop shrugged, "We learn to handle all sorts of things as time goes on." He gave a hoarse chuckle, "I've seen you throw back a few Jack Daniels this evening, would you have been able to do that at sixteen?"

Meat smirked, "It was 'cause I was doing that at sixteen that I can hold my drink now!" she wrinkled her nose at the fumes of the joint, "Besides, just the smell of tha' stuff makes me feel giddy."

They sat in silence for a while, Meat watching Pop as his eyes slowly began to glaze and his body began to relax. She smiled across at him, "How do yeh do it Pop?"

He raised an eyebrow slowly and contorted his face, "Huh?"

"Cope so well with everything." She laughed lightly, "You've been through so much more than all of us-"

"That's because I've lived an awful lot longer than the rest of you." Pop interjected.

"But still, everything just seems to go over your head, you're so calm… I've never seen you get angry with any of us, even Scaramouche and she can be a pain in the ass at the best of times."

Pop offered a small smile, "That's because all of you encourage her, if you just laughed at her and left her to it, instead of shouting back at her and winding her up, you'd find her little outbursts weren't quite so long lived."

Meat replied with a low, "Hmm…" and then proceeded into silence again, her mind ticking over her time at the Heartbreak Hotel. She'd always been wary about newcomers. Brit' had welcomed them with open arms, insisting that the group was stronger in large numbers, whereas Meat took time to accept them, only really giving over to them because of Brit's friendliness towards them. She wondered what Brit' would have thought to Pop. They had met briefly before, Pop had told her, knew of each other and the work that they were both doing to enable the comeback of rock. But Brit' had never spoken of Pop to Meat and she had only met him herself at the Seven Seas of Rhye. She could never quite be sure whether her quick allegiance with him had been down to her brain dead state of mind, after all, it was difficult to fight against a friendship with someone once your mind had been blown, especially when they constantly plied you with beer in their efforts to keep you happy.

"Pop, why did you stick around with us all at the Seven Seas of Rhye?" Meat wondered aloud, "We were all just a bunch of pissed vegetables, it can't have been all that much fun for you looking after us, being the only sane person around."

Pop mused the question for a moment, drawing a long breath of the pot into his lungs. As he blew it out he wrinkled his forehead in thought. "I'd been sent there by Globalsoft, and unless I wanted to be killed outright I had to stay there… and of course I looked after you all, it was obvious what you were, disciples of rock music! I couldn't just leave you all in your own puddle of dribble, could I?"

Meat felt a smile cracking on the edges of her mouth. "I did not dribble!"

"If you say so lady," Pop grunted.