Thank you to EVERYONE who read and reviewed! Thank you to all of my silent readers, lurkers, followers, critics, friends, and even that one putz who's just too stubborn to take good advice.

Really, take the advice.

Onward!

Claudio moved to knock on Brena's door, then looked down at Meredith, who looked up at him and shrugged.

"We're busted anyway. It doesn't matter," Meredith wrapped one arm around Claudio and raised the other, lifting the heavy brass knocker on Brena's door and letting it drop, "And after all the shit Blondie put you through? He fuckin' owes you. He better not say one word about this. It's not your fault that you knew how to open your mouth and ask for what you wanted." Despite Meredith's knocking, it didn't sound as though Nick or Brena were coming to the door.

"Yes, platzchen, but in some things it is not so simple," Claudio lifted the door knocker again and rapped it firmly, this time hearing footfalls inside the brownstone, "Nick, he has the head of a bull."

"Yeah," Meredith purred, "And when it comes to anatomy, you have-"

"Don't finish that thought, Meredith," Nick said as he flung the door open, "I hafta ride with the guy, and I don't need to know that much about him." Winking and grabbing her arm, he dragged her forward into an awkward but enthusiastic hug, passing her off to Brena behind him and then turning to Claudio, looking every bit like a chagrined schoolboy as Claudio walked past him into the brownstone.

"Listen, C, I fucked up. I was doin' so much shit that I-"

"Yes, and you are done with those things now, are you not?" He spoke quietly as he looked past Nick at Brena, who Meredith had pulled over to the sofa and was now sitting with her, knee-to-knee, clutching her hands and trying to wheedle gossip and details out even though it was likely an impossible endeavor.

"Trust me, I am," Nick followed Claudio's gaze over to Brena, who looked ridiculously happy, and was most assuredly blushing, "I owe you both for making me pull my head out of my ass...for putting us in each other's way. But...I need one other thing. Meredith's phone number."

Claudio startled, then gestured at the solitary suitcase he'd pulled in with him. "Meredith and I will wait in the hall while you...explain...the quilt to Brena. And then you will explain this telephone request to me, because I am not sure if I should be comfortable with it. You are thinking...something. And it is not good."

Looking taken aback, but understanding Claudio's hesitation, Nick nodded as he lifted the suitcase. "Look...once I explain why I need it...well, you're gonna be pissed off. At first, anyway. But then I think you're gonna understand."

Meredith glanced over her shoulder just long enough to catch Claudio's eye; they both made their way out to the hall for what they expected would be a lengthy wait while Nick stumbled through an explanation of what had happened to the quilt Brena had entrusted to Nick.

"Here, Bren," Nick knelt to unzip the suitcase, Brena nearly instantly at his side, "I was just leaving it in here, I didn't know what was gonna make it worse, and...I can't really tell how bad it is, either."

Gently lifting out the quilt and spreading it on the floor, Brena couldn't help but laugh and shove an already off-balance Nick completely over to the ground. "You're silly, mo trodaire. This? This is nothing. It ripped on the thread. I'll take out the pieces of fabric that have the stitching torn off, and put new pieces in. Well, maybe more than one. Hazel always saved the scraps, so if anything's too small or off-sized, I'll just change the other side to match. Symmetry."

"You're...like...really okay with that?" Nick still didn't sound sure about it – didn't sound like he'd ever be sure about it, and Brena felt she had to put her foot down about the issue before he tied the quilt into a noose for himself.

"Look," Brena balled up the quilt in her arms and tossed it onto the coffee table, gesturing for Nick to follow her down the hall toward yet another bedroom, "Look in here. Hazel had dozens of projects she never finished, Nick. Quilts I'll never understand the patterns to, more fabric than I'll ever do anything with, things she started when she was out of her mind on medication. Half these things weren't ever really meant to be quilts, or pot-holders, or even so much as a pillow case," Brena held up one particularly lopsided and mismatched chain of fabric that was frayed, curled in on itself, and made no sense whatsoever. "And the yarn – Nick, look," She gestured toward a towering shelf stacked with skein after skein of colors and textures and weights that Nick didn't know how he'd missed last night – he was almost sure she'd walked him through the room – but knew he had overlooked. "Really, look. It's like a rainbow in here. Things I'll never get to, things she never got to. Hazel would take one look at that quilt, and laugh that you're worried about one slip of fabric that's got to come out. Look at how much fabric never went in." Holding him by the shoulders, she pulled herself up to kiss him, hoping he understood. "Let me have something to do, Nick." Her smile was thin, but her grip around his hand felt sure as she led him back toward the front door, stopping long enough in their bedroom to fold the starburst quilt and carry it with her to his suitcase.

'And holy shit, it's our bedroom. Ours, like, me and her. Us. I thought it, and she even said it. Last night, she said it. She said Hazel and Deaglan would be okay with that, and I'm okay with that, and I really want that. Now I just have to not fuck it up. Claudio's just gotta help me out one last time, because Corporate will absolutely fuck it up if I have to go to them. And my suitcase smells like Christmas and we didn't talk about a single fuckin' thing that's important, last night, not the way shit's important to her. I'm gonna call her. No! No I'm not. I'm gonna do what her ol' man woulda done. Phone's nice and shit, and I'm gonna do that, but I can do better than that, too.'

"Everything okay, Nick? You look a bit lost, and Claudio's going to be wondering if something's happened," Brena touched his arm, gently – almost fearfully – and Nick knew he'd blanked out a bit too long.

"Yeah. No. I don't wanna leave, Bren."

"And I don't want you to go, mo trodaire. It's an unfairness, but in a way it's a gift. We've got something to look forward to, if you want."

"Stop with that. I told you what I want," The edge in Nick's voice was absolute concrete, and Brena dropped her gaze to the floor. Nick, knowing he'd managed to come across as an irritable jackass for the umpteenth time during their short visit, gritted his teeth and tried again, "Whoever hit me with that door did a hell of a job. Brena, I mean...seriously. I wanted to find a way to tell you all this at Magee, and I didn't, and then I left, and...then I spiraled. I'm gonna guess things weren't so hot for you, either," Brena sighed, but shook her head, "Okay. So if this is what we both want – and I'm telling you, this is what I really do want – don't go saying it's not, okay? I manage to not have a filter for everything else, so I'm pretty sure if I wasn't happy I'd just say, 'This sucks, I'm out.'" He punctuated his last few words with some dramatic eye rolling and hair flipping, just to make sure she knew he was teasing, but her smile gave her away.

"True, Nick. But...as you said, I've been fairly locked away from the world, and as I've said, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have my feet under me, and something tells me you're able to settle to ups and downs better than I can."

"Watch how fast I settle down with you, Brena." Out of his mouth before he knew what he'd said, Nick's words startled them both into thoughtful silence, broken only when Claudio tapped at the door. Not knowing what else to do, or to say, Nick gently kissed Brena goodbye, let his fingers trail through her hair one last time, and then took himself and his suitcase through the door, both men nearly being shoved down the stairs by Meredith, who was only too eager to get inside and start picking away at Brena again for details.

"Spill it! I'm getting whiskey, you're getting drunk, and we're swapping stories! And you better tell me what end of the sofa not to sit on!" Meredith was banging around the kitchen, looking for ice, tumblers, and anything with an alcohol content, but only managed a bottle of white wine. "Nevermind, we're going Chardonnay. Figures, you two probably cleaned out the whiskey anyway."

Brena smiled and shook her head, catching the corkscrew Meredith lobbed at her from the kitchen. "It wasn't like that, Mer, and you can sit on whatever furniture you want. Nothing happened. Nothing like that, anyway. I propositioned him, he turned me down. Hand to a Bible, he didn't sleep with me."

"You're kidding," Meredith froze coming around the end of the kitchen counter, "I mean, what, you weren't in granny panties and a ratty bra, were you?"

"Oh for heaven's sake, Meredith!" Brena gestured for a wine glass; while Meredith was willing to drink from the bottle, Brena wasn't quite so eager to give up on basic decency, "One, the panties I was in were fine – I've worn them a million times – and two,"

"Oh, so they were granny panties." Meredith plopped heavily onto the sofa and passed Brena's over-full wine glass across to her; she then thumped the bottle heavily down onto the coffee table after drinking directly from it.

"They were boy shorts, you horrible woman. And two, I wasn't wearing a bra. Why am I even telling you this? Don't you have enough on your plate with Claudio? And why on earth didn't you tell me?" At that, Brena leaned in, looking a bit glum, "I...honestly, Meredith. If you know him well enough to plan out running me into Nick and then disappearing for the night, you know him quite well. I take it that it's been going on for a while?"

"Oh, fuck Bren, I don't know," Meredith drank, not knowing what to do, "Claudio wasn't intentional, he was just – I mean, I thought I was a pity-fuck because he was always around Blondie, and Blondie had a thing for you, and then it kinda ended up that he...enjoyed my company? I don't know. He actually liked being around me. I liked being around him. First time in a long time I didn't feel like I had to hold my tongue and not cuss, or suck my stomach in and paint my nails, or make sure I ordered the salad for dinner. We went out to eat the first time he really had a night here, and he got on my ass about not getting dessert. He called the waiter back to the table and made him wait there while I picked something out."

"He paid attention to you, then," Brena mused, swirling her wine, "All those times at the hospital. You and the pastries. Or cake, whichever."

"Claudio's been there for me, Brena. The shit I couldn't – wouldn't – lay on you, because it wasn't right or fair, I could lay on him. And before you say there isn't anything I couldn't lay on you, shut up. There's things you laid on Nick that you wouldn't lay on me, because it's just different. Not good, bad, or wrong – just different."

"I'm excited for you, Mer. But next time," Brena kicked Meredith soundly in the shin, "You tell me, you little git! I wanted something to be happy about after Deaglan, and I could have been happy for you!"

Rubbing her shin, Meredith glared upward, knowing she couldn't hold the expression for long. "You know what? I don't want there to be a next time. I just want him."

"You must explain this to me again, Nick. I do not understand why Meredith must take your pants off, and why you must call her personally to request this." Claudio was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were past white and had turned grey, and Nick was considering asking him to pull over before he re-explained the situation. For the sixth time.

It hadn't been easy the first time. Or the second. Or any of the times that followed. Claudio knew Nick had been fucking around – and fucking around to an epic degree – with anyone who smiled, nodded, and laid down, with the sole requirement being, 'Does this woman bear a vague resemblance in some way to Brena, if I'm drunk and squinting?' He hadn't been trading names, numbers, or backgrounds with the people he was bringing to his hotel rooms, and also hadn't bothered with condoms. A quick, "You on the pill? Good," had been enough for him, and so far, a lack of paternity suits had been enough to assuage his nerves. He hadn't found Brena, so he hadn't cared.

Until he found Brena, of course, and then the very real possibility that the heroin-shooting, coke-snorting, meth-using, alcohol addicted, generally undesirable females Nick had been banging had likely also been sharing needles, having unprotected sex of their own with other johns, and had little to no access to anything that even vaguely resembled health care. Hepatitis wasn't high on his list of priorities and HIV hadn't ever been a life goal, but he had money. There weren't cures, but there were pills. No, it was having the, "Hi, honey, dinner smells great, by the way I have a fatal disease," conversation with Brena that Nick was trying to mentally run from. He knew he needed to get tested for everything he could think of and a few things he probably didn't know existed, but the question then became, how could he do that quietly? Nick couldn't walk into a clinic; cameras and fans were everywhere. Going through corporate medical would raise more questions than he was prepared to deal with; he knew he might have to have a conversation anyway, based on what the test results showed, but he could deal with that eventuality when or if it became a reality. Then, it hit him. Meredith.

The one woman most likely to murder Nick and not get caught doing it was also the one woman most likely to actually go along with his plan to get blood work done and not make a fuss over it, especially because it was to protect her friend. Ideally, it'd be one needle and a quick trip to the bathroom for a urine sample, but then again – it was Meredith. It was entirely possible she'd make him suffer for his ways, even if his ways resulted in nothing more than epic guilt and a lifetime spent saying Hail Marys on Hazel's rosary.

It ended up that Nick did ask Claudio to pull over; he'd started to swerve too much for Nick to get through his explanation. Unbuckling once they came to rest on the shoulder, as much for comfort as for the very real possibility that he'd have to run like hell, Nick turned in his seat and started again.

"Okay. Listen. We have time before we've gotta be at the arena. I'm gonna try to say it without sayin' anything stupid-"

"Then, my friend, this is an impossible endeavor and we may as well drive," Claudio was unimpressed, and Nick was beginning to wonder if he was intentionally looking for a reason not to give him Meredith's phone number – and why.

"C, man, don't be like that. Let me try. Last time, honest, and if you still don't want to, I'll leave the whole subject alone." 'Except for the part where I try to wheedle Meredith's number out of Brena.' Clearing his throat, Nick tried one last time. "You know what I was doing when I thought I lost Brena. I was stupid. I was drunk all the time, I was bringing random women back to my room, and I wasn't always smart about how I slept with them."

"You have confused me already. You knew sleeping with any of these women was not smart no matter how you...attempted it. What could you have done to make it even less intelligent? And what does any of this have to do with my platzchen?"

"Your what?" Nick shook his head. "Claudio, man...you're gonna make me spell it out, aren't you?"

"No, I do not need you to spell things, I need you to stop being so damned American, and speak in words that make sense! Not everything needs an expression to be expressed!" Frustrated, Claudio turned the car on, and Nick reached over and turned the car off, snatching the keys out of the ignition.

"I was fuckin' them, but I wasn't...I mean..." Rubbing his hands over his face, Nick marveled at how hard it was to say, 'But I didn't wear a condom. Like, ever,' to his friend. "Okay, you and Meredith, you two sleep together, right?"

Silence. Silence, and a look that would have killed anyone other than Nick, who had received so many dirty looks in the course of his life he'd all but grown immune to them. "Okay! Okay. I'll just assume for sake of argument that you do. And when you did, the first time, I'm going to assume that one of you – maybe both of you, she's a nurse – were smart, and said, 'Hey, I know you're probably on birth control, and neither one of us has a disease, but here's a cond-"

"Mein Gott, Nick, you are saying you were simply...with these women? Just like that, just there, with nothing? Sex?"

"Well...yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying." The dashboard was suddenly exceedingly interesting, and Nick couldn't look at Claudio, couldn't even look out the windows of the car, because there were people driving by, and people could look at him. And looking meant possibly judging. Or knowing. Somehow.

"And you have done the same with Brena, you fool?" Now there was tension in Claudio's voice, something hot and craggy that wasn't there when Nick ruining only his own life.

"No, that's what I'm saying! I told her I couldn't sleep with her. She tried it – she propositioned me, I turned her down. It killed me, man, she looked like I fuckin' shot her cat. But...I can't do that to her. I want to call Meredith privately, not on a hospital line, so nobody knows, and ask her if she'd, like...check me."

"Check you? For what, Nick, a brain?" Claudio snatched the keys out of Nick's hand, started the car, and pulled roughly into traffic, before throwing his phone into Nick's lap. "You may call her – and you will keep the call on speaker."

Much later that night – well after the show – with Nick in the shower and Claudio stretched across his hotel bed, he called Meredith, wanting to find out how her day with Brena had gone, and what she actually thought about Nick's request. She'd been oddly silent on the phone when he called her from the road, and Claudio couldn't quite figure it out. He'd expected her to castigate him, to break him into jagged pieces and then arrange them into a sculpture so ugly he'd be unrecognizable as anything but the selfish asshole he was. But, nothing happened. Instead, Meredith only said she'd see what she could do and get back with him through Claudio, before hanging up.

"My schnitzel! Come, tell me what it is that is weighing on you. You did not sound yourself earlier. Is it Brena, or is it Nick?"

"Oh, it's your dumbass friend, not mine. Brena's never been so happy, and you know what? If he's got something I can't cure with an antibiotic and a stiff punch to the jaw..." Meredith trailed off, her voice hitching. "Brena drank an entire bottle of Chardonnay and was all fits of giggles. She took me out to lunch, actually ate, cleaned up around the brownstone, and told me how amazing she feels. What a gentleman Nick is, how much she knows he cares about her, that he didn't treat her like she'd be a one-time-pass for him, and she really believes him when he says he wants to be with her."

"Well," Claudio mused, "There, mein zuckerstange, I do believe him. He talks about her like no other woman he has ever..." There, Claudio stopped. "Honestly, platzchen, like no other woman." He chuckled. "It must be something about your state, my dear."

Meredith snorted, but continued. "Maybe, C, but it's got me on edge. Think about it. Brena's sitting there talking about how she finally feels alive again, feels like she's got something to look forward to. Claudio, tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to say to her if his tests say he's got hepatitis? HIV? You heard what he said he was doing. It'd be one thing if he was fucking a couple women with coke habits, but he was talking about women with track marks. Meth, heroin, shared needles, unprotected sex in every possible orifice. Body part. Whatever. You don't tell a john, "No, not there, not tonight, I'm sore," you just take it. These were not smart women, and he was not smart taking them up to his room."

"I know, my love, I know. And I do not know what to do about it. He is scared. Nick has been quiet tonight. It is not like him. The gravity of the situation, it has settled in. He does not know what to tell Brena, if there is something to tell her."

"If there's not, he better buy a lottery ticket." Meredith shook her head. "I looked at your travel schedule; you're still in Pennsylvania now, then it's out to New York, then you cut back across Pennsylvania to get to Ohio. You're gonna look all kinds of stupid for taking a flight like this, but if you take a layover in Philly from New York, instead of direct, you can go from Philly to whatever it is in Ohio. Columbus? That sounds right."

"Yes, and complicated. When we lay over in Philadelphia, I assume we are to meet you at the clinic?"

"Midnight shift; you can take my employee pass and park in the lockdown section of the garage. Nobody will see – wait – we? You need something, too?"

"I need to make sure you do not strangle him, platzchen. That will be my pleasure, if it comes to it."

That was how, a few days later, Nick found himself wrapped in a stiff paper gown, sitting on an exam table in one of Magee's basement lab rooms and fidgeting nervously, Claudio leaning against a counter next to a leaking sink and glaring at him, arms folded across his chest.

"She's...like...really coming, right? I mean she was down here to set up the room, obviously. But she's not back. I mean, she said eleven and it's already twenty after and-"

"And I can hear you bitching through the door, so lower your voice," Meredith hissed as she slid into the room, opening the door no more than was necessary, "It's a little hard to go on my break early and collect lab supplies instead of getting my usual coffee, and then go on lunch in the basement without getting any actual food, and not have anyone notice. So quit your whining, this isn't my idea of a good time. Drop your pants."

Sighing, then shivering, Nick shifted uncomfortably and half-glanced at Claudio. "Mer...I'm not wearing pants. Isn't there a bathroom?"

"Why do you need a bathroom when you're getting a swab test? No pants makes this even easier." Meredith rearranged her supplies on the cart, scrubbed her hands at the sink, snapped on a pair of obnoxiously-cheerful purple gloves, and then pulled the single longest cotton-tipped swab Nick had ever seen out of a crisp plastic packet. "Claudio, my dear, you might not want to watch. It's...scratchy." Marching toward Nick with the swab held up in the air like a sword, Meredith stretched her hand out and aimed much lower than Nick was comfortable with, and he found himself reflexively backpedaling up the table.

"Whoa, wait, hang on, what are you-"

Claudio outright laughed as Nick punched the table when Meredith swabbed – and swabbed was being generous, it looked more like she was trying to strangle his penis while simultaneously boring an additional hole in it. She reached around herself for the sterile sample bag, dropping the swab inside and then slipping a pink lab requisition form into its outer pocket. Nick's hands had flown to his crotch almost as fast as Meredith's had left it, and she could only chuckle as she walked away.

"No offense, but you're officially – for the purpose of the tests, anyway – a guy in his 80's. And you'd better be ready to pay cash, this can't go through his insurance. His wife would have a fit. I just had to put a name on it that wasn't yours." Meredith hip-bumped Claudio at the sink, who was still snickering, and began to scrub her hands.

"Jesus. Christ," Nick gritted out, "Are we done here, Meredith?" Positive he'd be pissing blood for weeks and unsure he'd be able to take a bump without shrieking and trying to run away from his own genitalia, Nick was more than ready to head back to the car.

"Oh no, Romeo, that was only half of the testing," Meredith's voice, sing-song and sadistic, raised the hairs on Nick's arms. "Whip it out again. Do you have any idea how vascularized the penis is? It's not like it just stands up on its own." Reaching over to her tray of supplies, Meredith ran her hand gently, almost lovingly, over a syringe with a ten-gauge hypodermic needle attached to it. "Doesn't matter to me if your little man is at attention or not, I just need you to hold very still. You don't want me to miss."

For the second time that night, Nick started to backpedal up the table; even Claudio left his position against the sink and approached Meredith, blocking her in before she could reach Nick, highly concerned about her ideas on how to collect the blood sample.

"Schnitzel, is it not possible that this...method...may cause him harm?" Claudio cringed on the last word; as much as he was ready to tie Nick in a knot below the belt, he also didn't want him to bleed out from Meredith's attempts at medical practice. Or phlebotomy. Or revenge.

"Only if he moves too much, C. Like I said, if you don't wanna watch, you don't have to." Meredith pointed sharply at the door, and Claudio took her up on the implied offer, not bothering to make eye contact with Nick while rushing out.

"Okay, Blondie. Pull it out. Let's go. My lunch break is half over and I don't wanna be rushed. Shit, you don't want me to be rushed." Snapping on a new set of gloves, Meredith picked up the syringe in earnest and walked up to Nick. "Honestly, if I could find a bigger needle, I'd use it. Do you know what it's gonna do to her if your test results are dirty? And I don't mean shit that there's antibiotics for, Nick, I mean shit that's gonna kill you. You think she wants to watch someone else that she loves die a slow, miserable, painful death?"

Nick dropped his chin to his chest, and slowly slid forward, out of the corner and toward the edge of the table. "No, Mer. Trust me, I know she doesn't want that," Grimacing, he lifted up the front edge of the paper gown, and looked away. "Just...don't miss, okay? Do whatever." 'Jesus Christ, the shit I go through. No, the shit I put myself through, being a fucking idiot. But I don't wanna put Brena through anything, either. She doesn't deserve that, andthis is gonna suck shit. Meredith, please, please don't miss. Please?'

Half a smile crossed Meredith's face, and she put the syringe back on the tray, reaching instead for a much smaller, standard sized hypodermic needle attached to a different syringe. "Nah, Blondie. Drop it, and stick your leg out."

"You...you're fuckin' with me?"

"Honestly, no. If you were gonna argue this shit with me, I was gonna put that needle right through your dick, and a ten gauge isn't exactly small. But...the fact you were gonna let me do it...you do care about her. The results aren't just for you, or you woulda fought me on it."

The nausea was crippling; it was part from the relief that he didn't have to have a giant needle driven through him – the needle into his ankle was bad enough, felt strange and unexpected, but Meredith explained there weren't many other places she could put it that wouldn't show on camera, given his ring attire – and part from the understanding that he'd have to wait weeks for his test results to come in. And in that time, he'd have to maintain a facade of complete normalcy – or at least, of completely-normal-for-Nick – every time he talked to Brena. Balling up in Claudio's passenger seat as they sped off toward the airport, he sent a text to Brena, hoping he wouldn't wake her, followed by one to Meredith. Both were the same, but meant completely different things: Thank you.