Brotherly Manwhores

I plopped into my chair at the table with a sigh. Another night with the guys…correction, another night being pretty much ignored by the guys as they checked out the brainless bimbos that strutted around the bar in barely more than their underwear covering their silicone enhanced bodies. I'm pretty sure that my body was the only female body in the room that was completely au naturale.

"Guys, ten o'clock…The blonde with the silver stilettos…what I wouldn't give for an hour in my back seat with her!" Mike yelled over the noise.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and took another long drink of my rum and coke. Why do I even bother wasting my time here? Oh yeah, right, they're my big brother's team and basically all my brothers by default as well…that and I have no friends or life of my own. I took another big swig feeling the familiar warmth fuzzing my overtaxed brain and allowing my perpetual mental filter to slip slightly.

"Ha Mike, like you'd be more than five minutes! You guys are so fucking unbelievable! God, just go hire a hooker and get it over with. She probably would have had fewer diseases and then at least you'd know she'd be talented enough to be worth the effort." Oh yeah, the filter was long gone!

"Whoa, whoa there baby sister, if you're busting out the f-bomb then it's time to cut you off." I shot my brother Emmett a dirty look before rolling my eyes.

"Em, Do you guys even realize how pathetic you all sound. My God, you're all a bunch of perverted broken records with one-track minds! God forbid you actually meet someone with some substance and carry on a relationship beyond wham bam thank you ma'am! If I weren't so damn pathetic and managed to have a life outside of the hospital, I would so be anywhere but here!"

"Isabella Marie! First of all, you know I'm not in on the whole slut scene anymore now that I have Rosie. Secondly, you are NOT pathetic. You've been working your ass off to get through college and med school on the fast track and now you are a first year intern. After you get past this first year things will start looking up for you socially. I'm proud of you for sticking with the important stuff; you have the rest of your life for the rest for this shit."

I took a deep breath rubbing my hands roughly over my tired haggard face. I had just come off an eighteen-hour rotation in the ER that as usual morphed into a twenty-five hour shift. I knew I looked like death worn over sitting here having not even bothered to change out of my scrubs before crossing the street to our regular hang out to find my boys. It was no wonder the guys seemed to forget they were in the presence of a female when I was around. I barely felt like one anymore myself. I had been reduced to an androgynous medical robot whose entire life was the hospital and sleep with a few sporadic meals tossed in between.

I sighed leaning my head against my big brother's warm bicep. "Thanks Em, I should probably just go home already. I get to do it all over again tomorrow and could really use a good night's sleep."

"Bells, I'm not sure you should be going home alone. You're pretty plastered and totally exhausted on top of it. I have to wait for Rosie or else I'd take you right now. Could you please wait just a little bit longer for her to get here and then we can drop you off on our way to her place?"

I sighed. Emmett and I shared an apartment just a few blocks away and I hated the implication that I couldn't manage to walk the whole four blocks home by myself. I was a grown woman now, but my over protective brother never could really resolve himself to that fact. I guess I could understand in a way since he's been taking care of me since our parents died when I was sixteen. He was in his second year studying criminal justice at Northwestern University in Chicago and turned his whole world upside down in order to take care of me. He rearranged his schedule, moved out of the dorms and into an apartment so we could continue to live together and worked his ass off to provide for the two of us. Emmett was beyond any doubt the best man I had ever known. Seriously, what twenty year old do you know that would sacrifice so much to keep his kid sister out of the foster system, especially when it would only have been for less than two years?

It was a big adjustment for me too. I went from living life in a small town in central Illinois to being thrust into life in the big city. I was never alone though. His freshman year at NW Emmett gravitated to a group of guys who shared all of the same interests including his major and they immediately grew into a brotherhood… and they all adjusted and helped out when a kid sister was added to the mix. I jokingly called the boys the Justice League and our apartment just so happened to be Justice League central. I never walked in or out of the front door without there being at least one if not more of those guys draped across a piece of our furniture and eating our food. Thank goodness I was a decent cook and they actually had the good graces to chip in on groceries or I'm not sure how we would have survived.

Originally they had dreams of joining the FBI, but when they all graduated, somehow several of them managed to join the Chicago police force and end up in a SWAT team together. So now I was sitting here with what was left of the original Justice League and a few new guys, drunk off my ass and growing more and more annoyed as I watched the newbies to the crew, Mike and Tyler, as well as League vets Joey, Andy, Jasper, and Edward ogle the never-ending procession of two bit, dime a dozen hussies tripping in and out of the front door in their six inch stilettos taking bets on which one they would end up bedding tonight.

I looked up considering waiting with Emmett just in time to see Edward and Jasper put a ten down on the table betting on which one would get the closest silicone barbie's digits first and I heard myself growl, no longer able to bear the blatant disrespect for the rest of my sex being flaunted in front my face.

"Emmett, I am not a fucking child! I am twenty-three years old and perfectly capable of walking myself home. Besides I can't stand to watch you guys objectify any more women tonight. You guys disgust me!"

I meant to make a graceful exit, but between the booze, my exhaustion, and my typical lack of coordination, I stumbled on the chair leg in my attempt to stand up and toppled backward into the lap of my big brother, thank goodness it was him and not the soused douche bags at the table behind us! He opened his mouth to protest again as all of the guys at the table laughed openly at me, but I halted his speech by covering his mouth before pushing myself off of his lap, grabbing my purse off the floor, and listing my way toward the front door.

I was nearly there when a drunken queen of the silicone jungle decided that it was the perfect time to whip around and do a booty drop on the drunken sap she was reeling in at the bar, slamming into me in the process. I struggled to regain my equilibrium, but it was too late and I was sailing toward the floor for an embarrassing face plant when I felt two strong warm arms wrap around me and a velvety voice in my ear letting me know I was okay and joking that I should have realized I was in a plastic enhanced floozy zone. I giggled a little as he led me through the door and the cold of the fall Chicago night hit me immediately helping to sober me some and regain some semblance of my mental filter.

"You really don't have to do this Edward. I'd hate for you to miss out on getting your rocks off tonight with miss upgraded from a B cup to a Double D back there." Okay, so maybe the filter wasn't exactly in place. I looked up at my surrogate big brother and his ungodly beautiful presence wishing that growing up with such dauntingly handsome guys hadn't spoiled me for life.

He shrugged his shoulders with his hands in his pockets looking sheepishly at the sidewalk for a moment in a rare moment of conscience before the wall immediately returned adorned with his cocky smirk. "No biggie, the hottest ones always stumble in after midnight anyway."

I shook my head and made a lame attempt to punch him in the arm to which he pretended to be maimed and pouted holding his bicep. I rolled my eyes and began stumbling toward my apartment in a desperate attempt to escape Slutward.

I had known Edward Masen for seven years now and had grown to accept that basically there were two Edwards. There was my sweet and caring big brother type guy, Edward, who looked out for me and held me as I cried when my first boyfriend broke my heart and dumped me on the night of prom when I wouldn't put out for him. (Jake mysteriously showed up Monday at school with two black eyes and a broken arm by the way…I guess you shouldn't mess with a group of future law enforcement officer's baby sister figure.) That Edward would listen to me and hold my hand and stroke my hair and hum me to sleep when I was upset or stressed out. He was kind and caring, and an all around good guy like Emmett.

Then there was the man who came out in public, particularly the bar settings. This was Slutward. He was the unrelenting manwhore who used his dazzling good looks, striking green eyes, and always soft and enticing as hell bronze sex hair to sleep his way through the better part of the city. Slutward was the bane of my existence and often led me to tears when I would again and again see my sweet Edward morph into the horny unfeeling monster.

Unfortunately my mental state and biological predisposition to hazard didn't allow me to get too far ahead of Slutward before the edge of my sneaker caught in a grate effectively twisting my ankle and sending me once again spiraling toward the ground and once again Edward swooped in to save the day.

"Damn it!" I screamed wishing at least once tonight I could pull of a cool attempt to storm away in righteous indignation.

"Are you okay Bella? Does it hurt? Can you walk?"

"Yes Edward, I'm fine, now let me go!" He did and I went to take my first step as my ankle attempted to buckle out from underneath me again and Edward reached back out to stabilize me.

"Obviously you're not alright. Do you want me to take you to the ER?"

I groaned. "No, I've had enough of these to recognize the severity by now. It's just a sprain…a minor one at that I think. I have to go wrap it and ice it and hopefully it will be better tomorrow, or else it will be one long freaking day tomorrow."

Edward frowned at me as he listened before smiling at me knowingly. "Well, someone's buzz has definitely been killed." I looked at him questioningly. "You said freaking instead of the fucking." He laughed as he scooped me up to carry me bridal style. "The only time you actually cuss is when you're drunk, the rest of the time you use milder alternatives."

I sighed and threw out feeble protests at Edward carrying me as I relaxed into his arms resting my head on his shoulder. By the time we got to the apartment I was nearly asleep.

"Bella, love, do you have your keys handy? I can't hold you and reach mine."

I mumbled and reached blindly into my purse pulling out my keys and attempted to reach over and insert the correct one into the handle, but I was far too disoriented. With a laugh Edward grabbed the key from my hand using the one my legs were draped across and lithely unlocked the door carrying me directly to my room and laying me down on my bed. He disappeared and then reappeared with an ace bandage, a bag of ice, a glass of water and two ibuprofen.

"Here, take these and I'll wrap this up for you before I go." I mumbled an incoherent thank you swallowing the pills quickly and taking a few more sips of water before letting my head fall back against the pillow.

I could feel his gentle touch as he removed my shoe and sock and rolled the leg of my scrub pants up a bit running his hand along the inner and outer sides of my ankle before adeptly wrapping it in the bandage and propping it up on a pillow. I was asleep before he placed the bag of ice over the injured foot, only aware that he had done so when I found the bag of water lying haphazardly across my foot when I awoke the next morning. The bandage on my foot, the melted ice, and the two ibuprofen waiting for me to take on the bedside table were evidence he had been here. I was sad that they were the only signs of Edward's presence…and that fact bothered me.