Disclaimer: I don't own; I borrow with the odd exception.
Author's Note: Flames are welcome. Apologies for how long it took to update. Take this chapter for what it is. As always, thanks to Cheap Indifference and everyone else who had any part in the writing of this chapter. Point out any and all mistakes. Remember that reviews would be oh so lovely.

Feb. 1964

"Siblings ain't always gonna get along, Dal," Buck was telling me.

I ground my teeth together and nodded, running my finger through a water ring on the top of the bar.

"I got an ungodly number of siblings runnin' all over God's half acre, an' I don't always like 'em all." He poured me two shots and shrugged. "I ain't gotta like 'em. Course I love 'em, but sometimes, I can't stand 'em worth a damn."

There were seven kids in Buck's family. I couldn't remember all their names for the fucking life of me. Knowing one Merrill was more than enough for me. He got his personality from his mom, which wasn't all bad, but she'd been fucked three ways to Sunday before she'd died. And Buck himself hadn't been right since.

He told me once that we all had pieces of crazy in us, some bigger pieces than others. It seemed like everybody I knew lost their mind at some point or another.

I picked up one of the shot glasses and pressed it against my temple to slow the throbbing. Buck sighed and reached into the icebox. He wrapped up a chunk of ice in a dirty cloth and handed it to me.

"You think Janice is crazy?" I asked, pressing the ice to my temple.

"Shoot." Buck helped himself to a shot and grimaced. "It don't take a genius to see it. And you're right behind her."

I glared at him through my good eye. The only reason he knew anything was because he was a family friend. I thought of him like a brother, and my mom sure liked it when he came around. The two of them could talk themselves hoarse, and that was how he'd come to know everything there was to be know about the Winstons.

"You think it runs in the family?"

He grinned, wiping his hands on his shirt. "Y'all don't get your crazy from your ma, sure as shit."

"Well la-di-fucking-da."

I twirled my finger in the air and threw back my shot. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to take my edge off. I watched Buck pour me another couple shots before sitting across from me and sighing. He grabbed my chin and jerked it toward the light, shaking his head and looking as unimpressed and pissed off as I felt, the way he did every time I showed up looking like this. I didn't know why, but in all the years I'd known him, he had yet to get used to it.

"You kids sure do live dangerously nowadays." He laughed to himself and finally let me go. "Your kind is a dyin' breed, Dal."

"We seem pretty fuckin' alive to me," I said and swallowed back both the shots he'd poured me. I pressed the ice over my eye and managed to smirk at him. "But I'll take your word for it, pard."

"Now you're just makin' fun."

It was easy being around Buck. He was simple and underestimated, but he never went out of his way to try and prove himself to anybody. I had to respect a guy like that, who had taught me things about life I wouldn't have learned anywhere else. A lot of people took him for some drunk hillbilly with nothing but a couple horses to his name, and few knew different. But Buck was a businessman, first and foremost, and besides his get-rich-quick schemes, and his drinking problem, he knew exactly how to make everything seem like it was all going to be okay.

I heard someone come toppling through the front door. The screen slapped shut, and Buck grabbed a glass out from under the bar.

"Here comes the cavalry," he muttered, wiping it out. He filled the glass with ice and whiskey and set it down next to me.

There was only one person I knew that drank whiskey like that. I got up to leave but was shoved down in my seat. Buck even had a scowl on his face, and he wasn't one for getting mad.

"Your tab's in pretty rough shape, Janice," he said, and all I could see was her smiling at him from the corner of my eye like she thought she owned the whole goddamned world. "I expect it'll be gettin' paid real soon."

"Shoot, Buck," she started, "you let Dallas drink free."

"And we all know why that is."

"Because you're a pushover." She grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it. "And what's worse, you'll do anything for a good-looking girl."

The two of them were disgusting. It didn't look like he was taking the bait, but what she'd said was true; Buck would do anything for an honest-to-God good-looking broad.

"What the fuck do you want, Janice?" I grumbled and put my head in my hand.

"To apologize." She threw her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into her. "You know, to say sorry and all that."

She took the ice from me and tilted my head up toward the light the same way Buck had, looking at it like she was impressed with herself.

"Stop smiling," I told her, squirming away. The idea of her being so close made my skin crawl in every direction. "And shove your apology up your fucking ass."

"Calm down, sweetheart." She sucked back her drink and pursed her lips. "You're always so uptight. Have a drink."

Buck was starting to look mighty impatient with us. He refilled her glass and jabbed his finger into her shoulder. "That's about enough outta you," he said. "You done caused enough damage for one night."

She only laughed at that. "Well thanks, cowboy, but this here's my brother." She paused to give him that I-art-Holier-than-thou smile of hers. "I got blood rights."

"You know what you ain't got?" I spat, ready to knock that look right off her face. "Consideration."

"For who?"

"Anybody."

She put her chin in her hand and her elbow on the bar. "And you know all about consideration, don't you?" She waved her hand and laughed at me—just one short, curt, bitter sound. "You're a kid, Dallas. Get off your high horse."

Buck cleared his throat. "I reserve the right to refuse you service, little miss—remember that."

She tsked at him and grabbed his hand again, running her thumb over his knuckles. "Let's go out this weekend, Buck," she suggested, as if she hadn't heard a damned thing he'd just said. "I'll show you a real good time. Promise."

"Sometimes you got about as much class as a third-rate prostitute, Janice, you know that?" I commented dryly, swiping her drink. "Does that run in the fucking family, too, or is that all you?"

That got Buck smiling. He took the make-shift icepack from me and patted Janice's cheek before putting it back in the icebox. The look on Janice's face was absolutely priceless, and what made it even better was the fact that she had absolutely nothing to say back. It was a sweet victory, even if it wouldn't last long.

"Anyways," I started as Buck handed me a lit smoke. "Have you seen much of Bobby lately?"

He nodded and scratched the back of his neck. "There is always somethin' to be heard," he said, more to himself than to me. He looked around and continued on. "Bobby was in here with some asshole named Archie."

Janice and I both looked at each other. I thought she might start crying and handed her my smoke.

"What did you hear?" she asked slowly, like maybe she really didn't want to know. "Did you get a last name?"

"Sure as shit," he said, scratching his jaw. "McCallister—Archie McCallister. Bobby made sure to introduce us real proper-like. And that wasn't all that didn't seem right to me." He pushed the ashtray at Janice and licked his lips. "Bobby was talkin' real loud, like he wanted me to hear what he was sayin'. I had no idea you'd killed somebody, Dallas."

I shrugged. "There's a lot shit you don't know, and with good reason."

"That's not exactly something you run around advertising," Janice added. "That's not something anybody needs to know—get me?"

He nodded and cleared away the empty glasses. "I'll see you 'round seven." He winked and took off into the back.

"This is all your fault."

Janice and I were laying in our bed, staring at the ceiling.

"If you hadn't gotten Archie's best friend killed—if you hadn't killed him—we'd still be in New York."

It was one of the many times where she was right. Archie's friend had died by my hand, and I'd never regretted it up until now. And still it wasn't regretting what I'd done so much as having not done it right. There were too many witnesses that had been left alive.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, Dallas, but you are not taking me down with you."

"Shut the fuck up," I hissed, turning onto my side. "Just 'cause you didn't kill him don't mean you ain't every bit as involved as I am."

She looked like she was considering smothering me with her pillow. "I guess being there is crime enough, isn't it?" She scratched the side of her head and groaned.

"Like you said, I'm your kid brother, so this has everything to do with you."

"This isn't funny," she said, closing her eyes. "They know where we live. You think he isn't above going after Mom?"

I hadn't thought of it that way. The idea of anyone even thinking about putting their hands on our mom made my blood boil. She knew all about what I'd done and the idea of her getting hurt because of me made me absolutely sick.

"Archie ain't stupid, Jan," I told her, but I was really only trying to convince myself. "He ain't desperate enough to go after Mom."

"But what if he gets that desperate?" she asked, sounding choked up.

"He won't."

As personal as this was, going after our family wasn't in Archie's repertoire. He would knock me and Janice off one by one, and we wouldn't even see it coming. What made Archie better than most everybody else was that he knew how to turn everything into a game, and everybody was playing, whether they knew it or not. And the thing about his games was that nobody ever made it out alive.

In New York, I'd watched Archie run his game on a poor kid named Vinny Kickman. He was just some scrawny little shit that ran with the gang because he didn't have anywhere else to go. After Archie was done with him, it was pretty obvious that coming out of his game alive was worse than being dead. Vinny had hung himself not long after.

I knew Janice was thinking about Vinny. He was part of Archie's legacy. Archie was known for the people he killed, and Janice was known for going steady with him, up until that point, because Vinny had been a real nice kid with a real nice kid brother. You just didn't go around killing nice kids; it went against some code, some rule someone had made up once.

"Let the dead bury the dead," Janice muttered, pushing my hair back.

"Then we might as well start buryin' ourselves."

She curled onto her side and gave me a watery look. I saw her for what she really was and what she'd always been—scared. But I'd never seen her cry and wasn't about to watch her now. People like my sister and me weren't supposed to be scared.

"Here." I reached into the nightstand and shoved this sad excuse for a switch at her. "I rolled one of them Fox boys for it."

She screwed her face up and swiped at her eyes, sniffling. "I can't carry that around," she said, but she flipped it open anyways and tried to get a feel for it. "This is ridiculous. Is this supposed to make me feel better?"

I shrugged, sliding off the bed. "If nothin' else, it's supposed to make you sleep at night."

"I've never used one of these before, you dipshit."

"I know," I said, motioning her over with a few fingers. "Come at me."

"Come at you?" she repeated, her eyes bugging. "I could kill you with this thing."

"That's the fucking point."

She got up off the bed hesitantly and gave me this look like she was extremely disturbed by the whole thing. Her hand was shaking and her face was white. "What if I cut you?" she asked, standing in front of me. "What if you bleed to death, right up here in our room?"

"Then I reckon you'll be mighty happy, won't you?" I shot, reaching into my boot. I snapped open my blade and stood there, waiting for her to do something. "You can finally step out of my shadow."

I saw the gears start to turn. She tightened her grip on the handle but still didn't know what to do.

"I get it," she said, throwing the blade onto the bed. "I get it."

"You don't get shit." I picked it up and shoved it at her again. "You don't know who the fuck Archie's got runnin' around out there, waitin' for you."

"You're paranoid."

"I'm cautious."

She moved so quickly that I didn't even see it. I felt the cold steel of the blade on my skin, nicking me enough to make me bleed a bit.

"You wanna know what you did wrong?" she asked, wiping the switchblade off on her shirt. "You let your guard down—you let me distract you. I told you to never let anyone distract you—ever."

I wiped my bloody hand on her face and snorted. At least I knew that if someone came after her, she had the capability to gut them. The only thing that worried me was whether or not she'd actually do it. I wasn't always going to be with her; the only person she could count on to keep her alive was herself.

She kissed the top of my head and took my blade from me. The cut wasn't very deep and it wasn't very long. I certainly wasn't bleeding to death anytime soon.

"Think we oughta teach Mom how to do this?" Janice asked, closing the nightstand. "Maybe she could fend off Mack."

"Evil doesn't die, Jan," I said, peeling my shirt off.

She curled up on the bed again, facing the wall. I sighed and stalked off to the bathroom.

I refused to watch her cry.