Rising from below like the living dead, into the sun, the light shocking my eyes. Walking those ten minutes between the subway and the bar always felt so good.

But that feeling never lasted. Some days the city is a vampire. It steals all your best moments. They come and go in seconds, and fade away. You end up remembering only the worst.

The room suffocated with smoke. In the middle was a poker table seated with four mafiosi, all in suits and smoking cigars. Hernandez had to limp into the room due to his heavily bandaged foot and lack of crutch, as no one had the money for one.

"Look who it is, the idiot waiter," a man in a suit and slicked back hair laughed at seeing Hernandez for a second time. Twenty dollar bills were sticking out of his pocket, identifying him as Benny. When Desmond stepped into the room, Benny pointed at him with a cigar, shaking even harder in cackles. "And he brought back up!" Desmond ignored the mafioso and helped Hernandez get to the wet bar to prepare snacks for the mafiosi. Once Desmond had poured the mafiosi drinks from the only bottle at the wet bar, Hernandez limped over to serve the snacks the mafiosi had ordered last time.

"Are you going to get me salted peanuts, or the unsalted ones you got me last time?" Benny put his face in Hernandez's space when Hernandez was nearby, making it hard to ignore the mafioso. Benny laughed at what he was doing to the Hispanic, and he flicked ash from his cigar at Hernandez's face.

Hernandez flinched, but otherwise forced out an unaffected exterior, snubbing Benny. The mafiosi picked on Hernandez for his flinch anyway, amusing themselves with the waiter as one would by shaking an ant farm and watching the small bodies inside struggle, or as one would by dangling a spider on a stick over water and slowly submerging the stick until finally letting go. They just wanted to see smaller creatures squirm.

As Desmond prepared to refill the men's glasses, he watched Hernandez try to man it out and ignore the bullying. The best — and the worst — way to destroy a man was to destroy his pride, his sense of manhood. If Hernandez showed any form of complaint at the mafiosi's treatment of him, it would only prove to the mafiosi that Hernandez was a weaker, insignificant being than them, just as they expected. Hernandez did not want to satisfy them by proving them right. Desmond didn't agree with Hernandez setting himself up by snubbing the mafiosi, so he was surprised his co-worker stuck with it the entirety of serving the snacks.

Until Hernandez, after finally being able to limp away from the table to the wet bar, met Benny's eyes and smiled to make his next words seem less purposefully mean than they were. "Yeah, well, go screw yourself." Benny burst into cackles. "Look at this guy! I shoot him in the foot and he tells me to go screw myself!" "Are you just going to take that, Benny?" one of the mafiosi goaded, and the three of them joined Benny in less explosive laughter.

They kept looking at each other, laughing, and Desmond kept an eye on them as Hernandez walked past Desmond for the bar, but their expression of their — while wrong — amusement was harmless. Desmond turned around to follow Hernandez to the wet bar.

Call it intuition — be it genetic, or earned from the experience of exposure to street crime and Assassins — but Desmond sensed more than predicted Benny taking out a gun. Desmond turned his head to look at Benny, but the bullet was faster, and Desmond was only distantly aware of the warmth that splattered on his neck and cheek and of Hernandez collapsing behind him.

His neck…. Benny was laughing; the other mafiosi were complaining, saying that they weren't going to help Benny dump the body out because they didn't feel like taking out the trash that day. His neck was wet…. Benny was still firing bullets without looking; they were wild and not aimed anywhere particular — it was just horrid luck that the first one had hit Hernandez. Blood…. Benny's cackling was louder than the bullets. Desmond's neck was wet with Hernandez's blood.

His neck….

Blood….

Desmond's mind went blank.

The mafiosi at the table jumped when Benny's laughter cut into a scream. Benny cradled his hand, which had a kitchen knife thrown through it, as his gun clattered to the ground. It seemed to be only another blink for the mafiosi until they saw the bartender taking out the knife from Benny's hand and moving to shove it through his throat.

Minds catching up to what they were seeing, the mafiosi stood up from their chairs, and two of them were on Desmond in an instant. The brunette changed the course of his knife and pinned Benny's arm on the table via sleeve, before quickly turning to punch the two mafiosi in the stomach before they could swing at him. They hunched over on the floor. Desmond coldly, uncaringly, moved past them. There was nothing in his eyes. Only death.

The last mafioso fired at Desmond, but the brunette tilted his head back just in time for the bullet to harmlessly fly past him. Blood was still rushing in Desmond's ears and invigorating him like a wild animal, and, angered as an animal was when denied of its prey, Desmond and the gunman engaged in brief combat before Desmond twisted the gunman's arm back, shot Benny in the foot, and slammed the gunman's head into the corner of the table, killing him. Meanwhile, the two mafiosi from the floor had recovered and gotten their guns out, and they then intercepted Desmond from finishing his business with Benny. Desmond grabbed their wrists, broke them, and struck their throats. They slumped to the floor, dead as well. Desmond removed the knife from Benny's sleeve, and the mafioso fell off his chair onto the floor in a desperate attempt to get away from Desmond before the bartender could kill him with the knife.

"What Family are you from!?" Benny demanded.

Desmond's head turned a few degrees to Benny, like a bird picking up the location of prey from their sound. His gaze was the unreadable, cold one of a predator killing everything in sight simply as he was designed to. He took a step forward, and Benny scrambled to get up and run, but his injured foot hindered him from standing. Something was magnifying Benny's heartbeat and squeezing his lungs, and even if he didn't recognise what it was or was refusing to acknowledge it, the force weighed heavily on his chest — the presence of fear.

"Dev…stop it!"

The new voice startled the other two living people in the room, and Benny and Desmond looked at Hernandez, who was nursing his collarbone. Blood stained his shirt and was already drying on his skin, but he still had a chance to live before blood loss got to him.

The waterfall sound of blood rushing to the head suddenly disappeared from Desmond's hearing, and he dazedly dropped the knife on the floor, where it vibrated in place handle-up. Desmond rushed to Hernandez's side and robotically helped him stem the bleeding, located the Hispanic's cellphone, and dialled the boss's number. After Hernandez was as comfortable as he could get, Desmond stood up and stared at Benny.

Benny didn't know what to make of the bartender who had fought like a wild animal and then suddenly moved around like a zombie. When the brunette's eyes landed on Benny, the mafioso was suddenly very aware of the knife that he couldn't hold properly, but that the bartender could. When said bartender slowly walked over, Benny's eyes jumped between his assailant and the knife.

Worry consumed Lippi as he followed the manager bartender of Bad Weather to where the old man had gotten a call earlier from Devon briefly explaining what had recently transpired during serving mafiosi of the Ré Family. Lippi and the fellow Family members he was with at the time Bad Weather's employees had burst into panic were running after a few of the employees led by their head bartender, who was quite speedy despite his old age.

At the destination, the employees of Bad Weather were quick to attend to their Hispanic coworker bleeding on the floor and nearly unconscious. Outside the room, a few of Lippi's Family members were getting what they could about what had happened from the Ré's Benny while they tended to his wounds as "mafia bystander courtesy." Apparently, Benny was thrown out of the room and dumped on the street like trash by a certain bartender after being stabbed in the hand and shot in the foot. Curiously, the Hispanic waiter sported a similar, if older, foot injury.

With no Devon in sight, Lippi ordered his fellow Family members who were interrogating Benny to watch out for the safety of Bad Weather's employees, before signalling the rest to follow him in a search for Devon. Lippi and his Family members split up and searched the streets for the vanished bartender, and fifteen minutes later found Lippi spotting a familiar brunette sitting hunched against a wall in an alley while dazedly staring at his hands. Lippi rushed over to Devon.

"No." Devon's voice was flat, almost automatic in its response to another human presence. "Go away." The bartender didn't even seem aware his mouth was moving. Lippi stubbornly ignored his friend's words; he crouched on the ground and put a hand on Devon's back in comfort. "What's wrong, Baby?" he asked, until he noticed Devon's bloody hands.

"Come on," Lippi rubbed Devon's shoulders before trying to get him up, "let's get you cleaned up."

At a hideout belonging to Lippi's Family, Lippi guided Devon to a sink as the members who were with Lippi on the search for Devon earlier went about setting things up for use. Lippi turned on the water at the sink and set Devon to stand there with his hands under the water as Lippi searched for a bar of soap. When Lippi returned, Devon had not moved at all and was still staring at nothing. It was when Lippi tried soaping Devon's hands that the mafioso flinched and realised that the water was boiling hot.

After scrubbing Devon's hands clean with cooler water and drying them up, Lippi guided Devon to a chair at a table and sat down with him. "Is there anything you want to drink, Baby?" When Devon didn't respond, Lippi's brows furrowed in concern. He gestured to one of the mafiosi behind him. "Johnnie Walker, Black Label, three ice cubes," Lippi ordered. When one of the suited man left to get the drink, Devon seemed to be partly shaken out of his shock, and he slowly looked at Lippi.

"You—" Devon cleared his throat after not speaking for a long time, "You're—" "Shhh, rest your throat, Baby," Lippi coaxed. Devon ignored the request.

"You're a mafia boss," Devon realised.

The suited man returned with the drink, and Lippi put it in Devon's hands. "Drink up, Baby. You're still in a little shock." The glass didn't move. Lippi sighed. "I am," he confirmed, "of the Lippi Family. Now please, drink; the strong whiskey should warm you up."

Devon sipped once, twice, before looking at Lippi in gratitude for everything Lippi had done for him. It was the quick gaze of a young animal that had unexpectedly bitten a batch-mate into bleeding a little and now wanted to explain itself and apologise, but didn't know how to say it. Desmond was by no means a young animal to Lippi, but…well. Lippi understood the silent gesture and patted Devon's back.

"That was the first time I've killed anyone."

Lippi nodded — he had figured. "Do you need company right now, or should I walk you home…?" "No," Devon stopped him before he could finish listing for requests. The brunette stood up and moved to leave cash, but Lippi gave a sharp look and stubbornly shoved the bills back in Devon's hands.

Devon gave Lippi his own look, but it was weak from recent shock, and he sighed. "I'm walking home. I'll be fine." Devon did walk very composed and ready for anything for someone who had been and probably still was in shock — his hands hadn't even trembled or shaken for a second since the moment Lippi had found him sitting almost curled up in a ball in an alley.

"I'm walking you home," Lippi insisted. Devon hesitated, the first sign of him purposefully analysing or thinking about something since having been found in shock at a first kill. Or kills. Lippi made sure his stubbornness reflected on his face, and Devon gave a tired sigh.

Lippi did walk Devon home, though two mafiosi of the Lippi Family accompanied them as it was tradition for a mafia boss to never be out during the night without at least one member of his Family to watch his back. When the group arrived at a cheap-looking apartment building, Devon stubbornly refused company to his floor, and Lippi could only concernedly watch the bartender enter the building as one would watch one's child or younger sibling before leaving them at home alone.

A/N: The line, "Look at this guy! I shoot him in the foot and he tells me to go screw myself!" was inspired by a mafia movie, though I forget which. I give credit to the unnamed movie, if that means anything…. ;^^