The following morning found Lippi standing outside Devon's apartment building, waiting for a certain brunette to leave. Lippi understood the turbulent emotions that came with a first kill — having been through them himself, as he was a mafia boss — and that some people dealt with it better than others. While he called Devon a Baby, he didn't believe Devon was one.
This was only confirmed when, after minutes of not seeing his bar buddy come out, Lippi walked around to the back of the building, where Devon was sitting on a rail of the fire escape, high enough for the upper level winds to hit him and ruffle his clothes like several hands weakly trying to shake the clothes off of him. This was the first time Lippi had seen his friend in a white hoodie and jeans — or anything not a bartender uniform, truthfully.
"Baby!" Lippi shouted up to his friend. "Come and have a drink with me!" Devon looked down and spotted the wild-haired figure that was Lippi below him. "No thanks, I'm comfortable up here!" he shouted back. "Seven stories high?" Lippi yelled in disbelief.
Devon just laughed; he seemed to have gotten over his first kills already, as Lippi expected. He watched as Devon finally slipped off the rail and headed into the bartender's apartment, and Lippi grinned like a kid given back his playmate and walked back to the front of the building.
Desmond satisfied Lippi's desire to have fun by knocking back several drinks at clubs with the mafia don that morning in return for what Lippi had done for him. They parted ways when work called Lippi, and by the time Desmond stepped into Bad Weather, he had calmed down from the shock of the previous night's events and the craziness of the clubs he and Lippi had went to.
It wasn't time for work yet, but Mary was there with all of Bad Weather's employees — though the night shift workers weren't in uniform, Mary included. She was worriedly talking with Hall, and when the old man spotted Desmond, her speech became more rapid, and she tried to stop Hall, but the boss was coming over to Desmond anyway. Desmond realised the senior employee was angry at him.
"I tell you not to cause any trouble, and you end up beating up men — most to death — from the Ré Family, and throwing the last living one out on the street!" Hall did not even greet Desmond, getting straight to the point. Desmond met Hall's eyes evenly, taking the boss seriously just as Hall was taking Desmond seriously. "I understand if you want to fire me, boss." "Fire you?" Hall's volume rose, and Mary's voice came in like dew soaking into one's clothes, cool and calming, but the boss's crackling, fiery inflection broke through. "I want you to pay me cash for the damages those thugs are going to inflict on my bar after the stunt you pulled! They might even kill some of my employees!"
The official owner of Bad Weather was a petite young widow who had inherited the bar from her late husband. With no family, children, or connections, the bar was mostly run by the manager bartender, Hall, who was respected as the most senior worker of Bad Weather, and who ran the bar as if it was his own baby. The widow was perfectly fine with it, as she didn't care much for the bar; she came to Bad Weather maybe three times a year. Desmond was lucky she was there to accept him as a bartender after a charming smile and the serving of a Shirley Templar.
"I don't want that to happen," Desmond honestly replied. "Then you should have thought ahead before swinging your fists!" Hall shook a finger, his face turning pink. Mary put her hands on his shoulders. "He did save Hernandez's life, boss." "He wrapped towels on Hernandez's bullet wound, I know," Hall acknowledged, and then, to Desmond, "—but that's all you had to do! Not go gung-ho on mafi— oh…." Employees began worriedly crowding around Hall the instant the old man grabbed Desmond's hoodie to help himself to the floor with a startled face.
"Boss?" "He's having a heart attack!" "Lay him down, call 911!"
Desmond watched, his lips thinning. "We're closing down the bar," he declared. The others expressed alarm. "Dev, many of us rely on the bar for jobs," they discouraged. Desmond squarely met their gazes. "Better jobless than dead." No one could argue with that.
Hall was brought to the hospital, and without their manager bartender, Bad Weather's employees were forced to apologise to their customers and close the bar; Mary tried consoling Desmond in that he shouldn't feel guilty for the bar shutting down, and that it was the mafiosi's faults for shooting Hernandez.
"Bad Weather won't be closed for more than a few days," Desmond whispered to her, determined. "I'll try to make it so. I do care for everyone." Mary gave a small smile at that. "We all know that, Dev; in fact, we worry about you often, and about your safety. You're like the protective big brother of the Bad Weather family we have to worry about — what's wrong?" An expression had briefly flashed across Desmond's face at Mary's second sentence, and she wasn't sure what to interpret from it; she thought she caught a whiff of negative emotions from the expression: hurt, longing, frustration…. Desmond looked away.
"Please don't call me that," he could barely get out in an even voice. Mary stared at the side and back of his head — all of what she could see from him with his face tucked aside. "What, 'protective big brother?'" "Brother," Desmond corrected. Mary was sensing history behind her co-worker's reaction, but she didn't push for it. "Where is the hospital Hernandez is at?" Desmond asked, his previously tight voice now gradually easing up.
Mary gave Desmond the address and the room; the young man nodded, and, after a second, was able to meet Mary's eyes and thank her. "Keep me posted on the boss's condition," Desmond told her after putting his number in her cellphone, and he then left the bar for the hospital Hernandez was at. Mary stared after him with concerned eyes.
Hernandez nearly shrieked when he glanced at the window and looked back at the door to see his nurse replaced by his co-worker. "Dev!" he greeted, but his injuries and bandages forced him to keep his volume lower than he wanted. Devon grinned, amusement sparkling in his eyes at the scare he gave Hernandez. The Hispanic wondered how Devon picked it up.
Wishing to ask a vitally important question before Devon's boyish character made him relax and forget, Hernandez's happy air vanished under his seriousness. "Dev, you've got to tell me: where are you from?" Devon took a step back, alarmed. "What's with the sudden interest in my background?" Hernandez felt himself tense. "It's only because you're my friend I'm telling you this, but word on the street is that you're a mercenary."
"What!"
Hernandez relaxed back into his pillow. "From your reaction, you're not." Inwardly, he sighed in relief. Devon shook his head, lost and confused on what to make of the rumour. "Hernandez, those were my first kills," he said. Hernandez quieted, looking at his coworker. "Dev, you didn't have to do that for me." "That's just it," Devon laughed hollowly, "I didn't do it for you. Or even to serve the light."
"Dev?"
"I did it for me, to save my neck. I wanted to kill them. I felt threatened."
"That's just called self-defence," Hernandez assured, lost on how a combat capable individual like Devon was feeling. He'd have to ask the other Bad Weather employees. Hernandez wanted to console Devon somehow, but Devon's all-seeing, bartender eyes wouldn't disclose what was slowly eating him from the inside out. Mary secretly told Hernandez that she suspected that their friend didn't even know himself.
"Have you seen the boss? I heard he got a heart attack." "I haven't checked up on him, but most likely he'll jump back up soon. You know how he is — the older the tree, the tougher the trunk." Hernandez laughed, admiring how the atmosphere brightened so quickly. Devon chuckled with him and patted Hernandez's leg in farewell.
"Take care of yourself, Dev," Hernandez blurted out before he could think about it as Devon moved to leave. "I'd hate to see you get in trouble with the mafia and the government somehow, being the troublemaker you are. Don't make me worry, yeah?" It was meant to sound humorous, but Devon looked at him, and Hernandez felt his heart stop in one, panicky moment where he thought his coworker knew. But then Devon smiled as he always did and nodded, and Hernandez watched him leave.
He clenched his sheets in worry.
"You! Dove!"
Desmond reflexively looked back as he walked down the hospital halls because Dove sounded a lot like Dev, and he found himself unmistaken when he saw who had addressed him. Desmond entered Benny's hospital room, brow raised at what the Ré mafioso would try to do or promise. He made sure to close the door behind him.
One leg of Benny's was in a cast and suspended from a contraption connected to the ceiling; the other was under a blanket, but the size of Benny's foot told Desmond that it was heavily bandaged. Desmond glanced at it in pride, recognising it as the one he had shot and had subsequently given Benny an injury that matched Hernandez's. When Desmond got to Benny's side, the mafioso spat at him, and Desmond flinched and wiped the saliva off of his face. In his preoccupied moment, Benny drew out a pocket knife, and Desmond was able to jump back soon enough so that only his hoodie received a clean tear at the front.
Anger snapped within him like a rubber band, and in one quick movement, the knife clattered to the ground, and Benny's wrist was gripped tight in warning. Benny was already starting to foam at the mouth in his anger at Desmond, to which Desmond glared back with his blood boiling beneath the surface and his tensed muscles waiting for another attack.
"You never learn, do you?" Desmond hissed, and Benny angrily clawed at his face with a bandaged hand; Desmond recognised it as the one he had thrown a kitchen knife in. He slapped the hand away with enough force to make it hurt. "You're lucky it wasn't made men you killed that night," Benny spat, "or you would have declared war on the most powerful mafia famiglia of the city!"
The bandaged hand tore at the skin of Desmond's hand to free his wrist from the ex-Assassin's grip. Desmond ignored it and snapped Benny's wrist. It was quiet, with only a muffled crack and a hiss from Benny — a clean break. Desmond leaned in.
"I don't care if you're of the Ré Family," Desmond murmured furiously, the rumbles of a growl bubbling in his low notes. "Shoot one of us, or so much as breathe on my neck, and Bad Weather will be the last 'family' you'll know of."
Desmond straightened up, let go of Benny's broken wrist, and, on his way out of the room, slapped the mafioso's bandaged foot to remind Benny of the bullet he had put in it. He shut the door quietly but quickly so that only a few seconds of Benny's obscenity-filled raging after him managed to escape the room into the hall. A few curious people turned to the source of the noise, and Desmond smoothly pulled up his hood to hide his face. He disappeared into the bodies that walked down the hospital halls.
Before New York, a girl could ask, "So where are you from?" and my response was always the same: my parents were conspiracy freaks — they lived off the grid in the woods. A bartender I once worked with explained for me sometimes, said that I was "raised in a cult or something like that. You know, out west!" The girls would usually, awkwardly, back off from me after he'd say that. Who would want to date a weirdo?
I laughed at my past. I laughed at my family. Joked about everything, even the end of the world.
A/N: I tried breaking up the paragraphs so that they're easier to read, as requested by a reader. Let me know if any of you want longer paragraphs instead.