Archive of Our Own

The nuns leave March stranded outside the hospital with almost no blood left to his name, which explains why March wakes the next day with a pounding headache and sore, achy muscles at the bright hour of two P.M. and change.

Maybe he could fry up some bacon or open the emergency plastic bottle of gin, he thinks as he eyes the clock with a look reserved for trespassing roaches. Maybe by the time the sun sets, he will make valiant progress on deciding whether to work on his active case today.

Best laid plans, right?

He’s in the kitchen and staring at the open package of bacon, chewing on his lip and wondering if the fact that it has turned gray means it’s already gone bad or if it’s just well on its way. If Holly were home, she’d give it a sniff and decisively throw it on the pan or chuck it into the garbage. In lieu of March’s nonfunctional nose, and the fact that March wants to eat before Holly gets home from school, he’s deciding that a coin flip might be his best bet when the doorbell rings.

“Messenger service, is Holland March home?” is the only thing March hears as he stumbles—sways—wow, he must have lost a lot of blood if he’s still not halfway upright—and unlatches the door, and gets pummeled clean across the entryway.

March lands on top of the pointiest spurs in the shoe rack and sputters for air. “What the fuck,” he wheezes, blurrily staring up at the brute that strides confidently into his house.

As the guy crowds into March’s personal space, he stops for a second, frowning. “Wow, little forward, aren’t you?” he asks, waving around the general air in front of March, pausing like he expects a response.

March’s hearing is silent with a side of ringing, and all he can see through the pounding in his forehead is a vague blob standing over him, hands on hips, so he’s got nothing to say to whatever that means. He’s not even forward, right now. In fact, he’s mostly sideways, especially as the man winds up another kick to March’s stomach before March’s self-preservation instinct rears up. March raises his arm—unfortunately he raises the stitched and bandaged one—up in front of him to guard his delicates.

The man in the leather jacket announces himself to be Jackson Healy, like that rings a bell or any other instrument in March’s jumbled mess of a mind. “We’re going to play a game,” he drawls, pitched low like he’s practiced this line in a mirror before.

In March’s years of putting himself in harm’s way for very good and justifiable reasons, no one’s ever copied a Saturday morning cartoon villain at him like this before.

It’s working, though, is the thing.

The man, Healy, twitches his fist in March’s direction and says, “The game is: don’t talk unless you’re me.”

March has a sudden and nauseating vision of his steel boot connecting with March’s rib cage again, so March does the only reasonable thing: spreads his palms in front of his face, sputtering in what he hopes is unconditional surrender, averting his eyes and instead studying an unobtrusive bump in the linoleum.

Don’t make any noise, March announces to himself loudly in the confines of his brain, wheezing through his nose. Because the nice man just asked you to be quiet. No eye contact. Don’t move, don’t draw attention to yourself. Just lie here in a fetal position and wait and you’ll be okay.

Maybe.

March takes one deep breath and then another. His nose is wet with snot and blood—oh, great, it’s not like he has any left of that to lose—and the agonizing what the fuck of waiting while the man stands in front of him, seemingly frozen, is enough to psyche March completely out of his well-trained cowardice because he needs to know what’s going on.

March completely up and abandons any lingering sense of self-preservation and stares Jackson Healy in the face.

Healy is frowning down at him, wrinkling his eyebrows. Like he’s disgusted, or something.

“Yeah?” March yelps. “Don’t like what you see? Don’t like what you do to a normal, regular guy when you break into his house and kick him in the nads?”

“No,” frowns Healy, “it’s not that. It’s—”

And he’s reaching down, ignoring how March flails his limbs to get off get him off! Healy lifts March up, without seemingly any strain whatsoever, and slams him against the kitchen counter.

Healy presses March stomach-first into the sharp corner of the counter, fuck, and March sneezes blood all over the bananas and the package of graying bacon. Healy ignores all of this, one hand tight on the back of March’s neck and the other gripping his belt, and he—very slowly, very carefully—bends over March and takes a hesitant sniff.

Healy clears his throat. “Are you, uh…”

March stares forlornly at the contaminated open package of good bacon the man had just ruined with his petty violence. “You come into my house?” he squeals. “You kick me around and you turn around and sniff me; what the fuck is your problem?”

When March cranes his neck around and stares Healy straight in the eyes, for some reason, the man removes both hands from him and takes a full step back. Eyes a little wide.

That’s right. He better run. Even if March hadn’t gotten to the cookie jar pistol yet—oh, fuck, that’s a good idea, the pistol—makes sense that the guy wises up to the fact that you can’t just push Holland March around. He’s a goddamn private investigator, after all. This lowlife has fucked with the wrong guy.

“Oh,” says Healy, practically in another octave compared to his menacing gravel a second ago, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were, uh…” He waves generally over March.

March flinches immediately at the hand motion, cringing back against the sharp corner of the kitchen island and trying his best to shrink in on himself and look like he’s not a threat at all, just a guy who almost bled out last night and is a normal amount hungover. Maybe Healy shouldn’t fuck with him but March doesn’t mean that in a way that’s, like, a challenge or anything.

“The message,” March hisses desperately. “What’s the fucking message.”

Jackson Healy shakes his head and frowns directly at March. This time, March is much more familiar with the look on his face. He sees it approximately three times a day, after all, from strangers on the street or clients themselves, whenever March bumbles his way into asking a question that he really shouldn’t have asked, what is his problem?

Or, notably, one time by a client’s husband who returned home after a day of work to see March, unclothed and fancy-free and still at the damn house, having completely lost track of time playing the part of the Suave and Mysterious P.I. to his equally unclothed and shrieking wife.

Yes. March recognizes this look intimately: complete bafflement at his entire deal.

Notably, that one client’s husband had also balled up his fists and beat March to a pulp. It’s not an unusual conclusion to the pattern March has established. Currently, March is mostly just surprised that this guy is doing it the wrong way around.

Healy rubs a thumb into his temple and clears his throat. “Stop looking for Amelia.”

March blinks. March runs his shaking fingers over his own greasy hair. There might even be wild tears at the corners of his eyes, who’s to say. “I’m—I’m not even looking for Amelia!” Why is he opening his mouth? Why isn’t he just saying yes, of course, message received and taking shelter behind the wicker dining chair until the man leaves his house? “I’m a P.I.! I’m investigating her!”

Jackson Healy very clearly does not believe him. His right eye gets even wider. “…Investigating her,” he drawls. “Right now? While you’re…” Once more, he flaps his hand down March’s whole body.

What is the guy looking at. March pats the pockets of his crumpled suit, but there’s nothing in them. Even the bandage on his wrist is still in one piece. Not like the guy can see the couple pints of blood March left on the perp’s doorstep last night or the hole in his stomach where the hard liquor is supposed to go by now, so what is he talking about? “While I’m, what, what?”

Healy shakes his head, and is it just March’s hyperactive imagination or does he get a little pink around the cheeks as he valiantly tries to change the subject. “I’ve just got one more question for you—”

“—Who hired me?” March finishes, already nodding along. Yes. Yes! Wrap the conversation up, get him out of here, and leave March to sit on the floor against the refrigerator and pour the equivalent of sweet, sweet motor oil down his gullet until he feels like a human being again. “Glenn,” he supplies immediately. “Lily Glenn, two Ns. Looking for her niece.”

Hey look, the cookie jar is right there in front of March.

Healy stares at him, and March adds another point to the ticker of how many different ways Healy can communicate judgmental with only his eyebrows. Well, la di da di da for Jackson Healy and his high horse.

“You—you just gave up your client.”

“I made a business decision,” corrects March, trying to hoist himself up from the sharp corner of the counter.

“I asked one question—”

March’s brain supplies here, now, he’s distracted, and March twists his body and lunges for the gun.

He removes the lid from the cookie jar as Healy plants a boot right in his ass, kicking him over. March collapses like a can of worms onto the ground, winded and in fucking pain, and the pistol clatters a few feet out of reach in front of him.

March tries to inflate his lungs, and it comes out as a warbled groan.

His whole body hurts—his recently-kicked stomach smacked into the unforgiving floor, and Jesus, when Healy kicked his ass it fucking spasmed, what the hell.

“Okay.” For the first time in this entire conversation, Healy is starting to sound actually pissed. “I thought you were listening,” he says, like he’s March’s disappointed teacher. “I thought you got the message.”

“I thought I did too,” March groans, bravely attempting to lift his bleeding nose off the floor to catch a full breath. It doesn’t work. In fact, as March tries to scrunch any muscle in his body up into any position that isn’t pancaked, every muscle in his body gives out.

“Okay, that’s it,” Healy growls, like watching March flop around like a fish is his last straw. He reaches down and pins March’s ankles, stopping March’s crawl towards the gun before it even begins. “What the fuck is your problem, man. Why are you doing this.”

“Not—doing—anything,” March whines. Maybe he can at least convince his neck to move sideways so he can take a full breath without it hurting his lungs in the process. Come on, body. Come on.

Jackson Healy’s grip around his ankles is so warm and so tight, and March’s entire nervous system is broiling him alive, completely unresponsive. Come on. Come on, you can do it, you’re Holland March, you’re a goddamn private investigator. Get off the fucking floor.

“There!” Healy grinds his teeth together and stabs a finger into March’s ankle. “You—stop fucking presenting, man, it’s really embarrassing! For you!”

March squints, March blinks, and the spell is temporarily broken; he rolls over an inch to stare back up to Healy uncomprehendingly. “I’m—what?” is all March can manage, sputtering. “I’m, I’m not? I’m not! What? I’m not presenting!”

Then he realizes: hey, he turned a bit. He can move. Praise Jesus, he can move again. The fight-or-flight instinct to shut down dissipated the second Jackson Healy said the most out-of-pocket thing March has ever been told. Maybe he can frog-march his way across the linoleum to the pistol and break out of Healy’s professional grip on his ankles.

March puts one elbow in front of the other and tries to scamper across the floor. He discovers that this is basically the equivalent trying to drag both of them forward, and he scrambles without gaining purchase, squeaking on the floor.

Above him, Healy rolls his eyes magnificently. He releases one of March’s ankles to massage his forehead like he’s staving off a migraine. “Jesus, what do you think this is, some kind of shitty porno? I’m trying to have a professional conversation, and you’re over here presenting to me! In heat!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man,” March squawks. “I’m not in heat. This is self-defense! I’m defending myself!”

Maybe if March stretches himself all the way out, really just starfishes it, he can reach far enough to grab the pistol. Maybe.

“…And now you’re getting on your knees for me,” Healy continues, like he can’t fucking believe what he’s seeing. In the process, though, he loosens his grip on March’s foot, and March springs himself forward like a bloated and dying toad to close the two-foot gap and grab the—

Healy neatly steps over March and picks the pistol up, and March thunks his forehead directly into the floor. MotherFUCKER!

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying?” he sighs. Without losing a second, he mechanically unloads the pistol, and March’s last lifelines plink onto the kitchen floor and roll away. Healy tosses the pistol behind him—it takes a ceramic jar off of the counter with it, smashing five pounds of flour onto the floor—and Healy waves a cautious hand in front of March’s face. Like he’s checking March’s vision or something. “…Are you actually here with me?” he adds, slightly more sheepishly. “Or are you too far into heat to be thinking?”

“I’m not—I mean, I am! I am thinking!” March scrunches his face up, shaking his arms with the effort to put an end to this once and for all. “This is how much I think normally! Idiot!”

Healy creases his eyebrows. “So…what do you think is hap—”

“What kind of power play is this?” March shrieks, further along en route to losing it than he thought. “What is this: you’re in heat? How the fuck do you think that’s something you can just say to someone? You don’t know me! What if—what if—you’re the one in heat, asshole! How do you like that now? How does that make you sound?”

Jackson Healy, if humanly possible, looks somehow even more confused. “I’m not trying to tell you that you’re in—” He cuts himself off with a truly murderous twitch, fingers searching for a phantom garrote. “I don’t actually know how you don’t know you’re in heat!”

“How many times do I have to say this? I’m not in heat!” March shakes his bandaged arm at Healy, like that’s enough proof of the matter. “I’m dealing with an injury, they left me with almost no blood last night—well, I guess they did replace it with a couple banana bags of morphine—but I am not in heat!”

Healy boggles his eyes at him.

March holds his breath, heart pounding. Waiting for Healy to suplex him or stomp on his wrist or something.

Healy closes his eyes, holding up a finger. March flattens his limbs underneath him and braces for impact.

But Healy just takes a deep breath in and opens his eyes. “That,” he says, and points down at March. “That, you don’t smell that?”

Uh. March tries to scoot back half a foot, maybe get a little more air between the two of them. It doesn’t work. “I can’t smell!” he hisses. “Why does it matter! Fuck! I got your message, alright? I got your message!”

Healy pauses. March retreats his arms so far underneath his body he’s practically a T-rex. “…You can’t smell?”

March is still hyperventilating about seventeen times a second. The nostril that hit the floor cartilage-first might have collapsed with the way he sounds like a boiling kettle on every inhale. “Not at all, compadre.”

Healy opens his mouth. He closes it again. He turns back and stares at the front door—still cracked open, great, good to know that no matter how loud March yodels, no one will come to his rescue. Very chivalrous, cul-de-sac. “So…when you opened the door for me, that wasn’t you…coming onto me at all? Because of, uh…” He twiddles his index fingers.

It’s March’s turn for his eyes to boggle out of his head. “Coming onto—you said messenger service! You said my full name! And then you punched me! That never hap—that rarely ever happens to me!”

Healy doesn’t look stunned out of his mind any longer, and he doesn’t look like he’s gearing up to kick March in the nads again. He seems—actually, a little pitying. “…Yeah,” he says, in the least intimidating voice March has heard from him so far. “I bet this has happened to you before.”

March squints up at him. Well, yes, but not because he’s…pathetic, or anything. “All part of the job description,” he sniffs.

Healy sighs. “No. No, it’s really, really not.” Then he stares out into the middle distance and mutters something to himself about this morning and well, usually.

March breathes. March tries to come to terms with the fact that oh, right, smell is a sense that can give you information about people, especially if they have foregone the distillery by virtue of being locked in a hospital last night. March scratches an itch on his nose and then retreats that arm safely under his body. “Welcome to my life, I guess,” he says. “I do get punched. A bit.”

“It’s all you, if that makes you feel any better. You know. Your body.”

“…It’s literally not. Never been my fault before."

Healy pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. He mumbles, mostly to himself, “Well, I can’t—not if you’re in heat, I mean, that wouldn’t be fair. You’re practically running on instinct here.”

“I resent that,” says March, crossing his arms under himself. “I’m using my brain perfectly. All of it. All perfectly.”

“And that?” Healy points away from the kitchen, across the entry, over to the couch, chock-full of dirty laundry. “What would you call that, if not an instinct?”

March rolls himself up on his side and squints at the mess in the foyer. “I don’t know. That sometimes when you get dumped by nuns at the side of the road, it doesn’t matter where you throw your clothes when you pass out? Is that a crime, now?”

“No,” Healy says shortly, “it’s a nesting instinct. You’re nesting.”

“It is not! Because, crucially, I am not in heat!”

“Fine!” Healy shrugs his shoulders up to his ears. “Fine, I don’t care, Jesus! You’re out of your mind and you’re not making sense but clearly it’s because of the nuns that dumped you on the side of the road. That’s why.”

“Fine! Yes! I’m glad we agree!”

“Fine!”

“Okay, thank God! Can you get off my ass now, or what?”

The first inkling of March’s self-preservation instinct trickles back into his ears as Jackson Healy levels a different kind of stare at him for the first time this afternoon.

Calculating. And not even in a pitying way this time.

Uh. Shit.

March makes a break for it—tries to scramble up and out of dodge, alarm bells blaring in his ears, and he makes it about a foot and a half before Healy grabs him by the scruff of his neck and is twisting his arm behind his back.

“NO,” growls March. “No, no, no—”

“Even—hey. Listen to me.” Healy prods the small of March’s back with his steel toe. “Even if you aren’t in heat yet, you’re still…”

March isn’t listening at all. “Noooooo,” he whines. “Not my arm. Not my injured arm, please.”

“…Look, March, you just scented the air again. If you’re not in heat, you need to go to a fucking doctor to get that looked at.”

“No,” says March, already crying into the floor. For all he’s worth, he can’t wiggle his arm out of the lock. “No, fuck you! You don’t have to do this! You don’t have to do this to me!”

Healy bends over him one last time, and says, in an amiable tone, “But hey. While you’re there—”

“I won’t be there,” sobs March. “I won’t be. You can’t make me. Please. Pleasepleaseplease.”

“Stop moving. It will make this worse for you. While you’re there, you’re going to want to tell the doc that you’ve got a spiral fracture of the left—”

Crack.

At some point during March’s very short and professional yelp of pain, Jackson exits the way he came, closing the door behind him.

Twenty-four hours later, the only thing that hurts more than the ambient fever rising in March’s body is the ache of his core and his ass from where Jackson Healy’s bootprints have bruised. (Which is also the only reason his ass is hurting, thank you very much.) The only thing that hurts worse than his muscles is the gin wearing off and stinging daggers right behind his eyes, and the only thing that hurts more than that is how betrayed Janet looks as she gasps, “You took the Lord’s name in vain.”

March can’t deal with this shit right now. He can’t deal with anything right now; Holly can enjoy the birthday party on her own, March can disentangle himself from the preteen girls and the most saturated disco lights he’s ever seen and the fucking loudest rendition of Little Boxes possible. He can—nay, in fact, needs—to hole up in a bathroom stall and light a cig and read a magazine to calm down.

March wobbles into the john, glancing at himself in the mirror. His face looks gaunt and bloodless, sweat beading around his temples. Probably from the blood loss, he reasons, and the fact that he left his rum and Coke at the table. Just from that, actually.

His one working hand is shaking, he notices, and March has to prop the lighter in his armpit to keep it steady long enough to light up. He also realizes that it is anything but dignified to pull down his pants with said hand. He has to bite down on the magazine in order to not drop it, and now, as he settles in, flipping open the glossy pages, he can hardly read anything for the teethmarks stamped in them.

Footsteps echo on the tile outside the stall.

Immediately, March digs his pistol out of his holster. He recognizes those shoes. Those toes have had carnal knowledge of his rib cage.

Of course, Holland March’s brilliant detective work identifying the boot prints is worth shit when the man knocks on his stall door and says, carefully, “Hey, Jack Healy here. Can we—”

March kicks the stall door open, cocking the pistol. “How stupid do you think I am? I’ve been carrying this baby around since you attacked me! I’ve got a license to carry, motherfucker!”

Healy holds his hands up, palms out—yeah, that’s right, he’d better be placating after all the shit he put March through yesterday—and then the stall door hits the wall on the recoil and clatters closed. March knees it open, and his pants slide further down his legs. Healy glances downward—an expression on his face like he also doesn’t want to be doing what he’s doing—and March shoves the magazine right over his junk.

He’s really going to have to throw the paper in the trash the second he walks out of here, isn’t he, because eugh.

March has to chomp down on his cigarette to keep it from falling into his lap and, with his luck, igniting his whole dick. So it wobbles up and down on every syllable as March proclaims, “You! You were totally wrong, bucko.”

Jack raises an eyebrow. “I was what?”

“Wrong! Don’t care what you think you smelled yesterday. You won’t smell nothing today, because there’s nothing to smell! Do it! Take a whiff!”

Healy squints from March’s gun to the pants sliding further down his ankles to the upturned, sacrificial magazine. He’s got a look on his face like he’s going to town on a lemon. “…If it’s all the same to you,” he says, “I’d rather not.”

And then, like insult to injury, he fully turns away from March before inhaling again.

Who does this guy think he is? “I’m the one with the gun!” March waves the pistol. “Do you not see the gun?”

Healy turns back to him, creasing his eyebrows in deep concentration. “I see the gun.”

“And it’s loaded,” says March triumphantly. “So get in here. Not that close. No, back up back up. I Febreezed and cologned and everything, even spilled a cup and a half of joe down my shirt this morning. I smell extremely normal! Everyone has told me so!”

Jackson Healy upturns his eyes to the heavens as if to mutter a brief prayer. He eyes the pistol the whole time, stopping short about two feet away from March and the stall door, and—like he’d rather be inhaling the aromatic scents of a garbage dump—rolls his eyes deeply and leans over to take a sniff.

It’s such a small sniff too, unlike those huge honking ones he was taking yesterday to prove…whatever fucking point it was to March. Even in penance for what he’s done to March’s arm, he can’t take a whole proper one? A normal smell?

Jackson Healy grips the frame of the stall door and looks vaguely queasy.

“That’s right!” March taps on his nose. “Business as usual. I told you that there’s no smell reason that people haul off and punch me, there’s nothing for them to punch me about, and you were being super weird—”

“March,” says Healy evenly. “Any of those people you asked about how you smelled today. Was your, uh, whole ass out to them when you did it?”

March pauses.

March looks down. “The magazine isn’t, sorta…?”

“Nope.” Healy rocks on his toes and observes the light fixture overhead with determined focus. “Not a damn bit.”

March kind of wants to turn his pistol in on himself, now. He substitutes it for squeezing his eyes shut and planting his elbow on his knees, squishing the magazine practically in two, and letting out the loudest groan of all time into his hand.

Beyond him and his world that is rapidly closing around him, he hears Healy walk to the sink and turn the water on, dunking his face in it for a minute. Healy grabs several paper towels and dries himself off by the time March holsters his pistol and glumly makes eye contact across the mirror.

“Hey,” says Healy, in an entirely different tone of voice, “It’s a good thing you’re not in heat.”

March is now lost. “It’s…what?”

“A good thing you’re not in heat—you know. No temperature, no flu-like symptoms. Not scenting enough to get punched by anyone in a fifty-yard radius. No watering eyes or any of the rest of it.”

“Wh…but you just…” March points a finger between the two of them and taps his nose again. “I thought you…”

Healy raises his eyebrows emphatically and blinks. Twice. “It’s a good thing you’re not in heat,” he repeats, “because I need your help.”

“Oh.” March’s tongue sticks to his mouth. It’s a way out. It’s an olive branch.

He remembers the two hours this morning after waking before he managed to summon enough effort to painfully extract himself from his bed and the metric ton of duvets and sheets that had spontaneously appeared throughout the night. How he had stood upright and glared at himself in the mirror, feverish and shaking and—

“That’s right,” says March, clearing his throat. “Not in heat. Just hungover.” He flashes Healy his most watery smile.

Healy smiles in return, looking to all the world like he has just signed his own death warrant. “Well, that’s good,” he says through gritted teeth, “because I need you to find Amelia.”

Oh, good! Purpose! March starts to stand. “Oh, this is about the case—”

“Stop!” Healy throws his hand out in front of March, glaring daggers into the peeling wallpaper right beyond March’s shoulder. “Stop. Stop standing up.”

March looks down—the magazine is still crumpled on top of him, hiding apparently absolutely nothing.

March sits back down.

Healy takes a few measured breaths and scoots back towards the door. “I’m going to be at your table,” he says. “We’re going to talk, because we’re both in danger until we find Amelia. But don’t—don’t—” he says again, because March starts to stand at the word danger. Right. In the span of three seconds, March had completely forgotten. Healy holds out one finger. “After I leave. After the door shuts. Then you get up. Then you go back to the table. Then we talk.”

March mimes a salute with his wrapped-up hand.

Healy leaves, slamming the bathroom door shut with a vengeance, and for a moment, March rests his face in his hands—hand. “Fuck,” he mutters, kicking the stall door. It slams open and slams shut once more. “Fucking fuck, Jesus. Amelia. Danger.”

If he wasn’t Holland March, he wouldn’t be here, agreeing to help his former attacker. If he wasn’t Holland March, he would be—like, by the beach or something, without a care in the world this week. Sweating and heaving in style.

But no. Now he’s here and he’s toughing it out and he’s in danger and maybe, just maybe, he can weasel a big payout about all of this from Jackson Healy.

Because he is not in heat at all right now, no sirree. Holland March is in complete control of all of his faculties and he is ready for anything. As ready as he’ll ever be.

Although, just to be sure, after March dunks his cigarette and his magazine in the trash, he cinches his pants around his waist tighter than Fort Knox. He also washes his hands three times, cleaning the bowling alley out of their paper towels.

One more finishing touch—something March has not had to do since his younger days, back when he felt alive every once in a while. And, crucially, when he could smell.

March bends down and checks the cabinet underneath the sink for cleaning supplies. He pours out half a cup of industrial bleach cleaner into its cap and chucks it down the back of his shirt, feeling it drip coldly all the way down and settle into his boxers. Just some extra Eau de Ammonia to cover up any…uh…anything that might permeate through the sweat and the blood and the bottom-shelf alcohol.

Not that March is planning on taking his pants off again, but you never know what could happen on a case.

Things might even end up going well.

He’s due for that, March muses as he leaves the bathroom as suavely as he entered it. He can see the back of Healy’s head at his booth, and—oh, the fucker has stolen his rum and Coke, sipping the rest of it. Classy.

Even at the various members of the wait staff and preteens who recoil as he passes them, presumably because he smells like the ozone layer, and through the ache in his eyes and his arm—and the fact that Jackson said they’re in danger—March is still trying to smile.

Because, hey.

It’s not likely. It’s not much of a chance at all, but. Things might go well.

“Right!” he announces over Healy’s shoulder, and Healy starts, spilling the rest of the stolen drink onto his jacket.

“Fuck,” Healy mutters, staring down at the stain on the leather. “Come on, man.” Then he blanches, sniffs once more, and glares directly at March. “No,” he says, low and a little desperately, reaching up to covertly cover his nose. “No, you didn’t.”

Even this can’t harsh the vibe March is cultivating. He winks at Jackson. “Grow up, it’s just a little bleach. Now—you want me to find Amelia for you? My starting offer is five thousand.”

Even the way that Jackson Healy rolls his entire eyes back into his head can’t bring March down.

The bleach in his underwear does start to chafe a little. It’s a small price to pay for Healy—a potential new business associate!—shaking his head and begrudgingly counting bills onto the table.

“That’s nowhere near a thousand,” March notes.

“Three hundred, take it or leave it. But I would advise not leaving it,” Healy says. “I beat you up bare-handed. They’ve got guns.”

March squints at the bills on the table. Guns…guns could potentially harsh his vibe. “Uh. Well. What do you suggest we do about that?”

Healy rolls his eyes. “We team up, together. Obviously. I already said that, back at the john.”

“Right.” March can feel the smile peeking out of the corners of his mouth again. “We team up together. Obviously.”