#ambrodes

The club music drowned out just about everything, including the scuffle that in progress down the hall leading past the bathrooms to the owner's office. If anyone coming and going from the bathroom noticed, they decided it was in their best interests to not get involved. Even as another man, young and built, jumped over the counter from the back of the bar and went barreling toward where the fight was taking place, no one saw fit to stick their nose into it. This could be due to the intoxicated state of most customers in the club but Jon was certain, as a fistful of metal connected with his midsection, that they were simply cowards. Everyone was. Scared of taking a stand against some mountain man beating the crap out of another person.

Sinking to his knees, he looked up at his aggressor just in time to see them tackled to the ground. If the music were quieter, he was sure he would have heard some kind of enraged yell from his partner with the act. Jon pressed his back against the wall behind him as he watched Cody, the cold seeping through his shirt in a welcome distraction from the sharp stabs of pain throughout his body. The other should be out back with his father, Virgil, unloading the newly delivered alcohol. That he's not means the bartender didn't listen when he told her to keep quiet about the giant man. Smiling through the pain, Jon wondered how to get back at the woman but there was a more pressing matter before him. Cody wasn't stopping his assault on the mountain man, who wasn't fighting back. Taking it his cue that break time was over, he forced himself to a stand before leaning down to grab his friend, one arm wrapping around his neck and the other gripping his upper arm. Jon kept the hold until he had successfully dragged Cody from the dazed man and into his father's office.

“Let go!” The anger doesn't leave the smaller male until they're inside the office and Jon shoves him into a large armchair before collapsing himself on the couch. The leather feels good and there's a debate between him and a few others in his head on whether he should stay put and sleep or get up to deal with his distressed friend. Cody solves it for him by sitting on the ground by the couch and Jon makes himself open one eye to look at the other. His brows are furrowed, plump lips that typically flap at him about the newest superhero movie now pressed into a small line. All signs of a brain working too hard. Jon does the only thing he can think of in that moment and reaches up, flicking his friend right in the nose.

“I don't have bail money. Let it go. Besides,” his hand drops back to the leather of the couch and he does his best to smile, “it's not his fault he has bad luck.”

“...Mm. What did he want?” Cody asks, and he stares for a moment before easing his hands under himself and lifting his body from it's position. A hand on the front of his shoulder helps him into a sit and Jon makes himself laugh through the throbbing pain that comes from his ribs. “Jon.”

“I don't know what he wanted; I intercepted him before he could do whatever,” the lie comes easy and Cody frowns immediately. It looks abnormal on a face that Jon is used to seeing smiles from. “Is your old man--”

“What are we going to do about the fight tomorrow?”

“Up to you, Lispy, but don't pull out that white knight complex on me,” Jon watched the other as he stood up and headed over to the cabinet behind his father's desk, “if there's going to be a fight, we'll be in there together.”

Cody doesn't say a word, returning to the couch with a first aid kit, the white clashing with the red and brown color scheme of the room. Before long, what might as well be acid is being pressed to a cut beneath Jon's eye and he's biting his tongue. It stings more than an angry wasp and he focuses on reading his partner's face to distract himself. Perfectly plucked eyebrows knit together in concentration with his lips pressed into a line, drawing full attention to the faint beginnings of a mustache under his nose. Jaw set and cheeks sucked in—he's sucking on his teeth. Jon winces dramatically at the next contact from the cloth and those same eyebrows shoot up as Cody's demeanor softens into the wide-eyed look best suited to a kid worried over a tumble their buddy took from a bike. If it weren't for the fact that they were well into their twenties, Jon thought the other might have started crying.

“You need to shave that damn lip of yours again,” he speaks as if nothing ever happened, and Cody's shoulders sink as his eyes close, “and you need to stop being so fuckin' soft before someone does more than just pretend you're hurting them.”

“Maybe I'll let it grow in,” the cloth is pushed into Jon's hands and he uses it to wipe his face with his eyes closed, memorizing the few places that sting as it passes over the skin. When he pulls it away, it's a nice shade of red. “That's disgusting.”

“You make people bleed on a regular basis and you're telling me that a little bit of blood disgusts you, Lispy?”

“I don't usually gotta look at that much of it for more than a few minutes,” as soon as Cody finishes speaking, Jon throws the cloth at him. He snatches it right out of the air and promptly scrunches his face up, nose wrinkling as he turns and throws it directly into the trash can next to his father's desk. “Rude. Do I throw bloody shit at you?”

“No, you thankfully keep all those tampons to yourself,” Jon doesn't let the other come up with a retort this time, knocking the first aid kit away with his hand as he stands up from the couch. “Fuck the alcohol—let's hit that diner across the street.”

“I think I want the alcohol, actually,” despite his protest, however, Cody moved to pull Jon's arm over his shoulders, “dad's going to be so mad when he sees you...”

“If he didn't see mountain man first. Virgil ain't gonna do shit if we don't ask him to, and we're not gonna,” he thought back to his assailant's insistent attempts to find out exactly where Cody was before things had become physical and straightened up a bit. “You can't take revenge on the hired muscle.”

***

“I can use that money out of savings to take care of the bills,” as Cody rambled on about their finances Jon found his gaze locked on the spoon that the other used to push what had once been ice cream around in a large bowl. He licked the salt from his fries off his fingers before reaching over to smack the other on the forehead. “Ow! What the fuck—”

“Spill what's bothering you. It ain't that I got my ass beat, so don't try that cause it happens all the time and you're still able to eat ice cream like an over emotional teenage girl.” Jon narrows his eyes at his friend, taking it in as his eyes widen and the spoon finally stills in the bowl to lift a bite of the frozen treat to Cody's lips. “Too late, ya dumbass. What's wrong?”

“You lied to me,” Cody said after he had swallowed the ice cream, and Jon felt his hand twitch where it was resting on the table. “You said you intercepted that guy, but Christina told me that he approached you. I can't... Figure out why you would lie about that.”

“I didn't lie,” the twitch repeated itself and Jon pressed his hand flat against the table, “he wasn't there for me, I just didn't want to help him find who he was there for.”

“And why the fuck not? You know I can't let you fight with me tomorrow, right? We're going to have to forfeit our match to a couple of bird-brained thugs.”

“I'm a bird-brained thug, too, Davis.” Jon didn't mean for the words to come out as sharply and fast as they had, but was glad they made the other stop talking. “There's other fights, it ain't the end of the world. Fuck, you can even get your girl that ring you've been talking about all year.”

“Why the fuck did you let some guy beat up on you, Jon?” Cody's insistence on the topic didn't surprise him, but Jon pretended not to hear it and turned his attention back to the food in front of him. Silence hung between them for a moment before it was his friend's turn to reach out and shove his shoulder. “Was it because he was looking for me?”

His hand twitched again and Jon stood up, the sound of glass shattering and Cody's startled yell following him out the door. He wondered what had broken—their plates or the glass salt and pepper shakers that had been swept off the table with them. Settling on both, Jon smiled to himself as he started down the street and pulled out a joint. His hand was perfectly still when lighting the thing and he took a long drag, holding it in a moment before blowing out again just as Cody caught up to him.

“Are you fucking crazy?”

“Don't ask stupid questions you already know the answer to,” Jon took another drag from the joint before holding it out to the other. Receiving the typical 'no,' he put it back between his lips and waited for the substance to work it's magic on his ribs. “You didn't stop and help clean that shit up?”

“My best friend happened to have just run off after a fit of rage,” Cody told him with a huff, “I thought it was more important that I follow him than stop and clean. What was that?”

“You don't know when to keep your fuckin' mouth shut,” he said as he glanced over at the shorter man with a frown, “I tell you something, give you something to ease that goddamn mind of yours and you just keep digging.”

“I deserve to not have my friend fuckin' keeping shit from me,” the response makes him want to punch the other. Preferably with the same brass knuckles the mountain man had used on him, “I'm just as capable as you are. You don't need to go around protecting me—you definitely don't have any fucking right taking a beating from someone that's meant for me in the first place and then blowing it off—”

“If I had known that guy was carrying brass, I would have sent him your way,” Jon interrupts the other, but Cody calls him on the lie and he has to concede, “look. You don't need to be going around fighting when you're already hurt. I already told you that shit when we started this team.”

“But I could, I'm not fucking fragile.”

“You do this shit for fun, Cody, when you could be sitting in the background running that arena right alongside your dad,” he takes another drag from the joint before letting it drop from his lips to the ground and snuffing it out with the heel of his boot, “you're good at what you do because you're fast and injuries only slow you down. So stop fuckin' wondering why I didn't send Goliath your way.”

“...Fine. Who do you think sent him?”

“Who had a stake in the fight tomorrow?”

***

All is silent as Jon stands outside of the Davis' club waiting for Cody to finish telling his father they have to forfeit their fight. There's a special request to be given to Virgil: send their opponents to the alley when they get their pay for winning. The alley is a small dead end space directly behind the establishment that Jon can get to from the outside simply by jumping the fence next to the club and walking down several yards to the corner of the building. One left turn and he's out of sight from the street. There's a couple of bars laying out beside a trash can and he entertains the thought of grabbing one before dismissing it. This is something he wants to do with his bare hands.

Cody appears from the same door he expects their would-be opponents to arrive through later on. A smile is present on his face and he offers a can of beer up to Jon as he joins him in leaning against the wall for the wait. Knowing the alcohol will only lighten his mood, Jon sets it on the ground beside them for the time being.

“You know what this feels like?” Cody's voice draws him out of his thoughts and Jon turns his head slightly.

“Are you going to reference a comic book to me? Because if you are, the answer is going to be no. I don't care about that geeky shit.”

“I was going to say baseball,” the words make him raise an eyebrow but Cody just ignores it and grabs one of the bars from the ground. “You put your eye on the ball, right? Then you just...”

He takes a swing just as the door to the alley opens once more, the metal bar just missing the door itself. Jumping, Cody jerks back out of sight before the newly arrived duo can spot him or the weapon. One of the men is an inch or so taller than Jon, made up of more fat than muscle and a five o'clock shadow beard. The other is shorter and according to Cody, looks like “a less built Wolverine who doesn't know what a shower is.” They're laughing, probably at their success of making money without fighting. Jon waits until they notice him and smirks when the laughter dies out, the door clicking shut behind them.

“...Jon, hey, I uh. Thought Davis said you weren't able to make it today. He forfeited the fight to us, you know.” Wolverine-wannabe speaks, offering a tight smile while reaching for the door. Jon watches him jiggle the handle and pushes away from the wall.

“Just like you wanted,” Jon speaks with a smile of his own, a wide grin that splits his lip open again and shows all his teeth, “Lispy thought it was important for you to have it. Since it meant enough for you to hire muscle.”

The two men exchange a look as Wolverine-wannabe gives up on the door. Courage makes it's entrance and the tall one lunges at him with a closed fist Jon ducks under his arm and buries his own fist into the man's gut before moving toward the dead end side of the alley. Wolverine-wannabe follows and lands a punch that Jon can't get his arm up to block quick enough, followed by a kick to the side of his already hurt leg. Jon lands a punch and hops back on one leg to avoid another kick. He can practically feel the smugness coming off the other and can't help but smirk at the misplaced confidence, right before a shout of pain followed by a thud comes from the direction of the door.

Jon lunges forward as Wolverine-wannabe turns and hooks his arms behind his back just in time for Cody to swing the bar into his midsection. Once. Twice. Three times before Jon shoves him to the ground. Turning to Cody, he nods in approval as the other hands the bar to him. Jon nudges Wolverine-wannabe with his boot then kicks him to his back and soon he's happily pressing the bar down across the man's throat. He's vaguely aware of Cody making his way back over to where he's the taller one has probably been knocked out cold.

“Does breaking code of conduct weigh heavy on your conscious?” Jon asks as he presses the metal hard against Wolverine-wannabe's windpipe. The man rasps out an almost inaudible plea and Jon smiles. He puts more pressure for a moment before lifting and tossing the bar away to grab a handful of the gasping man's shirt. He jerks him up so their faces are only an inch apart. “Well?”

“W-we'll give you the money—” Jon laughs at Wolverine-wannabe's words as Cody shoves his friend down in a barely-conscious heap beside them.

“Don't want your money, idiot,” Cody says and the man's eyes are wide as saucers, “this isn't about that. See—”

“We could have fought you today,” Jon interrupts, releasing his hold on the shirt so the man's head smacks back down against the ground, “but I was hurt and that sort of thing makes Lispy nervous. He's a worrier, you see.”

“S-so you beat us with a crowbar?” Wolverine-wannabe chokes out, voice shaking, “that's the move of cowar—”

Jon's fist hits his windpipe and he goes from speaking to choking as the other man leans over him with a snarl. “You're getting off easy, you spineless bitch. If your buddy had so much as laid a hand on my partner last night, you would already be laying in a hospital bed. I'm not as understanding as he is about these kinds of things, you see.”

He stands just as a sickening crunch is heard from Cody kicking the other man in the face, watching his friend retreat down the alley. One final glance is spared to their would-be opponents and then Jon takes off after the other. As much as he would like to stay and continue making them pay for the slight they tried to commit, he can't let the other go off alone after this.

“You okay?” Jon asks as they hop back over the fence to the sidewalk in front of the club, looking toward his friend. Usually silence from the other man would be welcome, but right now he isn't willing to let Cody retreat into his thoughts.

“Nah,” he replies with a sigh before shrugging and waving a hand, “those jerks really did cost me that ring for Selina.”

Jon stops mid-stride and turns to narrow his eyes at the other, shaking his head. “Typical for you to think of her now. Don't worry that we have bills to pay or anything—”

“I did that last night!”

“No, you're gonna cry because you can't get a fuckin' engagement ring for the bitch who isn't even waiting for one,” as he finishes speaking Cody shoves him a foot to the side and Jon resists the urge to laugh. “Way to be a responsible adult.”

“Whatever, I'm more responsible than you.”

Jon just shrugs at that before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a ten dollar bill. He glances down at it before waving it in front of Cody. The other follows it with his eyes before looking over at him and frowning.

“Agree to give me free drinks at the club until the next fight, and I'll buy you whatever ice cream you want right now,” he says and he can practically see the gears start turning in Cody's mind. It's no where near a fair trade, but Jon would get the free drinks either way. What he really would like is for his friend to remain happily distracted from the events of the last twenty-four hours. “I won't even call you fat when you eat it all in one sitting.”

“...No more knocking shit off of tables?” Cody asks, reaching out to try and snatch the bill only for Jon to pull it away and stuff it back into his pocket.

“That's only for when you forget I'm the only guy allowed to bully you around outside of the arena.”

“You don't bully me,” Jon promptly informs the other that he's suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, but Cody doesn't bother playing along. “Hey Jon?”

“What now?”

“Thanks for taking on that guy.”