FIC: A Mighty Dark Night - Chapter II
Title: A Mighty Dark Night
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word length: ~74,000
Warnings: violence, language and sex
Summary: Detective Dean Winchester meets Homeland Security Agent Castiel James over a corpse.
Chapter II
I've seen a lot more than Hank ever did
Dean spent a frustrating morning on the phone and the computer, trying to track down leads. So much of police work depended on who picked up the phone when, or who was dumb enough to put something in an email that should have never been committed to posterity, it seemed. His most reliable source was a drunk ex-reporter, but Chuck Shurley must have been on a bender, because he never answered his phone. Chuck had an almost preternatural gift for finding out what was happening in PG County and the District. When Dean could get a hold of him, that was. As far as Dean knew, Chuck had no connection whatsoever to Crowley, but that wouldn't stop him from knowing that one vital piece of information that Dean was sure he was overlooking.
He took the USB stick out of his pocket and ran his finger over it. He wondered what type of information Castiel James would consider to be helpful. The man was a bit of an enigma. Dean wanted to strip him bare and see how he worked, label him carefully and place him into the black and white categories he'd made for the world. For all his politeness and calm demeanor, there was something steely about Castiel that made Dean think he wouldn't go easily into Dean's stark boxes, no matter how hard Dean pushed.
His phone rang, and he eagerly reached for it, half-expecting to hear a gravelly voice on the other end.
"Deeeeeeeeeeean. Jimmy Dean Sausage! Jimmy De-"
"Shut up, Ash, you got me on the phone! What's the matter?" Dean blinked, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He hated doing computer research. There was too much opportunity for his mind to wander, and besides, staring at the screen for too long gave him a headache. He'd complained to Sam about it once, and his brother had teased him mercilessly about growing old.
"We-ell. You know this morning, when you went batshit insane and asked me to drop the case?"
"When I told you to drop your little research project, you mean?" Dean glanced quickly around at the squad room. No one was paying him the least bit of attention.
"My little-! Why, I oughtta-"
"You called me, dude. You have something to say?"
"Oh. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure I want to tell you."
"Good, I don't want to hear it. Bye, Ash."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA! Dude, let's not be hasty! They're - wait for it - Ninja Assassins!"
Dean looked at his phone. Surely Ash hadn't said 'ninja assassins.' "I think you got your wet dream confused with the research, buddy."
"Excuse me, I do not have wet dreams about ninja assassins!"
Dean let the silence stretch.
"Okay, fine, I do! But this is totally unconnected. Your two ladies, the Meg and the Ruby - both ninja assassins!"
Dean sighed. "And I suppose you have proof?"
"You bet that tight ass of yours I do!"
"First: don't ever refer to my ass again. Second: I need to use one of your computers anyhow. I'll come by in an hour."
***
Dean leaned over the seat to grab the bucket of fried chicken. He had a feeling his stomach would need the ammunition to get through both Ash's wild theory and his own first look at Castiel's USB. He'd passed Rufus on his way out of the precinct, and told him the Benders might be feeling vindictive, Gordon was on the warpath, Henriksen was exercising his authority, and he himself was going to interview a witness. Rufus had just shaken his head and said he'd cover for him as long as he could.
The door flew open at Dean's first knock.
"Mmm, mmm, mmm, I could smell that fried chicken coming all the way from PG County! Dean Winchester, you are my own personal savior."
Dean raised an eyebrow. "Don't push it." He shoved the bucket in Ash's chest and stepped into the stairwell, pulling the door shut behind him.
"I need to just... hang on," Ash mumbled, juggling the bucket and trying to squeeze past Dean to do up all the locks on his door.
"You do realize that someone could just come down the old laundry chute to your apartment from your landlady's place, right? Those locks wouldn't help you then," Dean said, crossing his arms. Ash squeezed by him again to lead him down to his apartment.
"That's why I've got my ball-gripper (patent-pending) in the laundry chute."
Dean shook his head, but couldn't keep himself from smiling, just a little.
Ash's office was filled with the low hum of computers whirring away when they entered, Ash's hand already in the bucket. He took a big bite out of a drumstick and used it to gesture to a large monitor on the left side of the room. "You see that?" he asked around the crunch of fried skin. Grease dripped down his chin. "Ninja Assassins."
Dean leaned to the left, frowned, then leaned to the right. "What am I looking at?" he asked finally.
"Yeah, the quality is shitty. You remember Ronald Reznick?"
"Uh… conspiracy nutjob, right?" Take that, Sam! I know some current events. The crazy ones, at least.
"Careful, Dean-o. Ronald was a friend."
Dean glanced over at Ash. He'd never seen him look so solemn. Even his mullet looked deflated. Chicken grease spread in a slow stain on his t-shirt.
"Sorry for your loss, dude."
"Thanks, man." Ash gave him a ghost of a smile. "Ronald'd be pleased as punch you remembered him." He cleared his throat. "At any rate, he was a bit into the conspiracies, that's true. He had quite an elaborate security system set up in his apartment - hidden cameras, the whole bit. I always thought there was something fishy about the footage from the night he died."
"His death was recorded?" Dean asked, frowning. No disrespect to the dead, but the chicken was starting to look really good. He dug into the bucket and pulled out a piece. The skin crackled between his teeth. Ash gave him an approving look.
"Damn good chicken. Ronald appreciated the fried chicken." Ash took another bite of his drumstick and began to speak with his mouth full. "His death was ruled an accident - he choked on a peanut M&M. Asphyxiation. But none of his cameras caught him putting the M&M into his mouth, or what he saw to make him choke."
"And you found something in these encrypted files?" Dean nodded his head at the monitor. He still couldn't tell what he was supposed to be seeing.
"Yeah, man. I never knew how many cameras he had going. But this is clearly from a camera I didn't know about. Look." Ash pulled open a long, shallow drawer in his workbench and rifled through what looked like blueprints. Dean's eyes widened. He was sure a few of those buildings had no idea a man like Ash could waltz right in. "Here we are. Ronald's apartment." He pulled out a sheet and laid it down flat on the workstation. "This camera, here," and he pointed to a box marked 'Collectible Figurine Case,' "captured the death. But this footage here," he gestured over his shoulder at the paused scene on the monitor, "came from this angle, here." He jabbed at the blueprint. "That camera was never registered by the police. Now watch." He unpaused the footage.
Dean took a step closer. The view was over Ronald's shoulder, he could make it out now. It was rather surreal, watching Ronald's hand move from the bag of M&M's, stretch out in front of him, and toss a couple of pieces of candy in the air, back towards the camera, only to fly offscreen, presumably into Ronald's mouth. And then-
"Well, I'll be damned," Dean breathed. Two shapes appeared, backlit by Ronald's window. Dean wasn't going to forget Meg's and Ruby's smirks any time soon. It was them, in tight-fitting black leather. Ninja assassins.
Meg's lips moved.
"Any sound?" Dean asked quickly, shooting a glance at Ash, who shook his head. "Damn!"
Ruby cocked her head, and an expression of possible regret flitted across her features. It was difficult to tell in the grainy footage. She didn't move her feet from her spot, but there was a streak across the screen, and suddenly Ronald's hands were flailing in front of the camera. Dean looked back at Ash. He was staring resolutely at the far wall, away from the monitor. Ronald Reznick and the bowl of peanut M&M's both fell forward into camera range. Bleached-out candies rolled across the floor as Ronald twitched and went still. Meg and Ruby exchanged glances, then ducked out of the window.
Dean laid a hesitant hand on Ash's arm. "Dude?"
"Yeah, m'okay." He rubbed his eyes and then gave himself a great shake, like a dog rising from a lake, and seized another piece of chicken. "Does destroy my ninja assassin fantasy, though."
"Understandable," Dean agreed. "How well did you know Ronald? Did you know what he was working on?"
"What wasn't Ronald working on? I really wish I could help you there but A) conspiracy theorist, he didn't share his sources and B) everything was a conspiracy. I do, however," and Ash flashed him a greasy chicken smile, "have a copy of one of his back-up hard drives. Maybe find something connected to your case there."
Dean hesitated. He had told Castiel that he'd get Ash to drop his search on the restricted files. But if he was looking through Ronald's files, it wasn't exactly the same thing. He grimaced. "Yeah, okay, you start on that. Can I use one of your other computers for this?" He pulled out the USB Castiel had given him earlier that morning.
Ash took it and sniffed experimentally. Dean raised an eyebrow. "It's not a fucking bone, Ash."
"But it is a stick!" Dean rolled his eyes, and Ash continued. "And we don't know where it's been. Use this computer."
He sat Dean down at a desktop, one of his older models, and crossed to a little laptop and a large external hard drive to do his own research. Dean sighed and plugged the USB in. He could already feel a headache coming on.
They were financial records. Dean frowned as numbers scrolled past. Different holdings, different transfer dates - addresses popped up at him for a couple of swanky DC hotels, a few names he recognized as belonging to Crowley's men. It always comes back to the money trail. He just wished it wasn't so difficult to follow.
"Hey, Dean, you want a tasty and refreshing Coors Light?" Ash asked.
Dean looked up, a disparaging remark on the tip of his tongue, and froze. Ronald's hidden camera footage was still playing on the large monitor, and a distinctive trench coated figure walked into the frame. Castiel's face filled the monitor as he tilted his head, frowning, and reached up to stop the recording. The screen went dead.
***
Dean drove back to the station stewing in a miasma of his own thoughts. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip whenever they weren't clenched into fists and banging against it.
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!" he bellowed, slamming on the brakes at one red light. A soccer mom in a sleek SUV glared at him through her window, and he bared his teeth and glared right back, adding an extra 'fuck' for good measure.
How could he have made such a rookie mistake? His stomach roiled and the fried chicken threatened to make a reappearance. He went against the express instruction of his commanding officer for what - a pair of blue eyes and a gravelly 'trust me'? What was this, a fucking romance novel? How long had Castiel been covering for Meg and Ruby?
"Dean, you have to drop this case, as I am clearly involved and don't want you to find out," Dean said in an atrocious sing-song voice that sounded nothing like Castiel's gritty growl. "You're a fucking moron, Dean!"
He must have been insane. That was it, he was clearly insane. There had been something in the kitchen that he'd inhaled along with Crowley's dead man stench.
He made a beeline for Rufus's desk as soon as he arrived at work. "Got a minute, old timer?"
Rufus assessed him quietly for a second. "Breakroom?" he asked.
Dean gave him a curt nod and turned on his heel. The breakroom was a bit of a joke. Due to a flaw in the structural design of the station, it was the one place in the building that never received proper ventilation - frigid in the winter, boiling in the summer, and reeking of Andy's sweaty socks year-round. Everyone avoided it, just popping in for a quick cup of coffee that always tasted vaguely of manky cotton and hurriedly backing out again, making it the perfect place for a private conversation.
Dean chewed over what he was going to say. Rufus was his partner and his friend, but there were some things it would probably be best for him not to know. Dean ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the counter, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Rufus to follow at his own pace.
"Got ants in the pants, kid?" Rufus asked. "Chill the fuck out."
"I'm cool as a fucking cucumber," Dean grumbled. "Okay, look. Hypothetically, man, if someone comes to you from another agency, and it seems like they're on the up and up, but then you see something… and it could, possibly, be explained, but it's still pretty bad… and they might be covering up their involvement in something… and you maybe sort of shouldn't be talking to them in the first place…" God he sucked at hypotheticals. No wonder Castiel said he was an honest cop; he couldn't spin a story to save his life. "Um. If you weren't sure you could trust this person. What would you do?"
Rufus snorted. "First off, stop trying to get into her pants."
Dean blinked. "That's - that's really not what's going on here, Rufus."
Rufus raised a disbelieving eyebrow and poured himself a cup of coffee. "If you say so. Look, Dean, if you want to know if you can trust this person, you need to find out about her past."
Dean squirmed. Would you stop saying 'her'? Fuck, this is so messed up. "I don't-"
"You don't what? You don't nothing. She's with another agency, she's going to have a history. DC is the smallest big city in the world. You still got that buddy with the feebs?" Rufus asked, taking a sip from his mug and making a face.
"You're missing a prefix, old man," Dean muttered. It was good advice. He took a calming breath. "Let me call her; see if she knows anything. And dude," he reached over and plucked the mug from Rufus's hands, "don't drink that shit. Andy's socks, man. Andy's socks."
I've done the down and out in every dark end dive
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Word length: ~74,000
Warnings: violence, language and sex
Summary: Detective Dean Winchester meets Homeland Security Agent Castiel James over a corpse.
Chapter II
I've seen a lot more than Hank ever did
Dean spent a frustrating morning on the phone and the computer, trying to track down leads. So much of police work depended on who picked up the phone when, or who was dumb enough to put something in an email that should have never been committed to posterity, it seemed. His most reliable source was a drunk ex-reporter, but Chuck Shurley must have been on a bender, because he never answered his phone. Chuck had an almost preternatural gift for finding out what was happening in PG County and the District. When Dean could get a hold of him, that was. As far as Dean knew, Chuck had no connection whatsoever to Crowley, but that wouldn't stop him from knowing that one vital piece of information that Dean was sure he was overlooking.
He took the USB stick out of his pocket and ran his finger over it. He wondered what type of information Castiel James would consider to be helpful. The man was a bit of an enigma. Dean wanted to strip him bare and see how he worked, label him carefully and place him into the black and white categories he'd made for the world. For all his politeness and calm demeanor, there was something steely about Castiel that made Dean think he wouldn't go easily into Dean's stark boxes, no matter how hard Dean pushed.
His phone rang, and he eagerly reached for it, half-expecting to hear a gravelly voice on the other end.
"Deeeeeeeeeeean. Jimmy Dean Sausage! Jimmy De-"
"Shut up, Ash, you got me on the phone! What's the matter?" Dean blinked, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He hated doing computer research. There was too much opportunity for his mind to wander, and besides, staring at the screen for too long gave him a headache. He'd complained to Sam about it once, and his brother had teased him mercilessly about growing old.
"We-ell. You know this morning, when you went batshit insane and asked me to drop the case?"
"When I told you to drop your little research project, you mean?" Dean glanced quickly around at the squad room. No one was paying him the least bit of attention.
"My little-! Why, I oughtta-"
"You called me, dude. You have something to say?"
"Oh. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure I want to tell you."
"Good, I don't want to hear it. Bye, Ash."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA! Dude, let's not be hasty! They're - wait for it - Ninja Assassins!"
Dean looked at his phone. Surely Ash hadn't said 'ninja assassins.' "I think you got your wet dream confused with the research, buddy."
"Excuse me, I do not have wet dreams about ninja assassins!"
Dean let the silence stretch.
"Okay, fine, I do! But this is totally unconnected. Your two ladies, the Meg and the Ruby - both ninja assassins!"
Dean sighed. "And I suppose you have proof?"
"You bet that tight ass of yours I do!"
"First: don't ever refer to my ass again. Second: I need to use one of your computers anyhow. I'll come by in an hour."
***
Dean leaned over the seat to grab the bucket of fried chicken. He had a feeling his stomach would need the ammunition to get through both Ash's wild theory and his own first look at Castiel's USB. He'd passed Rufus on his way out of the precinct, and told him the Benders might be feeling vindictive, Gordon was on the warpath, Henriksen was exercising his authority, and he himself was going to interview a witness. Rufus had just shaken his head and said he'd cover for him as long as he could.
The door flew open at Dean's first knock.
"Mmm, mmm, mmm, I could smell that fried chicken coming all the way from PG County! Dean Winchester, you are my own personal savior."
Dean raised an eyebrow. "Don't push it." He shoved the bucket in Ash's chest and stepped into the stairwell, pulling the door shut behind him.
"I need to just... hang on," Ash mumbled, juggling the bucket and trying to squeeze past Dean to do up all the locks on his door.
"You do realize that someone could just come down the old laundry chute to your apartment from your landlady's place, right? Those locks wouldn't help you then," Dean said, crossing his arms. Ash squeezed by him again to lead him down to his apartment.
"That's why I've got my ball-gripper (patent-pending) in the laundry chute."
Dean shook his head, but couldn't keep himself from smiling, just a little.
Ash's office was filled with the low hum of computers whirring away when they entered, Ash's hand already in the bucket. He took a big bite out of a drumstick and used it to gesture to a large monitor on the left side of the room. "You see that?" he asked around the crunch of fried skin. Grease dripped down his chin. "Ninja Assassins."
Dean leaned to the left, frowned, then leaned to the right. "What am I looking at?" he asked finally.
"Yeah, the quality is shitty. You remember Ronald Reznick?"
"Uh… conspiracy nutjob, right?" Take that, Sam! I know some current events. The crazy ones, at least.
"Careful, Dean-o. Ronald was a friend."
Dean glanced over at Ash. He'd never seen him look so solemn. Even his mullet looked deflated. Chicken grease spread in a slow stain on his t-shirt.
"Sorry for your loss, dude."
"Thanks, man." Ash gave him a ghost of a smile. "Ronald'd be pleased as punch you remembered him." He cleared his throat. "At any rate, he was a bit into the conspiracies, that's true. He had quite an elaborate security system set up in his apartment - hidden cameras, the whole bit. I always thought there was something fishy about the footage from the night he died."
"His death was recorded?" Dean asked, frowning. No disrespect to the dead, but the chicken was starting to look really good. He dug into the bucket and pulled out a piece. The skin crackled between his teeth. Ash gave him an approving look.
"Damn good chicken. Ronald appreciated the fried chicken." Ash took another bite of his drumstick and began to speak with his mouth full. "His death was ruled an accident - he choked on a peanut M&M. Asphyxiation. But none of his cameras caught him putting the M&M into his mouth, or what he saw to make him choke."
"And you found something in these encrypted files?" Dean nodded his head at the monitor. He still couldn't tell what he was supposed to be seeing.
"Yeah, man. I never knew how many cameras he had going. But this is clearly from a camera I didn't know about. Look." Ash pulled open a long, shallow drawer in his workbench and rifled through what looked like blueprints. Dean's eyes widened. He was sure a few of those buildings had no idea a man like Ash could waltz right in. "Here we are. Ronald's apartment." He pulled out a sheet and laid it down flat on the workstation. "This camera, here," and he pointed to a box marked 'Collectible Figurine Case,' "captured the death. But this footage here," he gestured over his shoulder at the paused scene on the monitor, "came from this angle, here." He jabbed at the blueprint. "That camera was never registered by the police. Now watch." He unpaused the footage.
Dean took a step closer. The view was over Ronald's shoulder, he could make it out now. It was rather surreal, watching Ronald's hand move from the bag of M&M's, stretch out in front of him, and toss a couple of pieces of candy in the air, back towards the camera, only to fly offscreen, presumably into Ronald's mouth. And then-
"Well, I'll be damned," Dean breathed. Two shapes appeared, backlit by Ronald's window. Dean wasn't going to forget Meg's and Ruby's smirks any time soon. It was them, in tight-fitting black leather. Ninja assassins.
Meg's lips moved.
"Any sound?" Dean asked quickly, shooting a glance at Ash, who shook his head. "Damn!"
Ruby cocked her head, and an expression of possible regret flitted across her features. It was difficult to tell in the grainy footage. She didn't move her feet from her spot, but there was a streak across the screen, and suddenly Ronald's hands were flailing in front of the camera. Dean looked back at Ash. He was staring resolutely at the far wall, away from the monitor. Ronald Reznick and the bowl of peanut M&M's both fell forward into camera range. Bleached-out candies rolled across the floor as Ronald twitched and went still. Meg and Ruby exchanged glances, then ducked out of the window.
Dean laid a hesitant hand on Ash's arm. "Dude?"
"Yeah, m'okay." He rubbed his eyes and then gave himself a great shake, like a dog rising from a lake, and seized another piece of chicken. "Does destroy my ninja assassin fantasy, though."
"Understandable," Dean agreed. "How well did you know Ronald? Did you know what he was working on?"
"What wasn't Ronald working on? I really wish I could help you there but A) conspiracy theorist, he didn't share his sources and B) everything was a conspiracy. I do, however," and Ash flashed him a greasy chicken smile, "have a copy of one of his back-up hard drives. Maybe find something connected to your case there."
Dean hesitated. He had told Castiel that he'd get Ash to drop his search on the restricted files. But if he was looking through Ronald's files, it wasn't exactly the same thing. He grimaced. "Yeah, okay, you start on that. Can I use one of your other computers for this?" He pulled out the USB Castiel had given him earlier that morning.
Ash took it and sniffed experimentally. Dean raised an eyebrow. "It's not a fucking bone, Ash."
"But it is a stick!" Dean rolled his eyes, and Ash continued. "And we don't know where it's been. Use this computer."
He sat Dean down at a desktop, one of his older models, and crossed to a little laptop and a large external hard drive to do his own research. Dean sighed and plugged the USB in. He could already feel a headache coming on.
They were financial records. Dean frowned as numbers scrolled past. Different holdings, different transfer dates - addresses popped up at him for a couple of swanky DC hotels, a few names he recognized as belonging to Crowley's men. It always comes back to the money trail. He just wished it wasn't so difficult to follow.
"Hey, Dean, you want a tasty and refreshing Coors Light?" Ash asked.
Dean looked up, a disparaging remark on the tip of his tongue, and froze. Ronald's hidden camera footage was still playing on the large monitor, and a distinctive trench coated figure walked into the frame. Castiel's face filled the monitor as he tilted his head, frowning, and reached up to stop the recording. The screen went dead.
***
Dean drove back to the station stewing in a miasma of his own thoughts. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip whenever they weren't clenched into fists and banging against it.
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!" he bellowed, slamming on the brakes at one red light. A soccer mom in a sleek SUV glared at him through her window, and he bared his teeth and glared right back, adding an extra 'fuck' for good measure.
How could he have made such a rookie mistake? His stomach roiled and the fried chicken threatened to make a reappearance. He went against the express instruction of his commanding officer for what - a pair of blue eyes and a gravelly 'trust me'? What was this, a fucking romance novel? How long had Castiel been covering for Meg and Ruby?
"Dean, you have to drop this case, as I am clearly involved and don't want you to find out," Dean said in an atrocious sing-song voice that sounded nothing like Castiel's gritty growl. "You're a fucking moron, Dean!"
He must have been insane. That was it, he was clearly insane. There had been something in the kitchen that he'd inhaled along with Crowley's dead man stench.
He made a beeline for Rufus's desk as soon as he arrived at work. "Got a minute, old timer?"
Rufus assessed him quietly for a second. "Breakroom?" he asked.
Dean gave him a curt nod and turned on his heel. The breakroom was a bit of a joke. Due to a flaw in the structural design of the station, it was the one place in the building that never received proper ventilation - frigid in the winter, boiling in the summer, and reeking of Andy's sweaty socks year-round. Everyone avoided it, just popping in for a quick cup of coffee that always tasted vaguely of manky cotton and hurriedly backing out again, making it the perfect place for a private conversation.
Dean chewed over what he was going to say. Rufus was his partner and his friend, but there were some things it would probably be best for him not to know. Dean ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the counter, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Rufus to follow at his own pace.
"Got ants in the pants, kid?" Rufus asked. "Chill the fuck out."
"I'm cool as a fucking cucumber," Dean grumbled. "Okay, look. Hypothetically, man, if someone comes to you from another agency, and it seems like they're on the up and up, but then you see something… and it could, possibly, be explained, but it's still pretty bad… and they might be covering up their involvement in something… and you maybe sort of shouldn't be talking to them in the first place…" God he sucked at hypotheticals. No wonder Castiel said he was an honest cop; he couldn't spin a story to save his life. "Um. If you weren't sure you could trust this person. What would you do?"
Rufus snorted. "First off, stop trying to get into her pants."
Dean blinked. "That's - that's really not what's going on here, Rufus."
Rufus raised a disbelieving eyebrow and poured himself a cup of coffee. "If you say so. Look, Dean, if you want to know if you can trust this person, you need to find out about her past."
Dean squirmed. Would you stop saying 'her'? Fuck, this is so messed up. "I don't-"
"You don't what? You don't nothing. She's with another agency, she's going to have a history. DC is the smallest big city in the world. You still got that buddy with the feebs?" Rufus asked, taking a sip from his mug and making a face.
"You're missing a prefix, old man," Dean muttered. It was good advice. He took a calming breath. "Let me call her; see if she knows anything. And dude," he reached over and plucked the mug from Rufus's hands, "don't drink that shit. Andy's socks, man. Andy's socks."
I've done the down and out in every dark end dive