FIC: Take Me Out
Title: Take Me Out - Part Five
Pairing: This part, Winters/Nixon, Webster/Liebgott
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Insert long and winding speech about how they are not mine, here.
Summary: It's the beginning of another legendary season and Team E has been training for this for too long to do anything but win.
Notes: This is, in fact, a modern-day AU. Throw what you know to the wind! Embrace the semi-crack! I have no manner of knowing how many parts it is, but I do have a set ending in mind. In this part, Winters gets a new job, Harry has vicarious sex, and it's Webster versus Liebgott, round 2.
PART ONE: In which Nixon thinks about orgies, everyone gets drunk, Perconte tries to be sensible around George Luz, and Speirs is one scary man.
PART TWO: In which Lipton gives Speirs the chance to dig himself a deeper grave, Buck enjoys Malarkey (and his cooking), and Babe gets recruited.
PART THREE: In which Liebgott takes it out on Webster, strip poker happens, and the plot appears.
PART FOUR: In which the boys learn of their possible fate, Babe gets pinned with laundry duty, and Harry is a very happy and very drunk man.
Winters had taken another meeting with Sink only one week after the first. This time, however, he wasn’t toting Lipton and Buck with him and Nixon wasn’t called to be there. It was just a meeting of the two of them and he had walked out with a sudden promotion that he didn’t recall asking for or wanting. He knocked lightly on the door of the room Nixon was in at the hotel (well, that they were in, but for the purposes of booking and team inquiries, Winters’ was in the suite next door).
“You survived,” Nixon observed, barely glancing up from his paper. “And here I thought you were marching to your doom. How’d it go?”
“Not exactly as I anticipated,” he admitted, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. He took a long moment to compose himself before prying off both shoes and socks, clearing his throat. “Express will have a new coach as of next month and I’m being promoted up to league supervisor. Sink thinks I have it in me to monitor all the teams and make sure we’re making a positive impact and improvement.”
“You do have it in you,” Nixon observed, turning in his chair to stare at Winters, tucking the pencil in behind his ear. “Is this you before you throw a fit or is this just the fit itself and I’ve gotten really bad at reading you?”
“He’s replacing me with Ron Speirs,” Winters announced, a look on his face that said to Nixon that he wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling about the whole thing. “I’m being replaced.”
“Technically, you’re being promoted,” Nixon clarified as he pushed himself up from his seat, plunking down on the bed beside Winters and grinning cheerfully at him as he wiggled the flask in his direction. “Hell, I think this calls for a celebration drink.”
“No thanks.”
“I’ll drink for the both of us,” Nixon assured, taking a swift chug as he draped one arm around Winters’ shoulders. “So, what’s the deal?”
“I get one month left with the boys and then you officially have a new co-coach to work with.”
He pried the glass of alcohol out of Nixon’s hands and slowly went about methodically pinning him to the bed as the slow dawn of an epiphany wound its way into Nixon’s head and he stared at Winters with a knit forehead. “Hold on.”
“Yeah?”
“This means you won’t be here all the time.”
“I was wondering when that’d hit you,” Winters commented with the beginnings of wry bemusement to his tone. “No, I won’t be on the road with you anymore. I’ll be at headquarters down in Los Angeles with occasional visits out to the host cities, but I won’t be on the road in a dedicated fashion anymore, which means you’d better learn to sleep on your own,” he added as a casual afterthought. There was more to his tone than just the inklings of barely-there concern and it was in Winters’ eyes that all the words were kept about how much he would miss the nights spent in and the quiet conversations or the way Nixon got in one of his Vat 69 fueled moods.
Like right then, when his knee happened to be doing very pleasing things to the inseam of Winters’ thigh.
“Speirs,” Winters continued, voice shaking as he exhaled a weary breath, “will be stepping in immediately to inherit coaching duties and to let the men grow accustomed to his style.”
“Kamikaze baseball?” Nixon suggested with a wicked look in his eyes and his knee began to drift higher than before. If he was having a crisis about the notion of not having Winters around on a permanent basis, it hadn’t sunk fully into home plate just yet. “I’m sure they’ll be ready to cry Uncle within days of his practices.”
“They’re made of stronger stuff than you give them credit for,” Winters insisted, that possessive flare rushing through him.
“Yeah, I know, you’re a real Momma Bear about them. Dick, can we shut up and get to the sex, now?”
“Whatever the two of you do,” came from the other side of the wall, distinctly in Harry Welsh’s tone, “can you remember that the walls are paper thin?”
“So I shouldn’t call Kitty’s name?” Nix shouted back.
“Only if you’re reaching for stars you can’t get, Nix.”
Nixon might have argued further on the point if it wasn’t for the fact that Winters was giving him a very bemused and a very expectant look, shifting his weight just down enough to cause a slight bit of friction.
“Lew will get back to you later, Harry,” Winters calmly commented. “Keep what you heard to yourself, will you?”
“Aye aye, Cap’n.”
“Now, where were we?” Winters suggested in a far quieter tone, that expectantly-bemused look shifting to something far, far more suggestive.
*
The bar they drank in while at their Northern California stop was three-tiered and noisy and the E team had taken over the upper echelons without a word spoken. It was just how they operated. Now that they had more pull with the municipalities they were playing in, all it took was a mention that they would be there and strings would be pulled.
It was one of those nights when things started to get more complicated.
“Excuse me,” Webster muttered, inching past people and ascending the stairs to the top level of the club, standing with the bouncer and leaning in to mumble something into his ear, pressing a handful of bills into his hand and gliding right past, only stopping when he arrived at Liebgott’s side, grabbing hold of his wrist and yanking him away from the loud conversation he was having with Toye and Guarnere.
“What the fuck?” Liebgott nearly howled. “Webster, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Webster opened his mouth to speak, hesitating when Toye and Guarnere started to close in. He’d met each and every one through interviews, press junkets, and the times he did socialize with Team Express, but he had no desire to let them in on why he was there and what Joe had done, considering he didn’t think it was something that you talked about with your team.
He cleared his throat and when he launched into his fervent plea, he made sure each and every word was in German (a language he knew he and Joe both shared a working knowledge of, seeing as they had conducted full arguments in German before just to prove that they could). “You have to get out of here. Now. You can stay at my place.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Joe hissed, yanking Webster away to the side.
“You’re about to be arrested for assault. You think that’ll look good on a front page? Come on.” The news had been broken only hours ago that Joseph D. Liebgott was wanted for assault against a fan who had been throwing lowballs about the team and Joe in particular, blaspheming his family and his religion in the process. It’d been the last game of the previous season and Joe had solved the issue in the alleyway with his fists and definitely remembered the incident.
He just thought it’d have gone away seeing as he’d gone so long without hearing anything.
Now, though, he was unsure enough to at least take Webster’s word for it. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain later. Just trust me,” Webster insisted, digging his keys from out of his pocket.
“You. Why would I ever trust you?”
“Just do it.” Webster yanked Joe back to the front. “Say your goodbyes and meet me outside. The cops’ll be here any minute and you’ll be arrested and in jail and the league doesn’t need that kind of press. You need to lay low while Winters and Sink take care of this. Joe, trust me.”
Trust David Webster.
Well, Joe had done stranger in his life, he supposed.
*
David Webster was beginning to regret ever hiding Joe from the police while Winters and Nixon dealt with the fallout and the cops. It had been fine for the first twenty minutes and then Joe had started bitching about his choice of cereal, about the way the couch hurt his back, about how there wasn’t enough light in his loft. That had been the first night and now they were to the third.
David had thought he was in the clear and had even brought his on-and-off girlfriend back home with him, draping his scarf and coat on the hangar in the midst of kissing her and guiding her up to his bedroom. It was mercifully silent and he was hoping that maybe Joe was out with some of his team, giving him this so-well-earned respite.
They were up to the bedroom and half-clothed in record time, his shirt off and her jeans shed by the doorway and as they tumbled into the bed, David thanked god for small miracles like Joe Liebgott being out of the…
“Hey, Web, I’m out of smokes,” came that slightly nasal complaint of a tone from the doorway.
His girlfriend froze and David went still as a mannequin as he gaped at the doorway to find Joe in a pair of jeans that barely fit him - that would be because they weren’t his and were instead Webster’s - and a tank-top, a silver chain tucked under. Whatever mood and thrall had been cast over them earlier had dissipated in an instant flat and his girl immediately pried away and wrenched her jeans back on.
“Who is he?” she demanded immediately.
Joe lit up with a shit-eating grin and looked her over. “Me? No one,” he said and Webster sighed relief that there was nothing inherently Joe about that statement. “Well, unless you count that I’m fucking him.”
“What!?” Webster and his girlfriend echoed at once and sent furious glares in Joe’s direction. Joe just shrugged in an ‘I just do it’ way.
There was no power in the world that could stop her from storming out of the room after that point and the way she slammed the door, Webster figured he could count on his neighbors complaining about the noise, next. With every ounce of irritation, he fixed a glare on Joe and sneered with all his might.
“You’re the guy fucking me?” Webster echoed incredulously.
“Well, to be honest, technically you fuck me over every third week of the month,” Joe replied with a bitter and cruel note running through his tone. “I was just returning the favor for once.”
“Asshole,” Webster accused as he yanked on a shirt.
“Fucker,” Joe casually said in return.
“You started all this,” Webster informed him. “Way back at the bar the night you decided to completely denigrate every ounce of respectable history the game has and then you decided to piss all over my shoes and stole the girl I was flirting with.”
“Jesus Christ, Webster, that was eleven months ago! Get over it!” Joe said, as if boggling over how long he had carried this grudge.
“Says the man who keeps coming by my office to bitch at me for words,” Webster commented in return, snapping his button-down lapels and stalking right past Joe and down the stairs of the loft, heading for the kitchen.
Without a single hesitation, Joe followed him. “Maybe if you didn’t make sure you were there, we wouldn’t argue every month.” He stopped on a dime when Webster did, wrenching the drawer in the hall open and taking a fresh pack of cigarettes out from it before he shoved them into Joe’s waiting palm. Joe grinned broadly, an array of teeth on display before he snaked one out of the pack. “Thanks, Web,” he saluted and stood there, just waiting.
Waiting for a light, apparently.
Webster stared at Joe incredulously and muttered under his breath in German as he dug through his pockets and found his lighter, flicking up a flame and giving Joe a dirty look.
“Don’t look so put out, Web,” Joe lazily replied in German. “Could be worse. I could’ve told her I gave you crabs.”
“I hate you,” Webster said, voice cool with condescension and irritation.
“Feeling’s mutual, Harvard,” Joe retorted and they went their separate ways - Webster to the kitchen and Joe to the spare room.
The sound of slamming doors seemed to fade into the loft in sync and Webster pressed his back to his own thick door and gritted his teeth hard to try and rid himself of the desire to do something about Joe Liebgott, even if that involved tossing him on his ass or to the cops’ door.
*
Joe didn’t return to the team until they were crossing the state lines and heading out to Washington for their next game. Perconte, Luz, and Janovec were waiting for him outside of the rental car at the hotel as he crossed the street and shouted out a ‘hey, wait up!’, slinging his bag into the backseat and grinning lewdly, snaking a cigarette from Perconte’s hands and lighting it up.
“The prodigal son returns,” Luz announced and clapped him on the back. “Survived your exile with Webster?”
“Hey, I didn’t get arrested. Now let’s book it before I do,” Joe announced, sliding into the backseat of the car and checking the rearview mirror, as if he was waiting to see Webster pop out on the asphalt. He’d left in the morning without a single goodbye, ‘thank you’ or anything resembling kindness. He’d just left a pack of fresh carton of smokes on the table and made his way out of the loft while the other man was still sleeping. “Seattle, here we come,” he announced with a broad grin. “What’d Winters say about me missing practice?”
“Buck convinced him it was better you missed practice than wind up in the slammer,” Janovec said over his shoulder as he pulled out onto the main road.
There was still no one behind them. No cars, no trucks, no pedestrians, and definitely no annoying writers. Joe was slightly disappointed. After all the hell he’d put Webster through, he at least expected a ‘good riddance’ when he made his way.
Even as they made their way north on the highway, there was absolutely no one trailing them and he hadn’t even received a phone call to tell him that life was so much simpler and quieter without Joe there.
Fuck, it was almost as if he hadn’t gotten under Web’s skin enough.
“You’re thinking loud enough to power a whole circus, Joe,” Luz observed. “The fuck is so important that you can’t participate in a game of I Spy, huh?”
Joe didn’t even bother to dignify that crap with an answer. He dragged one of Webster’s cigarettes from his pocket and rolled down the back window to light it up and wonder just what he should have done to ensure he really, really pissed Webster off.
Or maybe he was thinking about what he ought to have done to get the man to follow him to Seattle. Fuck, it was bound to be quiet and lonely without him there to keep company. Joe winced heavily as he sucked a long drag of nicotine. He’d never admit it aloud, but he had a bad feeling he was missing David Kenyon Webster’s company.
“Fuck this,” Joe muttered, interrupted Perconte’s bickering with Luz that the color they were looking at was chartreuse, of all things. “Come on, let’s pull over and grab lunch before I starve to death, huh?”
Fuck David Webster. He didn’t deserve to get missed by Joe, and that was that.
tbc
Pairing: This part, Winters/Nixon, Webster/Liebgott
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Insert long and winding speech about how they are not mine, here.
Summary: It's the beginning of another legendary season and Team E has been training for this for too long to do anything but win.
Notes: This is, in fact, a modern-day AU. Throw what you know to the wind! Embrace the semi-crack! I have no manner of knowing how many parts it is, but I do have a set ending in mind. In this part, Winters gets a new job, Harry has vicarious sex, and it's Webster versus Liebgott, round 2.
PART ONE: In which Nixon thinks about orgies, everyone gets drunk, Perconte tries to be sensible around George Luz, and Speirs is one scary man.
PART TWO: In which Lipton gives Speirs the chance to dig himself a deeper grave, Buck enjoys Malarkey (and his cooking), and Babe gets recruited.
PART THREE: In which Liebgott takes it out on Webster, strip poker happens, and the plot appears.
PART FOUR: In which the boys learn of their possible fate, Babe gets pinned with laundry duty, and Harry is a very happy and very drunk man.
Winters had taken another meeting with Sink only one week after the first. This time, however, he wasn’t toting Lipton and Buck with him and Nixon wasn’t called to be there. It was just a meeting of the two of them and he had walked out with a sudden promotion that he didn’t recall asking for or wanting. He knocked lightly on the door of the room Nixon was in at the hotel (well, that they were in, but for the purposes of booking and team inquiries, Winters’ was in the suite next door).
“You survived,” Nixon observed, barely glancing up from his paper. “And here I thought you were marching to your doom. How’d it go?”
“Not exactly as I anticipated,” he admitted, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. He took a long moment to compose himself before prying off both shoes and socks, clearing his throat. “Express will have a new coach as of next month and I’m being promoted up to league supervisor. Sink thinks I have it in me to monitor all the teams and make sure we’re making a positive impact and improvement.”
“You do have it in you,” Nixon observed, turning in his chair to stare at Winters, tucking the pencil in behind his ear. “Is this you before you throw a fit or is this just the fit itself and I’ve gotten really bad at reading you?”
“He’s replacing me with Ron Speirs,” Winters announced, a look on his face that said to Nixon that he wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling about the whole thing. “I’m being replaced.”
“Technically, you’re being promoted,” Nixon clarified as he pushed himself up from his seat, plunking down on the bed beside Winters and grinning cheerfully at him as he wiggled the flask in his direction. “Hell, I think this calls for a celebration drink.”
“No thanks.”
“I’ll drink for the both of us,” Nixon assured, taking a swift chug as he draped one arm around Winters’ shoulders. “So, what’s the deal?”
“I get one month left with the boys and then you officially have a new co-coach to work with.”
He pried the glass of alcohol out of Nixon’s hands and slowly went about methodically pinning him to the bed as the slow dawn of an epiphany wound its way into Nixon’s head and he stared at Winters with a knit forehead. “Hold on.”
“Yeah?”
“This means you won’t be here all the time.”
“I was wondering when that’d hit you,” Winters commented with the beginnings of wry bemusement to his tone. “No, I won’t be on the road with you anymore. I’ll be at headquarters down in Los Angeles with occasional visits out to the host cities, but I won’t be on the road in a dedicated fashion anymore, which means you’d better learn to sleep on your own,” he added as a casual afterthought. There was more to his tone than just the inklings of barely-there concern and it was in Winters’ eyes that all the words were kept about how much he would miss the nights spent in and the quiet conversations or the way Nixon got in one of his Vat 69 fueled moods.
Like right then, when his knee happened to be doing very pleasing things to the inseam of Winters’ thigh.
“Speirs,” Winters continued, voice shaking as he exhaled a weary breath, “will be stepping in immediately to inherit coaching duties and to let the men grow accustomed to his style.”
“Kamikaze baseball?” Nixon suggested with a wicked look in his eyes and his knee began to drift higher than before. If he was having a crisis about the notion of not having Winters around on a permanent basis, it hadn’t sunk fully into home plate just yet. “I’m sure they’ll be ready to cry Uncle within days of his practices.”
“They’re made of stronger stuff than you give them credit for,” Winters insisted, that possessive flare rushing through him.
“Yeah, I know, you’re a real Momma Bear about them. Dick, can we shut up and get to the sex, now?”
“Whatever the two of you do,” came from the other side of the wall, distinctly in Harry Welsh’s tone, “can you remember that the walls are paper thin?”
“So I shouldn’t call Kitty’s name?” Nix shouted back.
“Only if you’re reaching for stars you can’t get, Nix.”
Nixon might have argued further on the point if it wasn’t for the fact that Winters was giving him a very bemused and a very expectant look, shifting his weight just down enough to cause a slight bit of friction.
“Lew will get back to you later, Harry,” Winters calmly commented. “Keep what you heard to yourself, will you?”
“Aye aye, Cap’n.”
“Now, where were we?” Winters suggested in a far quieter tone, that expectantly-bemused look shifting to something far, far more suggestive.
*
The bar they drank in while at their Northern California stop was three-tiered and noisy and the E team had taken over the upper echelons without a word spoken. It was just how they operated. Now that they had more pull with the municipalities they were playing in, all it took was a mention that they would be there and strings would be pulled.
It was one of those nights when things started to get more complicated.
“Excuse me,” Webster muttered, inching past people and ascending the stairs to the top level of the club, standing with the bouncer and leaning in to mumble something into his ear, pressing a handful of bills into his hand and gliding right past, only stopping when he arrived at Liebgott’s side, grabbing hold of his wrist and yanking him away from the loud conversation he was having with Toye and Guarnere.
“What the fuck?” Liebgott nearly howled. “Webster, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Webster opened his mouth to speak, hesitating when Toye and Guarnere started to close in. He’d met each and every one through interviews, press junkets, and the times he did socialize with Team Express, but he had no desire to let them in on why he was there and what Joe had done, considering he didn’t think it was something that you talked about with your team.
He cleared his throat and when he launched into his fervent plea, he made sure each and every word was in German (a language he knew he and Joe both shared a working knowledge of, seeing as they had conducted full arguments in German before just to prove that they could). “You have to get out of here. Now. You can stay at my place.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Joe hissed, yanking Webster away to the side.
“You’re about to be arrested for assault. You think that’ll look good on a front page? Come on.” The news had been broken only hours ago that Joseph D. Liebgott was wanted for assault against a fan who had been throwing lowballs about the team and Joe in particular, blaspheming his family and his religion in the process. It’d been the last game of the previous season and Joe had solved the issue in the alleyway with his fists and definitely remembered the incident.
He just thought it’d have gone away seeing as he’d gone so long without hearing anything.
Now, though, he was unsure enough to at least take Webster’s word for it. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain later. Just trust me,” Webster insisted, digging his keys from out of his pocket.
“You. Why would I ever trust you?”
“Just do it.” Webster yanked Joe back to the front. “Say your goodbyes and meet me outside. The cops’ll be here any minute and you’ll be arrested and in jail and the league doesn’t need that kind of press. You need to lay low while Winters and Sink take care of this. Joe, trust me.”
Trust David Webster.
Well, Joe had done stranger in his life, he supposed.
*
David Webster was beginning to regret ever hiding Joe from the police while Winters and Nixon dealt with the fallout and the cops. It had been fine for the first twenty minutes and then Joe had started bitching about his choice of cereal, about the way the couch hurt his back, about how there wasn’t enough light in his loft. That had been the first night and now they were to the third.
David had thought he was in the clear and had even brought his on-and-off girlfriend back home with him, draping his scarf and coat on the hangar in the midst of kissing her and guiding her up to his bedroom. It was mercifully silent and he was hoping that maybe Joe was out with some of his team, giving him this so-well-earned respite.
They were up to the bedroom and half-clothed in record time, his shirt off and her jeans shed by the doorway and as they tumbled into the bed, David thanked god for small miracles like Joe Liebgott being out of the…
“Hey, Web, I’m out of smokes,” came that slightly nasal complaint of a tone from the doorway.
His girlfriend froze and David went still as a mannequin as he gaped at the doorway to find Joe in a pair of jeans that barely fit him - that would be because they weren’t his and were instead Webster’s - and a tank-top, a silver chain tucked under. Whatever mood and thrall had been cast over them earlier had dissipated in an instant flat and his girl immediately pried away and wrenched her jeans back on.
“Who is he?” she demanded immediately.
Joe lit up with a shit-eating grin and looked her over. “Me? No one,” he said and Webster sighed relief that there was nothing inherently Joe about that statement. “Well, unless you count that I’m fucking him.”
“What!?” Webster and his girlfriend echoed at once and sent furious glares in Joe’s direction. Joe just shrugged in an ‘I just do it’ way.
There was no power in the world that could stop her from storming out of the room after that point and the way she slammed the door, Webster figured he could count on his neighbors complaining about the noise, next. With every ounce of irritation, he fixed a glare on Joe and sneered with all his might.
“You’re the guy fucking me?” Webster echoed incredulously.
“Well, to be honest, technically you fuck me over every third week of the month,” Joe replied with a bitter and cruel note running through his tone. “I was just returning the favor for once.”
“Asshole,” Webster accused as he yanked on a shirt.
“Fucker,” Joe casually said in return.
“You started all this,” Webster informed him. “Way back at the bar the night you decided to completely denigrate every ounce of respectable history the game has and then you decided to piss all over my shoes and stole the girl I was flirting with.”
“Jesus Christ, Webster, that was eleven months ago! Get over it!” Joe said, as if boggling over how long he had carried this grudge.
“Says the man who keeps coming by my office to bitch at me for words,” Webster commented in return, snapping his button-down lapels and stalking right past Joe and down the stairs of the loft, heading for the kitchen.
Without a single hesitation, Joe followed him. “Maybe if you didn’t make sure you were there, we wouldn’t argue every month.” He stopped on a dime when Webster did, wrenching the drawer in the hall open and taking a fresh pack of cigarettes out from it before he shoved them into Joe’s waiting palm. Joe grinned broadly, an array of teeth on display before he snaked one out of the pack. “Thanks, Web,” he saluted and stood there, just waiting.
Waiting for a light, apparently.
Webster stared at Joe incredulously and muttered under his breath in German as he dug through his pockets and found his lighter, flicking up a flame and giving Joe a dirty look.
“Don’t look so put out, Web,” Joe lazily replied in German. “Could be worse. I could’ve told her I gave you crabs.”
“I hate you,” Webster said, voice cool with condescension and irritation.
“Feeling’s mutual, Harvard,” Joe retorted and they went their separate ways - Webster to the kitchen and Joe to the spare room.
The sound of slamming doors seemed to fade into the loft in sync and Webster pressed his back to his own thick door and gritted his teeth hard to try and rid himself of the desire to do something about Joe Liebgott, even if that involved tossing him on his ass or to the cops’ door.
*
Joe didn’t return to the team until they were crossing the state lines and heading out to Washington for their next game. Perconte, Luz, and Janovec were waiting for him outside of the rental car at the hotel as he crossed the street and shouted out a ‘hey, wait up!’, slinging his bag into the backseat and grinning lewdly, snaking a cigarette from Perconte’s hands and lighting it up.
“The prodigal son returns,” Luz announced and clapped him on the back. “Survived your exile with Webster?”
“Hey, I didn’t get arrested. Now let’s book it before I do,” Joe announced, sliding into the backseat of the car and checking the rearview mirror, as if he was waiting to see Webster pop out on the asphalt. He’d left in the morning without a single goodbye, ‘thank you’ or anything resembling kindness. He’d just left a pack of fresh carton of smokes on the table and made his way out of the loft while the other man was still sleeping. “Seattle, here we come,” he announced with a broad grin. “What’d Winters say about me missing practice?”
“Buck convinced him it was better you missed practice than wind up in the slammer,” Janovec said over his shoulder as he pulled out onto the main road.
There was still no one behind them. No cars, no trucks, no pedestrians, and definitely no annoying writers. Joe was slightly disappointed. After all the hell he’d put Webster through, he at least expected a ‘good riddance’ when he made his way.
Even as they made their way north on the highway, there was absolutely no one trailing them and he hadn’t even received a phone call to tell him that life was so much simpler and quieter without Joe there.
Fuck, it was almost as if he hadn’t gotten under Web’s skin enough.
“You’re thinking loud enough to power a whole circus, Joe,” Luz observed. “The fuck is so important that you can’t participate in a game of I Spy, huh?”
Joe didn’t even bother to dignify that crap with an answer. He dragged one of Webster’s cigarettes from his pocket and rolled down the back window to light it up and wonder just what he should have done to ensure he really, really pissed Webster off.
Or maybe he was thinking about what he ought to have done to get the man to follow him to Seattle. Fuck, it was bound to be quiet and lonely without him there to keep company. Joe winced heavily as he sucked a long drag of nicotine. He’d never admit it aloud, but he had a bad feeling he was missing David Kenyon Webster’s company.
“Fuck this,” Joe muttered, interrupted Perconte’s bickering with Luz that the color they were looking at was chartreuse, of all things. “Come on, let’s pull over and grab lunch before I starve to death, huh?”
Fuck David Webster. He didn’t deserve to get missed by Joe, and that was that.
tbc