The walk up to the apartment was uneventful, and I managed to get us both through my door with minimal banging of elbows. I didn’t even drop my keys.

I had him on the couch, a fresh glass of water near his head, the bucket set up and was just laying the blanket over him when the door opened.

I didn’t bother to look up to see Bren’s disappointed face. He was just going to have to deal with this. “He was unconscious in the bathroom,” I said. “And -”

“I know.” Bren sighed. “Orin told me.”

I looked up to find Orin there as well, his huge frame filling our doorway. I nodded, surprised at how relieved I was to see this perfect stranger. “Thank you,” I told him, quietly. For being there to help. For telling Bren, and helping him to understand.

He nodded, slowly, his eyes on the mess of black hair arranged over the couch. I followed his gaze.

“I think he’s doing okay,” I ventured. “He hasn’t woken up, but -”

“Coop,” Bren said, his voice careful.

So maybe he didn’t understand. I needed him to; needed him to get why I had to do this, if just this time. “No one cared.” I pulled the blanket over him. “No one would have known.”

“Coop,” Bren said again, quieter. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I know.” My voice was just as quiet, and my eyes were on the still form before me.

“He isn’t good for you.”

“I know.”

“This is like playing with fire.”

“I know.”

“Shit.” I could hear Bren crossing his arms. “You gonna say something besides ‘I know’?”

“I know,” I joked feebly. Bren’s silence didn’t sound amused, so I sighed and started again. “The whole fucking bar, Bren. Everyone there, they all see him, they all know. And no one’s checking in on him, everyone just uses him for what they want. And he doesn’t care. He can’t, not when he needs that place like he does, not when he sees himself.” I took a deep breath. “He doesn’t have anyone. He’s alone.”

“Cooper.” I could hear the understanding in Bren’s voice, in the way he pushed my name towards me. “He isn’t you.”

“No.” I knew that was true, I knew it, but still… “But I was almost him.”

Orin gave a look, but my eyes never left the back of the man before me as I watched him breathe.

“That doesn’t make him your responsibility.”

I passed my hands over my eyes and stood. “I know.” I made my way into the kitchen for a glass of water of my own.

Orin followed me, a little bit behind. I knew what was coming and steeled myself, settling truths on my shoulders and making the words ready.

“Adam is really worried about this.”

I nodded. “He just doesn’t want me fucking up a good thing.”

“Can I ask…” he started, then shook his head, unsure how to continue.

“Drugs,” I just said, hoping that would be enough. I didn’t want to get into specifics, didn’t want to talk about sleeping in my car after I lost the last apartment I could afford, didn’t want to talk about the bar fights, didn’t want to remember burning through job after job. How my friends disappeared, how I turned on my family. “Alcohol too, I guess, but.” I shrugged.

“What made you stop?”

“I got a wake up call.” I’d had a lot of wake up calls, but I finally got one that I answered.

“You got hurt,” he guessed, but I shook my head.

“I got hurt all the time. I had shit that could numb that, and the more dumb shit you do the more you think you deserve it.” I saw Orin nod, slow and easy, but knew he didn’t understand. Not really. “But hurting someone else? That’s a whole different ball game.”

I watched Orin pause, his eyes taking me in.

“Bar fight,” I explained quietly before his imagination could run wild. “I was trashed. He was trashed. I was high. I donno, I don’t really remember it.” I did; I remembered it real well, remembered it in nightmares and the way my body never let me really let loose anymore, not outside the ring, or around Bren, or anywhere where there weren’t people I trusted to stop me. I breathed; you did this, you can talk about it. “I put the guy in a coma.”

“Jesus,” I heard Orin breathe.

“Yeah.” My voice was just as quiet. I drank a bit of water and waited, knowing he’d have questions.

I was right. I could feel him shifting in front of me. “It’s alright,” I told him, even though it wasn’t. “You can ask.”

“You still drink.”

“Yeah.” The glass felt cool in my hand. “Alcohol was never really my trigger, you know? I had an unhealthy relationship with it, sure. So I quit it for a while. When I came back I just had to be careful, really, really careful.” I didn’t get drunk; not anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to, all the fucking time. But I didn’t. I could control that.

Orin moved on to harder questions. “I thought you couldn’t fight if you had a record.”

“That isn’t true. Lots of guys come to MMA to get clean, in one way or another.” I tapped my finger against the glass. “But I don’t have a record.”

He frowned and I shrugged, feeling sick. “He didn’t have anyone, not really. He was just some old drunk, the bar’s bastard, you know? No one liked him. No one really knew him. No family, no friends, just the drink. So when it came time to act as witness, there wasn’t anyone willing to go on record and say it was me involved. Fuck, there wasn’t anyone willing to say they’d even seen him at the damn bar that night. So the case got dropped.” Not even the police were there for him, in the end.

“Fuck,” Orin summed up.

“Yeah.” I sat there, remembered how I’d curled up in the alley, blood on my hands and seeping into my soul. So drunk I could barely see. My dealer had cut me off the morning before because I’d told him - it didn’t matter. I was drunk to deal with the withdrawal. I was fighting because I was pissed at what I’d become. Or maybe it was the other way around; I was drunk to deal with what I’d become, and I was pissed at the withdrawal. Or maybe both were true. “It’s sick, but it wasn’t really that I’d hurt the guy that got me clean. It was that I was becoming him, you know? I was him. No friends, check. No one to come visit me in the hospital, check. It was like, I looked at him there in that hospital bed, knew I was his only visitor, ever, in the entirety of his stay, and thought. You know. The only reason that’s not me is because I won.” I rubbed my hands, feeling the aches that multiple stress fractures had put there. I’d gone to the guy’s funeral three years later when his kidney had given out. I’d been one of three attendees. “No one wants to end up there.”

“No,” Orin agreed quietly.

“So I got clean. I joined a gym. I met Bren.” I shrugged. Three years of my life, summed up in three sentences. “Now that we fight pro, there’s no looking back now. We get drug tested constantly and there’s no time for going out and binging. Plus the calories, and the water weight?” I managed a small smile, and Orin smiled back. “It’s a great system, pressures me to stay away from all the shit.”

“And now you bring a goddamn junkie into our home.” That was Bren. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, but when I did I just saw understanding. I breathed. “And you keep my lover away from my bed.”

Orin smiled, a soft and sloppy expression. “Sorry, baby.”

Bren disappeared into the bedroom, muttering, “You’d better be,” and both Orin and I chuckled.

“He’s a good one,” I mentioned, just on the right side of affectionate, and Orin turned that sloppy smile to me. “You gonna come to his fight?”

I watched the smile start to fade. “I…” He shifted. “That’s what we were fighting about.”

I patted his shoulder. “It isn’t an easy thing, to see the person you love surrounded by such violence.”

The sudden look of panic and joy on his face told me that I had told him that he was in love with Bren before he’d known. Damnit. “I’ll be there,” I quickly said to distract him from whatever was running through his head. “So. If that helps.”

“Yeah,” he said distractedly, his hand huge on mine for just a moment. “Excuse me.”

I watched, smiling, as he made his way quickly into Bren’s bedroom and closed the door firmly. Good for them. Then I made my own way to bed, hoping that things would be better in the morning.