Ramifications: Day 3

Word Count: 18,009

Summary of Events:

Lachlan got one positive reply for a place to stay from his contacts, but only for one night, which wasn't what he wanted. Dom's efforts to find a place for Lachlan on his end also proved fruitless, and then the group who was serving supper arrived. Lachlan asked the superior gangsters for advance pay or something, but only ended up losing his temper and getting a bullet in his shoulder. Dom was helping some of the group pack food hampers for handing out to the people they served meals to when Lachlan arrived; Dom directed Lachlan to his office until they were done. After sitting in Dom's office for a long time alone, Dom finally appeared and told Lachlan the results of his efforts to find a place for Lachlan to stay . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

""None of my contacts could take you in either, so my wife and I've decided we'll let you stay with us, free of charge, for however long you need," Dom said. "Even though we don't want money we drafted up a bit of a . . . code of conduct sort of thing, just so you know what kind of things we'd appreciate you did, as a member of our household."

With something of a hesitancy, Dom held out the document to Lachlan.

Lachlan took it and read the neat writing. He wasn't surprised at many of the conditions: no parties, no friends over — it wasn't like he'd want to invite people over to a house that wasn't his. His mess was to stay in his room, he was to be respectful of their sleeping hours — and preferably not blast loud music in general — dispose of all his garbage properly, and all manner of other things he could agree to doing.

Reaching the bottom, he found Dom's signature was already scrawled across the bottom in sweeping, looping cursive that Lachlan could read rather easily, save between the O and the K of Dominik, which dissolved into basically a squiggly line with a couple dots over top of it.

Lachlan took up a pen from the desktop and scrawled his own signature across the bottom. It looked rather short compared to Dom's and the capital letters looked small too, but it wasn't like Lachlan had to sign legally binding documents all that often.

"You can come downstairs if you'd like, we're almost done cleaning up," Dom said.

Lachlan got to his feet, a stab of pain penetrated his shoulder. He needed some more painkillers.

He followed Dom slowly until eventually Dom disappeared. Lachlan stopped in the laundry area, where he'd left his repacked backpack with the grocery bags that his clothes had been neatly folded and placed into by whoever had emptied the dryer.

Drawing out the small glass bottle from one of the side pockets, as well as the syringe body, Lachlan fetched a needle from one of the other pockets, affixed it to the body, and then removed the slender paper sheath that guaranteed the sterility of the needle.

Firmly he thrust the needle into the special opening in the bottle's cap before turning the bottle upside down and drawing out the plunger to fill the syringe until it was halfway full.

He drew the needle out of the bottle's cap and put the bottle away before lightly flicking the syringe to guarantee no air bubbles.

Sliding his right sleeve up to expose some of the fine blue veins that crossed his wrist and even snaked up his forearm, he carefully slid the fine tip of the needle into his skin at the thickest vein, pulling back the plunger a little to guarantee that he was in the vein before slowly depressing the plunger and emptying the contents of the syringe into his bloodstream."