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While he didn't approach the house with caution, he did with watchful alertness. His ears quivered at attention, his yellow eyes flashing like cheap jade in the scanty light. What did a person get out of sneaking up on an empty house? Not much except to look like a jackass, and Obi had too much pride and not enough tact to sneak. Testing the broken handle on the door, he shoved it open. It rattled. He didn't go in any further.

It smelt like dust, eviction, and piss. The scent alone made a headache wiggle its way through his temple, his nose curling. A huff brought other smells close enough to taste: disturbed dirt, expensive cologne, blood-- the latter set light to Obi's bones. It smelt both fresh and old.

It also smelt empty. The worthless chains in Obi's hands unraveled and he immediately stepped into the house, across old newspapers, cigarette butts, and crushed beer cans, over burnt-out roaches, broken rum bottles, and the memories of whacked-out parties. Not the usual place he found Esben's broke-a**. This place was cheap and used.

Suddenly Obi lost his edge and just felt tired, adrenaline unused, settled.

"Hey, cabron, how's the ground taste?"

Enough walking had him in a big, empty room, filled with nothing but flattened boxes and a heap that was shaped like his best friend. Obi lingered at the door, a brief fear flicking through him: what if he's bleeding out, what if I can't help him, what if they come back? I should call the cops. I'm gonna call the cops.

His hand squeezed the phone in his pocket, the plastic creaking beneath his paw. It was his third that month, a cheap-pre-paid piece of s**t. Two had gone down during fights out on the island, the third forgotten during a swim-- all testaments to his loyalty to that God damn bear. Obi crossed the floor, breathing in Esben's blood and dirt and grit and sweat. He knelt swiftly, carefully, touched the bear's shoulder.

Now that he was right there, he was infinitely gentler. Wordlessly, he began to untie the taut ropes fastening Esben to his chair. No questions or insults, just a tense, quiet silence and the hiss of ropes as they came undone in his hands.

Obi snorted in light of Esben's feeble retaliation. He felt that a response like 'least you ain't dead yet' was an unnecessary addition to the scene playing out before him. Esben wouldn't have heard him anyway, drifting in and out of consciousness as he was.

Once the bear was free from the ropes, Obi rolled him out on to the floor and crouched at his side, using his cellphone as a light to try and assess the damage. His head, he figured, took a beating considering the amount of blood caked there. Not a big deal-- Esben didn't have much to lose anymore in the way of brains. He peeled up his shirt and drew away with a hiss; bruises were flowering across his abdomen like church rosettes, blood stood out like tooth marks in his skin. Obi touched his ribs: tender. He'd be lucky if nothing was broken. The blood from his lip was from an open cut, so he prayed that there was no internal bleeding going on here.

Seeing Esben wrapped in such bruised and broken skin never ceased to make Obi feel ill, never failed to make him wonder if this may be the last time he could save him. Obi pulled the grimy shirt down with a squeeze of his eyes and a released breath. Then, fisting his hands in it, he hauled the bear up to his feet and supported his weight across his shoulders.

"You'd think you'd lose a couple of pounds from all this," he joked tiredly, dragging Esben's sorry a** out of the building. He had already punched the Mainland Taxi Services into his phone, had his phone jimmied against his shoulder and ear; he'd long since added them to his speed dial because of these escapades.

"What do you mean you won't pick us up? Dude, there's no one here and my friend is wasted. You expect me to carry him home?" A pause. "You've picked us up before! How is this any different?" Obi shifted Esben's weight, rolled one shoulder back. "I don't care about what your boss said, you can't just leave us here! It's money. s**t!" His brows creased, "Hello?"

Maybe it was dumb to call a company as it were, what with Esben in the state he was in. Maybe he should invest in a shadier cab company. Either way, Obi was at a loss. He lowered himself and the bear onto the curb, thumbing the buttons on his phone so that they lit up in the gloom of the neighborhood. There was no way to get back to the coast and rocking the wounds he was, Esben's condition would worsen if he piled him into the skiff and took him back to the island.

Obi rolled down his list of options, the pad of his finger pausing over one name. He groaned and looked away, briefly rubbing his temple with the edge of the phone as if to dispel the way the skin beneath his collar seemed to heat up. When he made a late night call like this, he didn't want it to be over something like... Obi glanced down at Esben with a sigh. Banyan's name lit up like stars as he hit call and put the phone gingerly to his ear, as if awaiting teeth on the other end.

"Oye, mama... " he began in his most genuinely sweet and boyish tones, milking that charm to make up for the ungodly hour. "I need a favor...."

His guilty laugh needed a little practice at sounding more like a laugh and less like a burbled giggle, but at least it was earnest in its guilt. It isn't exactly good, he explained in hushed, monotonous tones as if speaking any louder would disturb his unconscious friend and the half-asleep woman on the other end on his phone. Obi stopped and started a lot, re-explained the story and went back several days in order to try and elaborate on how it may have happened in order to justify his call to Banyan, as if the story behind the story would somehow make the fact he'd called at this ungodly hour that much better. He made a lot of hand motions on his part, flicked his hand out, drew the house with the thick digits of his paw, pantomimed Esben getting his gray matter beaten out.

Or what he has left of it, he segued in a cheap attempt at a joke. At the end of his explanation, his massive paw dropped back into his lap, only to jump back up to keep the bear from falling head-first into the concrete.

I'm sorrys and lo sientos were sprinkled in between sugary please mamis and I'll make it up to yous as if he were standing at the doorway coaxing a slighted lover. At the end he paused for a long, pregnant moment, breath held deep in his stomach:

"We just need someone to pick us up. A place to crash. We'll be out of your hair before your deadline, lo prometo."

There was a quiet plea of please don't hate me for this underlying the rasp of his usual voice, a tired, rattled tone so unlike the Doberman that made him crush the phone to his cheek.

"Heh, I try," Obi grinned feebly. "But Esben's not too cute right now. He looks like the back room of a carneria." He made a face on his end of the phone, a worried back tilt of his ears, "Well, good to know."

The canine rolled his head slightly to the side, ears falling to like twitching antennae. Hospitals had too many security guards and too many curious doctors wanting to know what happened. And-- his brain was pacing a mile a minute-- what if they had some grunts stationed inside of the wings? While they made Esben a regular punching bag, he never knew when they would take it a step further and send him swimming at the bottom of the Bass'ken Lake. His instinct told him it was soon, but that may have been panic talking.

"I don't have the money to pay a doctor right now. They're as good as sharks, anyway," he said with more bitterness than he meant to let on. It really didn't help that he wasn't a fan of hospitals and medics in the first place. He cleared his throat, "I'm sure if you just have some peroxide, a sewing kit, and some band-aids, we can MacGuyver him up or something."

He took a long, side-long look at Esben before adding: "And maybe some Tylenol...."

"Southside Aekea. This place is a s**t-stain, Banyan, wouldn't ask you here no how, Mami. But that housing complex they zoned off? Yeah, we're in the back of that. The tigueres will be comin' out soon too, I can smell it," he observed with a curled upper lip. It wouldn't be any problem, not when he was called a tiguerazo himself... but these cats on the mainland had a different flavor. He didn't much like their style at all.

"We could always call Dr. Frankenstein," he said with a smirk, charming lines cutting down his cheek. "Pretty sure Dr. Frank likes putting s**t that's falling apart back together. Or all the king's men. We'd be straight with that kind of help."

The gentle banter helped alleviate the tension pulling the cords of Obi's neck and forearms taut. He stopped trying to crush the phone in his large paw and instead released his worry by tapping a reggaeton tumbao with his foot. While he knew Banyan was a big girl that could take care of herself (she had a handful of cojones tucked away in her little purse, he was certain), his machismo pride was recoiling at the fact that he was asking her to pick them up in this part of town. It made his skin prickle uncomfortably; he knew if he was still a puppy, he'd be on high alert.

Her concern pulled him from his reverie, mouth slackening slightly. It prompted an affectionate smile in spite of the situation (supporting Esben's weight wasn't getting any easier).

"A hug? Maybe a pillow. Possibly a beer, but I think a coke would do." He laughed.

Obi had given up trying to change Esben's ways-- at least for the next six months. It was a routine they went through like the monthly cleaning of a machine to keep it well tuned and running. Esben would do something dumb as hell, Obi would jump in before he got himself a curbie, and then when Esben had enough motor skill to form a sentence like 'I gotta take a piss,' Obi would lay into him with a lecture, coaxing at first, you could work at the bodega and I know some apartments are opening on Ponce de Leon, but it would then dissolve into yelling, then a lot of posturing which usually ended in the Doberman throwing his hands in the air. Esben would change his ways for a couple a days, then fall through again, as easily as a goldfish through rice paper.

So then Obi would tell him, Dude, I can't do this. You're gonna kill me. Stop calling. And he would. Until he invited him to a party and he just couldn't resist, and suddenly they were hermanos again, getting into crazy shenanigans like always.

What Banyan told him his roommate did too, You're a good kid, Obi. You need to straighten your s**t out. Don't you have priorities?

"I can't believe I left two alcapurrias on the table because of this," he grunted, lifting his hips to pocket his phone. But his words were only superficially bitter. He was careful to make sure Esben's weight was balanced against his side and he wasn't laying on the ground.

His ears quivered when dim lights fell across them. Obi tore his eyes away and rolled to his feet, tugging Esben's arm across his shoulders. When the bear hung like dead weight, he chuffed a disbelieving laugh, squatted, and heaved him up and across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. When Esben was conscious, this was usually followed by slamming him into a couch and trying to lock in an ankle lock until he tapped out, but....

"Bonnie's here, Clyde," he said. He jutted his chin out at the approaching car in greeting, jogging towards it; the dim lights seemed to amplify the movement beginning to wake-up in the back of the culdesac.