Project 43

Good thing or not

"I like you," Dominik pointed out as he and Elias sat on a couch in the corner of the bar. It was a Friday night so the place was packed, the two had been able to get off work for the night and have the owner take the shift.

Elias just raised an eyebrow and looked at his new friend with a slight smirk. Dominik was a weird person. He was very friendly and nice to his friends but incredibly cold and distant to people he didn't know. Over the last few weeks, however, Dominik had taken it upon himself to teach Elias the ins and outs of the city.

Dominik was Elias' only real co-worker at the dingy, small bar he was forced to work at if he wanted to survive. The black-haired man seemed to only work at the bar to sneak a drink in when no one was looking. Dominik was a funny guy and so easy to read that he seemed to be incapable of telling a single lie even when it would have made things a lot easier for him. Elias figured that was why a lot of important people kept him around.

"You're eerily calm all the time. Like you're planning your next move while the people around you are talking their heads off," Dominik explained with a glass of rum swinging in his hand. Elias just chuckled lightly shaking his head but took another sip of his whiskey.

"No one has ever called me, eerily calm before," Elias pointed out. "Don't know if it's a good thing or not," he continued, observing the dancing crowd in front of them.

"I don't know either yet," Dominik simply said. "But I wanna dance with that girl over there," he continued completely changing the subject and quickly swinging his feet off the table.

"Come on," Dominik said as he got up.

"No, I don't dance," Elias replied earning an eye roll from his friend.

"You really are weird," Dominik said before turning around and walking over to the girl he had gestured at before. He didn't say it to be mean and Elias could easily understand that to Dominik, 'weird' was a good thing.

Elias watched Dominik walking up to the girl with confidence that could only be found in hard drugs. In the last weeks Elias had spent with Dominik, he had realized his supersoldier resistance to alcohol didn't work as well with other substances. He needed more stuff to get him going, but it was fun to escape reality every once in a while, he was still in his twenties.

"No! Go away!" Elias heard someone call over the loud music. He looked over to his side and saw a girl with long, curly brown hair walking away from a tall, buff man somewhere in his thirties. The man had a bunch of tattoos down his arm, if Elias hadn't been focused on something else, he would have stopped to admire them.

Elias got up from the couch slowly and gently rolled up his sleeves and took a few steps toward the two people. The girl looked annoyed but Elias could see fear behind her cold expression, like she didn't want the man to see it.

"She told you to stop," Elias said walking up to the man who must have been two heads taller than the short man. The girl looked slightly relieved to see someone stepping in but still concerned.

"Stay out of it, kid," the man said before making a big mistake. He lifted his hand and roughly shoved Elias' shoulder. The shorter man saw red and immediately his fist collided with the tall man's jaw with a force that made his footing falter.

Before the man had enough time to realize what had happened, Elias grabbed the back of the tall man's head and kneed the man in the face. Elias heard the crunch as the tall man's nose broke on impact.

"Oh, you're dead," the man said with burning anger on his face. Elias readied himself for the sloppy attack that the man would throw his way only for him to be cut short.

"Not to interrupt, but would you gentlemen like to take this matter outside?" Dominik asked standing beside the two men.

Elias took advantage of the tall man's moment of distraction and knocked him out with a single punch.