RESEARCH ( barry berkman.. ) ✔

o27. alcohol/gum..

Legally bound agreements: the human way of going around our primary trust issues since the very beginning. Contracts are hardly just pieces of paper in the value they weight through the prism of etiquette and reinforcement in law, for their domain of jurisdiction is also vast. Goods, services, money and even vows, they hold a bond as tight as a necklace of rope, around the lack of trust in the parties involved in such deals.

Adelaide's trust in that moment was certainly with the unfounded faith she will never drink before attempting taxing activities such as dealing with mobs. Though she left Batir's house on her own feet, only a few street away, she discovered the cold night air kneeled her besides a trashcan in an alley, barfing out her intestines. And for what? One bad drinking choice.

The nausea had ended eventually, leaving room enough for fatigue to strike back a full swing. Adelaide fished her phone out of her jean's small pockets, squinting her eyes to call, if not an Uber, at least Barry. Her body weakened, so she chose to sit down and hope the splitting headache will pass her unharmed. 

Surprisingly, before she could see anything else clearly on the screen, not even the other missed calls or the fact that she was running out of battery, Adelaide got a call. Though she disliked what it implied, answering it seemed like the most convenient, low-energy choice, until she figures out a way to walk this bad choice out to her box of an apartment.

"What is it, Hank?" Adelaide almost shouted into the phone, holding it at first to her ear with her hand, and then giving up this extra effort altogether, by keeping the device in place with her risen shoulder. Her hand flopped in her lap and her back furthered into the hard brick wall, wanting to imagine it was a softer, warmer surface.

"Ouch, why the aggressiveness?" Hank's awkward laugh scratched her ears the wrong way, making Addie flinch one eye closed. "Is this a bad moment? Am I interrupting...?"

"Yes, you are interrupting my death," she groaned back. "What is it?"

Her insistence got faced with a pause. "Shit, wait, are you actually dying? Because I don't want to sit here, asking shit of you while you are bleeding or sick or...," he paused in a little too vocal of a shiver, "That would be fucked up, even for me."

"So it's about work?" Adelaide sighed. She didn't have to squint her eyes at her phone, held too lightly put by her shoulder and jawline, in order to be able to tell the detail which she could finally roll her eyes in peace to. "How come you always want us to talk about work at night? You're in deep shit with Batir, I know, but working night shifts has never been on any of my contracts."

"We...," Hank hesitated, slightly puzzled himself, "don't have a contract yet."

"I was being metaphoric," Adelaide pushed her back off the wall and realized the annoyance and curiosity which Hank triggered in her have electrocuted away most of her sickness. Not all the dizziness have left her yet and certain parts of her body felt numb while other, like her throat, felt on fire. Addie was rather certain, despite the trash being next to her, she was the one smelling badly too.

"Uhm, did you die-?"

"I don't have a ride. If you want to meet, you'll have to come pick me up," Adelaide cut short Hank's misplaced worry. After Barry's warnings being noted into her mind, her rough, low tone was most welcomed to accentuate her current seriousness.

"Oh," some excitement returned to Hank's glee way of doing business. For a Chechen with Barry's weariness earned and nailed forever into existence, Hank could not yet be seen as vile by Adelaide, who ever only met this version of him, almost incapable of doing any atrocities. "Alright, okay, I can come by. Where are you at?"