So this guy rolled in through the Inn?s back door. He was just your regular everyday normal guy, you know? There weren't any choirs bursting into the Ode to Joy on his arrival. No nubile women to strew rosepetals in front of his wheelchair. He didn't have a halo. From the size of the bruise on his forehead courtesy of a car accident earlier in the day, he didn't even have any healing superpowers (though the chair probably told you that already, right?)

John looked around as he pulled his scarf down off his face. Nobody he recognized, but that was no big surprise. Some girl was riffing on a harmonica at the bar, some other guy was watching her. A pretty professional-looking couple were talking to one another. A minotaur was making coffee. The usual.

He cut thataway and disappeared into the kitchen, the door whip-whapping shut behind him. Inside, he made a sandwich of truly epic proportions. Meat, cheese, lettuce, meat, more meat, cheese, peppers, more meat...he slathered some dressing atop it, balanced the other half of the bun slice on top of it and scrutinized it. Maybe if he unhinged his jaw like a snake's...chips made out of some root vegetable he'd never heard of. A beer. He considered the chance that he'd picked up a concussion in the accident, and decided to have another beer just in case.

He balanced the plate on his knees. Took another look at the Sandwich, and decided to stick a toothpick in it just to make sure it didn't come apart on the way out of the kitchen. Seven toothpicks later, he was maneuvering his way through the door.

A woman dimpled at the minotaur as he came out, blue eyes shifting to move covetously over his sandwich as he rolled toward the nearest table. He nodded a hello and started unloading dinner. The first bottle of Silvermark hissed rudely as he cracked it open and Mother of God, it tasted good. And then he had a handful of something. A flyer? What? He looked after the woman in a bunny suit who?d just handed it to him, then squinted at it. It was some two-for-one advertisement for a pub down the road.

The headache got stronger as a wave of cigarette smoke rolled over him and a familiar voice drifted down with it. "Well, as I live and breathe." Wretched air, with enough smoke flushed through his nostrils that it was opaque. "If it ain't John Benandanti himself. How ya doin', boss?"

His shoulders hunched. John swiveled a look up at the massive man. "Is this our reunion tour?"

"Are we getting the trio back together? Hey, I can't sing worth s**t but I can pluck a mean bass. Or act like it." Without even asking, Jochin took a seat across the table from him. "I see you more as the drummer."

"Me and Rick Allen, huh?" He sat back in his chair, pushed the unopened bottle across to the vampire slayer.

It was snagged and opened while the cigarette hung from his lips. "Nah, you got two working arms." A wink over to one of the girls at the bar, and a sip from the bottle. It seemed that sip was the only time he wasn't huffing on the cigarette. "Word around the way from Ashanti is you're more the Tommy Lee type."

John wrinkled his brow, which made the bruise on his forehead hurt, which made him wince. "Don't know why May's still talking smack about me. I don't work for her anymore." He started pulling toothpicks out of The Sandwich.

As the girl ordered a drink behind him, Jochin blew a stream of smoke through pursed lips up into the rafters. "Nah, this was long ago. I haven't seen her in a while. Simon's outta office. I don't know if she was working for that new guy who ain't around no more. How ya been?"

"Staying busy." John shrugged a shoulder. The shoulder was sore, too, dammit. The new job's got me working late. How you doing?" After taking a prodigious bite of sandwich, he eyed Jochin through the ever-present haze of smoke that surrounded him. The pretty woman eyed his dinner again. He briefly considered writing a love letter to her, signing it ?The Sandwich? and leaving it under her pillow.

"Doing things here and there. Tha usual. Ya know?" There wasn't an ashtray nearby, so he ashed into his palm. "How's the little woman? You guys got any kids yet?"

He choked on that mouthful of beer. After a minute spent cough-hack-wheezing, he said, "She says she's not really into kids right now."

"Good for you, boss. The way she talked about you that time I took her out I thought she'd push you down the aisle and she'd have a little John in tha oven." A smirk cut wide across the man?s face, stubble moving over his jaw.

He blinked at that. Jochin and Morana? Really? "When did you go out with her?"

Ruminating through another drag, he finally spoke in a thick haze of smoke. "Whoa. S'been almost a year now. By Rhy'Din standards you guys shoulda had two kids and be divorced already."

Oh. Oh. John finally got it and shook his head. A small headshake, because that headache was refusing to let up. "I'm not with Harper anymore."

"WHA?" Jochin twitched in his seat. Then his slouch in the chair got lower, lazier. "I mean, I'm sorry to hear that, boss."

The arrested reaction got a smirk out of John. No big surprise there. He shrugged again. "It happens." He'd managed to reduce The Sandwich to a shadow of its former greatness. Now he paused in his inhaling it to look around them. Some guy had brought a dog in and had a crowd of gabbling women around him. No big surprise there, either.

"S'tha nature a things." Broad shoulders lifted in a slow shrug before they settled. "Lucky fer you ya got out without having ta pay any child support."

"It's okay." He returned to studying the man across the table from him between bites of dinner. Jochin was easy, calm, relaxed. "You got the rage turned down about five notches," he observed a couple of minutes later. "Who is she?"

"Sami." He said. "I dunno if tha two of ya's 've ever met." Again, he ashed into his palm. "How about you? Ya don't look like ya wanna stab yerself anymore. And I figure to break up with your roomate like that you gotta have a good reason."

Sami. Sami? He didn't know anyone named Sami. That got Jo another headshake. "I don't think I have." He had another sip from the bottle, and weighed whether he wanted to talk about Morana right about then. The judgment came back no. "And how f**king weird is this?"

"So just like that? Slip out the back, Jack? Get a new plan Stan? Man..." He shook his head, and tipped back more beer. The cigarette was pressed out into the ashtray. "It's really weird. We gotta make sure Harper never finds out. Else she'll think we lost our minds."

"I keep waiting for the people with the cameras to jump out. What brought this on?"

"Guy like me needs all the allies he can get." The bottle mouth was tilted in John's direction. "Ya know? And I think it'd make mom proud if she knew I was fraternizin' wit' doctors. Even if yer speciality is dead peeps."

Headache or no headache, he was starting to frown again. "So what happened?"

"Nothin'." Jochin shrugged again, and set the empty down before he stood. "You want another?"

"Yeah, I'll take one more." Then he really needed to go find something for his head. Maybe he should have let the med techs take a look at him after all.

Jochin sauntered off to the bar, winking and waving at some bar, schmoozing it up before he slid sideways to make the break in the bar. Two Silvermarks, and coins dropped in the jar. He opened both on his way back and set one in front of John. "Besides, all that tension between us got right old right quick." He grinned and took his seat across from John again. "It was gettin' cliche. Ya know. And I don't exactly see you as the rich stuffy type."

"Thanks," John said, and tried to ignore the feeling of creeping weirdness. Any minute now Riley, who hated him, was going to come skipping over to his table with a handful of flowers and a big old hug. His brain was going to straight-up explode. John was big on major cerebrovascular events. He watched a guy with a head full of horns and too many eyes go not-prowling past. That called for a drink. Pulling the top off the bag of chips, he laid it on the empty plate on the table between them. "Any idea what a 'swede' is?" He indicated the bag.

"A swede?" He examined the bag and shook his head. "Must be some new kinda street lingo I ain't never heard before."

He fished out a handful of chips and watched the crowd. Maybe this made him the swede gallery. "My parents are schoolteachers. I don't know what you mean by 'rich.'"

"Yeah, I know, thats what I was thinking. Otherwise it'd been really cliche. But yer still a doctor. And I'm still the handsome, rugged, dangerous guy from the wrong side of the tracks." He rolled his eyes and took another sip. "Cept I don't own a motorcycle."

"I think we're supposed to go get drunk and make out, then."

"I would, but Sami'd have my a** for that. Maybe even yours, too." He smirked and shook his head. "So that?s what this was all along, Benandanti? Nothing to do with the skirt, everything to do with our sexual tension? I knew there was a reason I couldn't quit you."

John laughed out loud at that, dug a knuckle into his temple afterward. "I think your virtue's safe, ma'am," he said to the man and leaned back for another drink.

"Thanks for that. I'd hate to have to have the 'Where is this going?' conversation. Or hafta introduce ya to Cavs, so he could ask you what your intentions were." Another sip. He pulled a few chips from the bag and munched them all down. It was a snack-o-caust. He had the grace not to speak with his mouth full.

"Yeah, you know, I never got to meet him." Cavanaugh, Jochin?s handler. The attention he shifted back to Jo for a moment was pointed, thoughts sharp as razors tumbling behind his eyes. Then he swore at a really potent throb and set the bottle against the lump on his forehead. Oh, yeah, that felt good.

"Count yourself lucky. I'm sure Annie told you about when they met. She told me. Holy geezus, those guys are some massive c**k blocks."

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout... The lyric drifted through his head as nerves twitched down his back. No freaking clue where that had come from. His frown deepened, and he lifted his head from its rest against the bottle. "Yeah, and something happened to May, and he was creepy as f**k." He put the bottle down and sat back.

"Yeah." Another sip, he left it down on the table. "Things're gonna get real interestin' when I put in my resignation." He stood and pushed that chair in.

And then, clear as day, John felt fingers drift down his thigh, down past the place he couldn?t feel. "Holy s**t," he breathed, and stared down at his knees. He'd been sitting at an angle to the table rather than pushing his chair in, and they were in plain view. Ordinary pair of knees. Heavy canvas pants in a dark gray. Nothing on them to explain what his brain was trying to tell him was there. "I didn't know that resigning was an option," he told his knees.

"S'not." And the grin sparked wider, cutting razor sharp between the stubble. "Take it eas' boss, ya hear? I'll catch ya around." The boots moved him to the door in a loping gait, an apex predator after prey, before he shouldered it aside and headed back out into the cold.

How long ago, did he remember the feeling most over looked, the slide of sinew, contraction of muscle, glide of cartilage against cartilage. All to merely shift a leg to the floor. Did he remember? "Yeah," he said weakly to Jochin's departing back. Then he scrubbed a palm down his thigh, from the point at which he shouldn't have been able to feel anything to his knee. His Vans-clad foot thunked onto the floor between the footplates. He stared.

Wasn't that the feeling? No stab of phantom pains...just the feeling of a movement starting. The sweet push and pull of a limb versus gravity. He put the other foot down. He'd gone pale, was shaking. He began to sweat.

The thoughts weren?t his. But who the hell else?s were they supposed to be? Come on John, do you remember that little song from an old Christmas show? The Intro was playing, John, it was time to stand.

He stood up. He stood there, swaying like a toddler, one hand clamped white-knuckled onto the edge of the table. His expression was indescribable.

Put one foot in front of the other...and soon you'll be walking ?cross the floor. Put one foot in front of the other...and soon you'll be walking out the door. You never will get where you're going....if you never get up on your feet.

He had a sense of focused stares, of people looking at him. Someone started screaming, cursing, and maybe it was at him. It didn?t matter. He was on his feet. He was standing up, at a time when he wasn?t supposed to be capable of it. Hope rose up, practically choking him.

Then he tried to take that single step forward, and went down like a cheap hooker on Silvermark Saturday Night. Crash! His feet tangled up in the guard on the wheelchair. It hopped backward and started to roll gently away. 7.5, he thought semi-hysterically, an extra half-point for the poignant roll of the chair. Somewhere a woman was laughing, distantly. Maybe that was in his f**king head, too.

He struggled up onto his hands and one hip. Got his spine set against his table's leg and scowled at the chair, which was just out of reach. His glasses had been knocked askew. He straightened them, got into his chair with a stranger?s assistance. Home. His head was killing him, and he couldn?t breathe. He just wanted to go home.

(Adapted from live chat, with thanks to Jochin Nagadari and The Artist?s Muse.)