Roughly On Par with the Cakemaker of Kiev

"Excuse me?"

Eliot. Don't beat up the kid with glasses. That'd be tacky.

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But Alec thought it was entirely in Jerkface's wheelhouse.

"You heard me!" he retorted, scared out of his wits but not backing down. "I wasn't the only guy waking up in that bed with no pants on. Just the most--" ALEC DON'T DO IT. "Well-endowed."

Was there anyone in the clinic this week? Asking for a friend.

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Eliot as a grown-up was all about control, especially over himself. It was an intrinsic part of who he was.

Eliot as a teenager? Not so much.

He did still know how to throw a punch, though.

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And Alec knew how to take them. Not well, like how to mitigate the damage, but more in the 'this wasn't his first run-in with bullying' way. He was a skinny black kid with glasses who played the violin and liked computers.

He took the punch right to the face, head snapping back with the force of it. His eye felt like it was on fire and the skin above it split open like an overripe melon. "Yeah," he said, a little dizzy. "You punch like a redneck, too."

ALEC PLEASE. STOP CHANNELING STEVE.

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"You don't know when to shut your goddamn trap!"

Look at that, Alec, you made Church Boy curse.

He threw another punch, throwing in all his pent up rage and confusion and fear behind it. He didn't have the surgical precision he would in later years, but that mostly just meant he wouldn't know when to stop.

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And Alec just kept talking, because he had a smart mouth to go along with the rest of him.

"Not what..." he said, trying not to whimper, "you looked like...you wanted to say...yesterday morning."

He was going to die, but at least he wasn't going to die backing down from some homophobic, redneck bully.

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Eliot was going to hate himself later. He kind of hated himself right now. He was too angry for words at this point, just letting out an abbreviated roar.

And he just. Kept. Punching.

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Even Cristina couldn't be sustained on coffee and cigarettes alone, so she ended up at the diner after the coffee shop, looking for food.

"What. The. Fuck." She took a beat to just stare, then picked up her nice, big, heavy anatomy textbook and swung it at the angry white guy's head. "Get off of him! Oh my god!"

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It was always the angry white guys, wasn't it?

Alec was curled up, trying to protect his head with his arms and his stomach with his knees, just waiting for it to stop. He'd run out of trashtalk to say and was mostly struggling not to cry.

You know. Out loud.

The commotion finally made its way back to the kitchen, where the rest of the staff made their way out to stare, horrified.

Cook tried to grab hold of Eliot. "You're gonna thank me for this on Monday," he grunted.

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Eliot reeled from the blow to the head (he hadn't built up his crazy endurance yet, either) and let himself be dragged, even as he stayed spitting mad. "Lemme go! That son of a bitch had it coming!"

He would probably be too busy hiding to thank anyone on Monday.

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"For what, being black?!" Cristina stood protectively over the kid on the floor and raised her book again. "Jesus, all I wanted was a snack, and instead I'm witnessing a fucking hate crime!"

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Alec picked himself up a little bit, spitting blood onto the floor. "He jus' don't like me tellin' folks we were naked in bed together," he said, hoping people weren't noticing the tears rolling down his face.

Yeah, fuck you, Jackass, if you didn't think he wasn't going to make that sound as dirty as possible.

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Eliot let out another roar at that and tried to break past the cook and now the dishwasher, his fists already swinging.

"Shut up, you little freak!"

Well. At least he wasn't using any specifically homophobic slurs?

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"Ah," Cristina said. She raised her book at Eliot again threateningly as the kitchen staff dragged him away to throw him in the freezer, then looked back at the kid on the floor. "You need better boyfriends."

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"Ugh, like I'd ever date that asshole," Alec said, reaching up to touch his face and wincing. "It was jus' how we woke up yesterday. He freaked out."

Alec had also been freaking out, but not like that.

"Am I bleedin' bad?"

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"Man. All I got was a swanky hotel room full of medical journals and tequila." She set her book down on a nearby table and offered Alec a hand. "Not super bad. Unless you've got a clotting disorder or something."

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"Wanna trade?" Alec grumbled. He didn't like alcohol much--or at all, really. Tasted gross, make folks mean, made folks stupid--but alcohol never beat him up, either.

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"And end up with Honky McTemper over there? Hell no. He's not my type."

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"I don't think he's anyone's type," Alec muttered. "Who's interested in America's Next Most Wanted?"

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"Him? Way too high profile." Cristina shook her head. "He'll go back to Podunk, Arkansas or wherever he's from, get some dead end factory job, and eventually go down for beating his wife. All the while moaning about what hot shit he was in high school."

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"Nobody cares you were quarterback in high school once you go to college!" Alec yelled towards the freezer. He doubted Jackass could hear him but it made him feel better. Especially since he was still sniffling. "I hate that guy. And all the guys like him."

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"Maybe he'll blow out his knees and get addicted to painkillers. That'd be pretty funny."

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