"I mostly try not to get into any fights to begin with."

"Then they'll find you and it'll be your funeral, pal."

"Lasted this long," he says, with a shrug.

"Hiiiildaaaaaa," calls the drunk, staggering back in. "Where's my booooooze?"

    "Aye, aye, sit down you bastard and I'll get you it."

Hmm.

Zash stands up and starts to drag his table to be next to that of the two people he'd just been talking to.

"—hey, what's the bright idea?"

"Drinking with friends is always better than alone."

"Hear, hear!" says drunk guy.

    "We're not friends," grumbles the first guy from the other table.

"Why don't we introduce ourselves? I'm Z, this guy doesn't have a name, how about you three?"

First guy snorts. "Gabriel."

    "Hal."

        "Paul," says the third guy who had been quiet until now.

"Nice to meet you all!" He fills his own glass (a separate one that does not contain spat-out water) with whisky (no rocks, though, ice is a commodity) and lifts it to the air. "To new friends!"

"To new friends!" says nameless drunk.

    "Hear, hear," sighs Hal, and the other two join into the cheers.

By the end of the night Zash has managed to turn the whole pub into one happy group of drunken people singing together (as opposed to various separate small groups of people being grouchy and quiet). The fact that he bought alcohol for others pretty liberally certainly helped matters, but he likes to believe that there was some amount of charm and charisma involved, too. Even the women his nameless friend had probably been harassing earlier in the evening for alcohol got over their grudge and joined in.

It probably also helps that it seems his nameless friend really is the town drunk and people are used to his antics. And they do know where he lives.

So as people start to file away, so too do the two of them, with Zash once again mostly-carrying nameless dude to get him back home. The guy falls asleep halfway there and Zash, after checking that there's no one nearby to watch them, easily lifts the man up in a bridal carry and effortlessly strides towards where he's been told he should go. Then it's a few seconds of patting his new friend's pockets for his key and they're inside his apartment.

Even knowing he's the town drunk this place is still impressive. The main item of furniture is empty bottles of alcohol, and they're everywhere: on the floor, on the tables, on the kitchen counter, in the sink, under the bed, in the bathroom. The smell is just as bad, a pungent mixture of alcohol, dust, mold, and sick that would get to anyone who isn't completely inured to it or at least too drunk to notice.

The man had probably been speaking the truth when he said he lives in the pub; he likely only spends any time here when he's forced to not be there, and he likely only doesn't die of hunger due to Hilda's kindness. There certainly isn't any food here.

Not really outside what Zash had expected, if pretty close to the worst case.

Well, he's got his work cut out for him, doesn't he.

He gently places his new nameless friend on his bed and gets to it.

The man wakes up and he doesn't have a headache. Well, he does, but it's such a small one he can't even feel it. At least compared to his personal longtime friend of every morning of the past several years. But he's still so used to it that he takes a while to actually open his eyes, what with the purely instinctive flinch reaction he has to light due to aforementioned frequent hangovers. But when he does eventually open them he's almost convinced the reason he doesn't have the headache is because he's dreaming.

What other explanation does he have for, for, for...

There's not a bottle in sight. His floor is spotless, his clothes are folded, he can actually see all of his walls.

The place is, in a word, pristine.

He almost thinks there's a bad smell coming from somewhere before he realises that what this is is a lack of smell. The place has no smell at all—except, perhaps, for a background note of detergent.

What the fuck.

He gets up, slowly walks around, and tries to remember the previous night. He was drunk, obviously, and at the pub—Lin and Eko got fed up with him and threw him out and Lin hit him with a gun—then there were those twins—no, it was just one guy, Z, but he said he does have a twin—and the guy asked where he lived, then gave him water, then whiskey, and then somehow everyone was happy and cheerful and singing and drunk together and then he passed out and...

...did. Did Z bring him here and. Clean his apartment. Overnight???

Well, he supposes it's probably afternoon already, judging by the light seeping through his blinds, but STILL.

He goes to his bathroom, turns the light on, and has to shield his eyes from the reflection. He doesn't remember the last time he saw the floor shining so much. The smell of soap is stronger here, and there definitely isn't a smell of sick anymore, at all. His toilet is clean, his sink is clean, his bathtub is clean, everything is so clean.

Maybe he went into a coma and Z spent a whole month here cleaning stuff for him. That'd make more sense than this having happened overnight.

He starts crying, and he doesn't know why, except he does know why, but he doesn't want to admit that this is the most kindness anyone's shown him in years and it was a stranger and.

And he's going to take a shower. And change into clean clothes. And then go look for this saint he seems to have run into.

The saint isn't hard to find; this isn't a town so small that they keep notice of every single outsider, it's in the middle of a trade route and has representatives of a couple of major banks (they even accept credit chits!) and even has a port for sand steamers that gets very occasionally used, but the bright red and yellow kid with the big orange shades really does kind of stick out like a sore thumb. After some asking around, he can eventually be found at the second street market helping Dennis peddle plant meat he's reselling.

"Nameless guy, hi!"

"Hey, uh, Z."

"Sleep okay? Hangover not too bad?"

    "I, uh."

"Z, he's gonna drive customers away, if you wanna chat take a break."

"Roger that. Back in a little bit."