Nick pondered over things as he sat in the break room for a while, as per Charles’ suggestion. He rolled the bottle of water between his hands as he thought about what the other man had said to him, but also on how to handle things going forward. By the time he’d gotten through two-thirds of the bottle, he’d come to at least one decision. Setting the bottle down, he pulled out his phone, and called the pharmacy he usually went to, and requested a refill on his pain meds, expressing his desire to pick them up that evening since they were open late.
Nodding a hello to the occasional person who passed through, he continued to drink the water until the bottle was empty. Stretching out his knee, massaging it a little before he stood, he then made his way over to the recycling bin and dropped the bottle in, and collected Chase before heading to his truck.
There were two stops before heading home – one to the pharmacy to collect the meds, and one to grab a bite to eat, since he hadn’t had much at the spontaneous block party earlier in the day. Now, his thoughts were preoccupied on what others might say or do if they knew he was using the pills again, and wondered if he should hide them. By the time he arrived home, he decided to just tuck them away discreetly in the medicine cabinet for now.
Charles had made a lot of sense, and had helped. He seemed like a decent enough guy, so maybe Chase’s earlier edginess had just been a dislike of the incense in the office. He wasn’t sure, but he reached over to scratch between the pup’s ears before getting him ready to go out for the night. Sitting down to eat after he had fed the dog, thoughts drifted again to Ryan. He really needed to pin Ryan down to talk to him. He didn’t know if it was a good idea or not for them to get back together, but he wanted him back in his life – this he was certain of.
On a different matter, there was the job he was supposed to be doing for Brandon. Nothing had been done or even discussed yet on that, and it had been a week. He felt like something should be worked on soon. He didn’t like sitting around and just waiting when something needed to be done. It was one thing if you had to wait for something, but to not act at all when something could be getting done was really starting to get to him. A matter to bring up to everyone else when they were able to get together. Joseph would have to get out of the hospital first though.
Dinner done, he took care of the cleanup, making a mental note to both send a group text in the morning, and try to get in touch with Ryan. For now though, he wanted to ease the pain he felt, so he opened the bag to get the bottle, double-checking its directions before taking one, ensuring that the pharmacy bag and accompanying literature were well buried in the trash before putting the bottle in the medicine cabinet – right behind the middle divide between the two sliding mirrors, and then headed to bed.