Chapter Text
'What if it just ends up like the other one in the end?' your mind offers you whilst your eyes are glued to your cellular, ass planted on a stool in front of the counter. The flickering neon light above you, reading "Salty Outpost" only seems to add to your anxiety.
Your eyes gaze disgustedly over the design in the middle of your screen once more after making another note of the light fixture above you. It's only then that you realize staring at the abomination is going to get you absolutely nowhere. You place both your hands on your face and run them up into your hair, giving it a brief little fluff to allow in some of the stuffy air to cool off your scalp. It's refreshing, even though it doesn't necessarily help at all.
Before you can go back to stressing again, you look at your half-empty glass of booze in front of you, feeling sorry for yourself. You've walked all the way here in hopes of escaping the tensions work has to offer, only to open your phone and allow it to plague you some more. If only you had the nerve or funds to chuck the thing across the room. But part of you knew this would happen. There was nobody to contact from your phone, so you could have easily left it charging at home. But repeated failure was something that weighed heavily on your shoulders, so you needed to make sure absolutely everything about your proposal was perfect before you could show your face at work the next day.
"Somethin' wrong, sweetie?" asks the bartender from behind his post as he poured a shot for another customer.
You resist the urge to gag from the man's tacky attempt to flirt with you. Hooking up with someone was the last thing on your mind at all. "I'm perfectly fine, thank you," you answer him, making sure not to give him the gift of eye-contact.
He seems to understand and doesn't respond to you, causing you to gaze down once more at your phone. With a frustrated sigh, you finally give in and turn it off. With nothing left to do, you place your elbow on the countertop and rest your head in it, reaching for your drink with the other hand to sip it.
As the cold venom slides down your throat, your eyes scan the aged brick walls of the stark building and you're starting to get the feeling you should leave as soon as the rest of your booze has been given a proper home in your gut. You lift the glass to finish it off and start gulping it down only to be startled as a broad figure sits down beside you. You tried not to appear as you felt, but when your poker-face met the man now sitting in the stool beside yours, you couldn't help but stare, wide-eyed.
The first thing your eyes are drawn to is the muscles that look like they've busted through the sleeves of his shirt, connected to a broad set of shoulders. He's wearing a cap that shadows his face from you. All you can see is the cascade of long, blonde locks down his back which is tied twice; once at the base of his head, the other at the end of his ponytail.
You shift uncomfortably in your seat after looking away. You feel so tiny compared to him, having never seen such a huge person in your life.
The shadow covering the rest of his face is at last revealed as you notice his head turn slightly toward you and, feeling you have no other choice, you fall for the deadly bait of direct eye-contact. He dons a pair of gorgeous blue eyes framed by some hair falling around his almost perfectly structured face. But what happens next leaves words completely astray from your lips.
"You can really put it away, huh?" His voice was none at all like you were expecting. It was rough, sure but so too was his accent. He definitely sounded foreign, perhaps from the east. He smiles, seeming to mock your astonishment after realizing he's not going to get an answer from you. "Is there something on my face?" he asks with an almost mischevious tone.
Even knowing he's just fooling around with you, you can't help but feel like you might have offended him by staring. "No, sorry," you say as heat rises to your cheeks. "You just startled me, that's all."
The mysterious man catches onto your apprehensive behavior and his smile grows wider. "I guess that means you have to let me buy you another," he answers in his thick accent.
You understand enough of what he said to catch onto his game too and sigh. Even cleverly worded, the flirting still makes you cringe. "I really shouldn't..." you trail off.
"What? Why not? Didn't you come here to drink?" He seems genuinely astonished that his smooth-talking isn't working.
"I wish I did, honestly," you say.
"If you didn't come here to drink, then why are you here?"
You look down at the cup of melting ice in your hands. Perhaps if you get lost in the sight of the frozen water slowly deteriorating, you just might get so lost that this man and all of life's troubles could never find you again.
"I don't know..." you finally answer and slide yourself off the stool you were sitting in and pull out your purse to leave money for the drink and service.
Before you can place down the cash, a larger hand lands on the counter in front of yours, money in its grip. You follow it back to the blonde man and look at him hopelessly. "Please, sir, you don't have to do that." Your voice sounds desperate, but all that's returned to you is a smile.
"If you aren't here to drink, you shouldn't have to pay for it, am I wrong?" he says. "And, my name's Terry, not sir," he adds.
You allow yourself to give him an appreciative smile and slowly slip your money back into your purse. Or, at least you make it seem like you did. "Well... thank you, Terry. It was nice meeting you and all, but I should really go." Your eyes travel to the pocket hanging wide open on the leather jacket he was wearing and as you begin to walk away, you slip the twenty into it. Thankfully, it seems as though the stranger, or... Terry, as he called himself, did not notice your slick little maneuver and you were able to easily escape the situation.
"What the hell is your problem?" a different voice calls from behind you, but it's one you recognize and it holds your feet in place, only to turn and face who had spoken. It was the bartender from earlier and he was looking straight at you.
You can honestly say this astonished you and the confusion on your face tells the man you have no idea what he was on about.
"I'm sorry?" you say, staying in place.
The confrontation earns a few stares from some guests at the bar, both near you and the bartender, others searching for who he was talking to. "Don't play dumb. You don't acknowledge my existence but you allow this guy to buy your drink? Gimme a break, woman. People like you don't deserve to breathe."
The force of his words would be enough to knock you off your feet had they been physical. Perhaps they weren't, but they hurt as if they were. You didn't understand what you'd done to make the man so upset.
Terry stays sitting on the stool, but you hear his voice come over the near-empty bar. "You shouldn't talk to a lady that way... it's not her fault you're ugly."
You slap a hand over your mouth, eyes agape as you realize Terry was making the situation no better for either of you. You were glad he had stood up for you, but you hadn't expected the insult to come pummeling the bartender back like a barrage of devastating strength.
The other man rolled up his sleeves and cracked his knuckles all while your feet prepared themselves to make a run for it if things got rough. "Listen. She ain't no lady, blondie... that right there's a pig."
Terry stayed sitting but slowly rose from his seat and you watched as his height slowly overshadowed that of the bartender. "I suggest you watch who you're calling a pig." You could almost feel the glare radiating off his blue eyes, being shaded by the brim of his cap even though you couldn't see his face. "She has every right to talk to whoever she wants to... if you think you're entitled to be acknowledged by someone, well... I guess that just makes you the pig, doesn't it?"
You heard a few 'ooh's echo from within the bar and already you can feel the tension building between the two men. You wished men didn't have to be so competitive. One of them was not going to make it through the fight that would inevitably ensue and it could all have been avoided too. You felt guilt wash over you, knowing someone was going to get hurt.
Faster than you could blink, you saw the bartender's fist go flying across Terry's face and you gasped. "Stop!" flew through your lips.
"Watch your mouth, chink."
An uncomfortable air settles in the bar while the racial slur floats around within it. You can feel something far more displeasing settle around you as Terry recovers from the blow dealt to his face.
"So..." he trailed off. "Not only are you disrespectful to women... but you're a racist too." You heard the sound of fabric ripping as Terry yanked the bartender over the counter and toward himself. "People like you don't deserve to breathe."
The next thing you knew, the bartender was on the floor, having been slammed against it. Terry did not follow up with anything else after that and you assumed it was merely a warning for the man to stop while he was ahead.
"Go back to Japan," the man spits after getting up. Now they are both standing outside the bar counter with Terry facing your direction.
You didn't know how to make this stop. You knew if you stepped between them that you had a chance of getting hurt. But if you didn't...
Within seconds, you were standing between them. "Terry, don't fight him, just go. He could call the police on you for disrupting this place."
Not only were tensions high between the two men, but the same with a few other guests who seemed just as fit for a fight, and they were staring straight at Terry, half-risen from their seats.
Terry didn't even give you so much as a glance to acknowledge you'd even said a word. His eyes were simply glued on the other man who was approaching them. "Get out of the way, bitch," he says fist rearing back and before you can register what's going on, his fist is mere inches from your face, only to collide head-on with it, sending you to the floor.
Once there, you immediately hear raw force clashing with flesh and grunting following shortly after. Holding your cheek, you look back to see Terry had managed to land a clean blow to the bartender. Despite the fact that he had punched you, you still didn't want to see the violence unfold.
You watched as two other men walked from their seats and began approaching Terry from the sides which he took quick notice of. You didn't understand why they were siding with the bartender though.
The fight unfolded so quickly, it had to have only taken about a minute for blood to start flying from lips and noses and you were astonished to see Terry single-handedly taking them on. Once he finished punching one, he would launch a kick toward another.
But despite the fact that Terry seemed to have the upper hand, he was still outnumbered, so once one got their hands on him and he began trying to escape, another came up and restrained him for the third to start bashing his face in. Each time a fist collided with his face, you could feel the hurt in his grunts and cries of pain, knowing you couldn't just run away.
You reached into your pocket and dialed the phone number for the cops. Your voice was shaky as you reported the incident, describing the location as well and while you did, the two other men noticed and backed off, heading for the doors.
But the bartender seemed not to care and, now that he was unrestrained, Terry kicked out his leg and knocked the man backward, staggering him for a few moments so he could return to his feet, his fists raised. He watched while the bartender ran back for more, only to receive another kick, this time to the stomach, sending him back once again. This time, Terry rushed forward and caught the man mid-air with two simultaneous punches that came out so fast, the bartender didn't fly back from the momentum until the second punch made contact.
The bartender didn't get back up after that and it seemed safe for you to approach Terry. "Why didn't you back off when the others did?" you ask over the sound of his panting.
"'Cause..." he breathes between a gasp and wipes some blood off his lip. "I couldn't let him get away with that mouth..." Terry looks at you. "But now that the cops are on their way, we should get out of here."
You give him a worried look. "Are you sure? You're hurt pretty bad... shouldn't we wait for them so you can go to the hospital?" you ask.
Terry shakes his head, some misplaced hair falling over his face. "For this?" He gestures to his face. "No, I'll be fine," he assures you.
You sigh, knowing you'd regret just leaving him on his own with how damaged he was. "Come with me."