Longer Writes

Hornee Warning (LightningWolf)

A rowdy dive bar was decidedly not where Brin had been hoping to spend his twenty-second birthday, but Tinya, Chuck, and Thom hyped each other up far too much, and a simple dinner hangout had turned into an all-night bar crawl. They were on number five or six, and how they had even found this many out-of-the-way spots was beyond him. At this point, it was easier to just chalk it up to Tinya being Tinya and focus instead on the slaughterfest that was team pool.

He wasn't good at the game to begin with, and coupled with the fact that the table was closer to knee height than hip height, he was having issues getting low enough to aim without sitting on the ground like a toddler. Suffice it to say, Chuck was not amused, and looked almost relieved when Brin politely removed himself from the game -he definitely did not stomp off for a drink because Tinya kept insinuating that he fucked as well as he played every time he biffed a shot.

Now, squashed on a barstool, he sat leaned back against the counter, grumpily nursing some fruity thing Thom had gotten him hooked on a few bars back and watching his friends finish up the game. Every now and again, his eyes wandered to some of the other patrons; it was easy to people-watch with the bar on the back wall and everything else laid in front of it.
There was a group of besuited people in the corner booth, loud and raucous even in the din; a small horde of idiots in Air Force garb taking up the other pool tables and accounting for the rest of the noise; a small, family-looking unit in a booth that all looked in varying drunken states, and another group of friends sitting next to him that seemed to be catching up after a while apart.

Two of them, a guy and a girl, sat rather close together on the end of the little group, leaned into each others space every time Brin looked over, and they'd caught his attention. Or, more accurately, he'd caught Brin's attention, for reasons unexplainable.

It might've been the toothy, slightly feral grin that gave Brin the impression of a hyena, or maybe it was that roguish, slightly unkempt air about him that kept making Brin's eyes stray to the sharp of his jaw -It honestly could have just been the flex of a well-muscled arm under tight blue sleeves whenever the guy took a drink, but not even Brin was privy to that sort of knowledge- but he kept getting drawn in, enough that he didn't notice his friends approach.

"SO-" Tinya smacked the table beside him, startling Brin out of his most recent ogle session. "-now that we've established you're shit at billiards, anything else you wanna do here before we bounce, birthday boy?"

"Are we going to another bar?" He asked, sighing.

"Yeah."

"Then what's the point?"

"Because it's called a bar crawl, not a bar stop when we find a place we like. This place doesn't even have karaoke!"

"You really wanna hear me sing?" He asked, but already knew the answer when that wide, evil smile split her face in two.

"Oh, absolutely." Brin groaned and finished off his drink at that, standing up.

"Fine. Gimme a minute to go to the bathroom and then we'll go."

"Take too long and I'm siccing Chuck on you~!" She threatened in a sing-song voice, getting a squawk of protest from Chuck as he walked away.

The bathroom was a small relief from all the noise, sound muffled by a piping-insulated wall, and Brin scrubbed at his face as the door closed.

He did his business, washed his hands, and left, wiping his hands on his jeans since there were no towels. Without really thinking about it, he glanced over at the group that had been beside him, only to see them gone. He was disappointed, but figured it wasn't that big a deal, since they were on their way out anyways.