The Surly Jerks

Participants:

alexander_icon.gif hagan_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title The Surly Jerks
Synopsis One of those bar things, where Hagan insinuates things, Teo noses around tactlessly about women, and Alexander is scarred.
Date December 4, 2008

The Surly Wench

A punk rock pub through and through, The Surly Wench is dim, cramped, and incredibly popular. It's a small, rectangular venue with a bar bordering one entire wall. Despite this, ordering a drink on a weekend can be an exercise in line-waiting and rib-elbowing. There are a few small tables ringed with high stools for seating, but these are prime real estate. The majority of the patrons are forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on any given night. Almost half of the cramped interior is devoted to a low stage for live music. There's no dance floor. If you feel the need, you'll have to thrash in place.


Al, well. Alex looks like hell. There's a set of slashing claw scars over his left eye - the eye itself seems whole, but the lid is left somewhat droopy, giving him a permanent squint. He doesn't seem to mind it, though, as he swaggers in with Teo beside him - wearing a black hoodie, faded fatigue pants and combat boots, and pulling off his usual black watchcap. Very much with the military surplus chic. He looks rather grim, shoulders hunched against more than just the cold.

This is a punk rock club and Hagan's not…very punkish. His hair doesn't count. He doesn't do that on purpose. But it works as good camoflage, so no one bothers him. He's claimed a stool and is, as usual, drinking and smoking. He seems to be slightly in his cups, but not so far gone he can't handle it, There's a band setting up that he only gives half a look. Probably gauging when they're going on so he can be gone before then.

Heeling like a half-trained pup, Teo, uh, not to push the metaphor too far, but — he's dogging Alexander's heels. Characteristically, he's clad in gear as nondescript as his companion's, work pants, a hoodie or two and a jacket yanked on over it. He's young enough to blend in by simple virtue of age range and carriage, the stoop of his shoulders and tousle of his hair readily construed as fashionable recalcitrance. "Look," he murmurs, after a moment. He points at the back of Hagan's head, which is a very distinct shape with the flyaway hair massing to proportions that rival the afros of other subcultures.

Al grins at that, despite himself. "He's good people. I owe him a drink, even if he has no idea what in hell vegetables are." How is that sequitur in this world at all? Who can know? The redhead is stubbly enough to look more like a lazy skinhead, really, though no white laces on his boots. He comes sauntering up to Hagan, and offers a little salute. "Hey, man," he says, affably. "Small world, hm?"

Hagan doesn't react to Alex right away. He's too busy trying to decipher the tattoo in the back of a mohawked drummer. It's something rude, no doubt. But he eventually turns to face the redhead. He blinks. "What happened to you? Piss off a New Jersey bear?"

"I saw a bear once," Teo remarks, dropping himself onto the stool one seat away, the intervening spot ceded to Alexander, while he makes the sort of casual imposition that well suits people who've punched each other before. "It came up to about knee height and was doing this thing with its head and the wall which was pretty depressing. Kind of reminded me of you on the skating rink, uomo," he says, grinning from where he puts his head: down on top of his folded forearms, with all the physical self-discipline of a potato.

"You keep calling me secret Italian words and I'm going to start using Gaelic ones. I hated learning the damn language, so my arsenal of curses and colorful insults is large." Hagan drains what's left in his pint. He eyes Alexander, then Teo. "You two keep showin' up like bad pennies. I'm going to start looking for Home Security badges here in a minute."

Teo lifts his head up in order to rifle the lining of his jacket for a box of cigarettes. "I'm from Italy. We have a whole other faction of fascist assholes," he assures Irishman, bending his mouth around a grin far as the criticism of his preferred linguistic garnishing goes. It fades fractionally at the mention of hostile children and aggressive birds, though only slightly. "Mi dia— I'm sorry. English only. She call back? Mrs. Colin Farrell?"

Al eyes Teo as if he had NO IDEA what that might have meant. None at all. He snorts. "Nope. I'm registered. And I used to be a cop, but no badge these days." It's a bitter admission, by the way Al's lips twist as he says it. "Y'all had the kind with the snappy uniforms and the shiny boots," he notes to Teo, teasingly, holding out a hand as if it were a matter of course that Teo got those cigarettes out just for him.

Hagan's expression looks like sour milk at Theo's question. "Do you have to ask?" He waves at the bartender, who wastes no time in getting him another pint. He waits to see if Teo and Alex want anything as well. "So. Fancy both of you knowing one another."

"Only with the kindest of intent, I swear," Teo says to the face of sour milk, grinning crookedly. He locates the smokes after only a brief moment's shuffle, pulls them out and, an almost automated process, shakes one out for Alexander before he selects one of his own with his teeth. If he has any idea what Alexander thinks Mrs. Colin Farrell might have been about, he's unprepared to give any indication. "Fancy you knowing my fucking veterinarian," he answers Hagan, with a snort. "You're a cat person?"

"How…..do you two know each other?" wonders Al, rather tentatively, even as he orders a Coors, lifting one pale hand to attract the bartender's attention. His other hand is occupied with the cigarette, waiting patiently for Teo to light him. What's the Sicilian, his one man entourage?

"What? No. I have no furballs." Except on his head. Hagan's tone is fairly quiet at that. "I met her…can't even remember where exactly. She's…well, she's not a friend. She's a girl I know." Whom he accidentally saw naked. Alex's beer choice gets a bit of a lip curl from the Irishman. He's drinking the darkest thing they have, which is not particularly dark, but still. It's not Coors. "Know of each other, is more the truth of it."

It's better than not drinking at all, but apparently that's what Teo plans to do for the first round, at least. The box of cigarettes goes away and the lighter comes out, some old blue plastic thing on its last dregs that takes more than one squeaking spin of the wheel to catch fire. Alexander's patience, in the interim, is appreciated as well as — Teo belatedly glances around to check — the absence of No Smoking signs in the bar room. He never keeps track of which establishments think them above that.

"Me and him?" he motions between Hagan and himself. "Brian was having a rough week. I figured punching me in the face would make things better for a little bit. It did, and escalated. Beginning of a strange new acquaintance," Teo's grin turns cheeky and abashed, both, before he angles his gaze at Hagan, without outwardly congratulating himself on having deflected the other line of inquiry. With Pam. Beautiful blonde women have that effect. "Sorry. Bad subject?"

Alexander nods to that, though presumably he's no more enlightened than he was before. He dips his head to let Teo light him, before expelling a contented and rather smoky sigh. "That's right. Met in a fight. Well, there are worse ways," he says, musingly, letting his eyes drift nearly shut.

"Your buddy…Brian, was it? Was taking the whole thing too fucking seriously." Hagan snorts. "He was acting like I did something to him when you're the one who started the whole thing." He won't go back to the subject of Pam.

Noted, if not accounted for. Teo abandons the subject of Pam as well. "It was Brian," he agrees, nodding. "He does that sometimes. He's like nineteen years old." Twenty-two. "You'll have to forgive him. Still at that stupid age where he needs to blame someone easy to hate. Generally, strangers work. Hasn't been in too many fights, either. You two met the same way, right?" He swivels his head away to expel smoke to his left, before clarifying the query with a jerk of his head at Alexander. A fight.

"Well, I wasn't hitting him. He saved my ass from some of our buddies in Chinatown," Al drawls, showing every evidence of enjoyment in his pisswater American beer. "He takes a lot too seriously, like T here says," There's a sage nod of Al's head.

"I suggest you go beating that out of his head before someone does that for him. If I had more of a temper, he'dve been upside down in a trashcan." Hagan might not look very strong, but something about him suggests he might just come out on top in fights of the drunken bar brawl variety. He glances between Alex and Theo. "You're buddies? So the ninjas are after both of you?"

A shrug moves through Teo's shoulders, uneven: right shoulder to left, as if he can't be bothered with symmetry. "I've never caught shit from ninjas before. I don't know who else they're looking for. Chinatown's still the shithole it was two years ago, isn't it?" The worry spared by the glance in Al's direction isn't the slightest bit disingenuous. The Sicilian drops his elbows on the counter and curls his fingernails into a seam split into the varnish, prying: an idle fidget. "If you had more of a temper, you'd be either Brian or dead. But I get your point," he says, agreeably. "Kid's got to learn."

"Just me. I attract the damn things like I'm coated in honey, apparently," Al observes, lifting his glass of beer in lazy tribute. To the ninjas, presumably. "Yeah. Wretched hive of scum and villainy."

"Well then. Perhaps I should stop going there for my yams." He's still all broken up over that bloody yam. Sort of. Hagan taps his cigarette in the ashtray. "So. What. Are you Batman and Robin or something? Do you fight crime?"

Instantly, Teo looks amused if not quite confused. "What in any of the shit you've ever seen me — or him," a nod at Al, "pull could ever lead you to believe we fight crime? Running away from la polizia, or slugging it out in Chinatown? Couldn't you have picked an analogy like— uhhh." He doesn't know anything about American pop-culture. Jabs Alexander with his elbow.

Hagan looks down at his watch. It's antique looking and the strap has seen better days. "Isn't it all about the superhero types to be dodging authorities? Fuck it, I don't know. You two just seem like partners in…well, you don't look like criminals." He shrugs, then butts out his cigarette. "I'm off then. Call me if there's a good brawl." Clearly he doesn't mean that because he didn't exactly give anyone a number. He shrugs on his jacket and heads out the door.


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December 4th: Soundly Directed Anger
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December 4th: A Point Made
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