butdid_youdie (butdid_youdie) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-10-18 14:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | marsh grey, tasha sloan |
Who We Used To Be
Who: Marsh/Tasha
What: Commiserating
Where: Lucky's
When: Present
Ratings/Warnings: Low-ish
Tonight was a good night, not necessarily when it came to the tips but at least chaos wasn’t erupting like he’d experienced one too many times recently. Least of all that odd gambling machine that no one could lift or even unplug doling out curses like they were shiny gold tokens. He’d seen Tasha play before, had passing conversations with her when the bar was chock full of people but tonight was slow and he got to enjoy her set uninterrupted.
When she came to the bar he offered her his customer service smile that was explained to him since he’d never heard the term before. “Hello Tasha, what can I get you?” He asked her, wiping down the bar with a damp rag before throwing it back into the sanitizing bucket.
—
“I’ll take the Ringer,” she said, indicating one of the rotating taps. She had come to like and appreciate the pilsner from Bad Beat Brewing. “Thanks, Marsh.” She offered the friendly bartender a smile before looking around the saloon. It was a decent but not overwhelming crowd; she didn’t mind it.
“How’s it going tonight?” she asked him, before cutting a glance at the weird machine. Tasha wasn’t about to try her hand at it; that kind of stuff weirded her the hell out, and it was difficult to do that to her.
—
He grabbed a pint glass and tilted it toward the tap, pulling the lever to allow the beer to fill the glass. He looked around the bar at that question and shrugged his shoulders. “Been better but that was a mighty good show you played so I guess that evens it out.” He offered, wiping the side of the glass down before placing down a coaster and the glass on top of it.
He flipped the rag over his shoulder and balanced himself on the bar, relieving some pressure from the gunshot wound that still gave him trouble even three years later. “What about you? Get any good tips?” He asked her, though he knew it was probably minimal since the crowd was.
—
“Yeah, I got a good tip: get an agent,” she quipped, before bringing the glass to her grinning mouth. Tasha noticed the way his body language changed. She didn’t know the full story, and Marsh was a difficult read. The hunter also wasn’t one to pry.
“And thank you for the flattery,” she continued, setting the beer down on a coaster. “It’s nice to know I’m not just shouting into the void.” Tasha quirked a thumb over to the strange machine.
“What is the story on that, by the way? Did Brian choose that, because…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
—
He peered at the machine behind her and shook his head, grabbing glasses that had been used and dipping them through his sanitizing sinks. “I’d stay away from that if I were you. Don’t rightly know how it got here but we’re having a hell of a time trying to remove it. Damn thing won’t budge. Even Brian couldn’t loosen it.” And while Marsh was strong, Brian seemed to be significantly stronger than him.
“If no one feeds it maybe it’ll just disappear.” He thought out loud and chuckled at the idea of it.
There were plenty of reasons to be withholding, a good deal of trust in himself went out the door the day he got shot, but he knew he couldn’t withhold forever. No one survived that kind of repression without some repercussions. “What do you think? Any ideas on how we could get rid of it?”
—
Tasha looked away from it and turned back to Marsh. “I have no idea,” she answered, because obviously her first thought, a baseball bat to the thing, probably wouldn’t help. “You guys might just need to build a new bar and call this one a wash.”
The musician wouldn’t be going anywhere near it. She preferred to deal with things that were upfront about wanting to harm her. Less bullshit that way. “I haven’t seen Brian in a while. How’s he been?”
—
Brian and him were friendly enough but when it came down to it their conversations usually involved the goings on in the Saloon and or the parking lot. “About the same I suppose, though I’m not the best source of information when it comes to other people.” He was more aware than he seemed actually but that stuff was private and he wouldn’t divulge that sort of information unless it could help others.
Marsh didn’t like answering questions, spent years in college doing just that, now he much preferred to ask his own. “How’s the music coming along? You got anything big on the horizon?” Take the attention off of him and this bar, he’d gone down that conversational rabbit hole and it only ever seemed to confuse him more.
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“The biggest thing for me right now is this beer,” she answered casually. That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t like she could tell him about hunting. Tasha had no idea how much Marsh knew, actually. Yeah, a werewolf was the manager and she sort of knew about the weird shit that went down in those poker games, but it was easy to turn a blind eye toward that kind of thing.
She paused, the pint halfway to her mouth when she realized that was why they called that place in Vegas the Blindeye Diner. “I’m not going to be a rockstar anytime soon,” she smiled.
—
“I can talk to Brian if you like, there’s bigger crowds on the weekend.” Which was when he usually got the good tips but a little calmness amidst all the chaos was nice sometimes too. His bills weren’t in any danger of not being paid and it allowed his leg some necessary respite.
From the ether he heard someone thinking about the machine, a burly man with his eyes burning a hole into it. “Excuse me.” He said softly and made his way from behind the bar to derail the man.
“Sorry sir, this machine here is broke, it’ll eat up all your money. This one over here has had some good odds of if it’s what you’re after.” The man graciously accepted his advice and he breathed a relieved sigh. His leg was hurting again, god damn thing, and he limped back to the bar.
“Sorry bout that, anyway, what do you think? Could be good for you.”
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She watched Marsh persuade the patron to move on to another machine with an arched brow and curious expression. “Um, it’s cool,” Tasha told the bartender, her attention returning to the previous conversation. “I have some stuff on the weekends now.” Namely, hunting. It was a good time to catch the monsters at play.
Tasha also didn’t miss that limp, but she was also quickly learning that any line of questioning with Marsh would go nowhere. “I got my left leg broken in three places,” she told him, almost conversationally. “The rehab was a bitch.” She gestured with her half-empty beer glass. “Maybe you could take a small break. It’s not exactly slammed right now.”
—
He looked at the empty barstool next to her and sighed. “Let me know when you’re ready for another.” He offered and settled down in the seat next to her. He didn’t have many people to talk about his leg with, most just avoided the subject and Marsh never bothered to bring it up either. No one else was near the bar to hear so he thought, maybe it didn’t matter if he talked about it.
“I spent a year in physical therapy and some days I think I’m the same as I was before. Wonder sometimes if I wasted time and money.” It wasn’t true though, Marsh donned a cane for a long time and he could manage now without it, but sometimes it felt like the progress was too slow.
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Tasha didn’t turn to face him all the way. Instead, she tilted her head toward him slightly, listening, but kept looking toward the bar. They could have been two regular patrons, shooting the shit. “You feel like life ended the day you got injured,” she said, “and everything after that is just you trying to navigate this new life you’ve been given.”
She downed the rest of her pilsner, but didn’t ask for another. Not yet. The night was young, still.
—
He bowed his head, a piece of his long hair falling into his face. He stopped cutting his hair last year and he questioned that decision every day. He paused, unsure of how much of himself to reveal. He pushed the stray hair behind his ear and looked over at her.
“If I see a man with my same build, round my age, walking on his two legs, running. I don’t know, I think to myself that it should be me.” Daily jogs were a thing Marsh used to enjoy but his leg couldn’t handle it anymore.
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“It’s not fair,” Tasha agreed. “It’s cruel and slow and feels like you’ll never get back to who you used to be. Until one day, you do. It might not be the guy you see running like he doesn’t have a care in the world, but it’ll be you.” She watched the residual suds fall slowly down in the glass to settle at the heavy bottom.
“For me, it was fear that held me back,” she admitted to him, returning his gaze. “Fear that what landed me in the hospital in the first place would get at me again. Put me away for good.”
—
Marsh noticed the glass and pushed himself out of the chair, he’d rested it enough and Tasha’s beer was done. He made his way around behind the bar and grabbed the glass, putting it amongst the other dirty glasses before grabbing her a fresh one to refill her beer. “Well I certainly hope so.” He replied, placing the cold beer before her.
Fear Marsh understood but it wasn’t the same fear most people had. Marsh wasn’t afraid of anyone else, more so just afraid of how he was going to sabotage the rest of his own life. “Fear is the enemy of logic.” His dad had been a fan of the late Sinatra and used his words as absolute truth growing up. He made some good points.
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“Good thing life isn’t logical,” Tasha half-joked before thanking him for the fresh beer. “Or the world, for that matter. How else do you explain stuff like that” -- she gestured to the mysterious slot machine -- “or anything else that goes down around here?” She finished her little monologue with a drink.
“Fear can be a gift, if you don’t let it control you,” the hunter added afterward, and she spoke as if she were realizing this for the first time, too. “But something tells me you know that.”
—
He eyed her at that, squinting an eye as he did his damn best to hold back from looking into her head. “What makes you say that?” He asked her. She was right of course, fear was a healthy mechanism for keeping oneself alive but it could also morph into a self-fulfilling torture for some. Even he could admit he’d been victim to that.
As far as anyone knew, Marsh was a bartender and there was nothing particularly interesting about him but it was all front. Some secrets were best kept to himself.
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Tasha shrugged, smiling enigmatically. He could work for some of it, too, she decided. “Lived experience. What’s that saying about the turnip truck?” She laughed softly, nursing her drink. The jukebox, at least, wasn’t haunted or whatever. It was currently playing her favorite Metallica song.
—
“I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck.” He finished her sentence. His mom used the phrase often when he was growing up and Marsh tried to lie to her. “Suppose you’re right about that, don’t get to age 39 without learning a few things along the way. “ His fortieth was early next year and he still couldn’t quite believe he’d lived so long.
Metallica was a band he found himself gravitating towards when he was a preteen. A thirteen year old Marsh, though studious, felt inclined to the harder rock and anger. Part of the healthy habits his therapist had recommended to quell his merging anger. At least she, unlike some of the women who came here, was closer in age to him. He never felt as much of a disconnect as he did with people in their twenties. “Whether or not I learned from it is another story entirely.” A person was only as good as their will to better themselves.
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