InsaneJournal

WHO: Marv and OPEN
WHAT: Drinking up a storm.
WHEN: 10:40pm.
WHERE: A random hole in the wall bar.
RATING: Opener is PG-13, might increase to R if someone tags in. Marv has a foul mouth.
STATUS: In Progress, or complete if no one tags.

There may not have been enough alcohol in any world to get Marv drunk, but there he was, dutifully trying anyway. He’d spent a long time barhopping, looking for just the right place, and he’d almost given up hope of finding a place. He’d been kicked out of several bars for fighting, though it would be more accurate to state that he’d been kicked out of several bars for breaking hands when male customers got a little too grabby with waitresses or bartenders. He’d finally found a job at his new watering hole, The Bridge, and it was just his kind of place. The kind of place where you could smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, and as long as you had the money – or the benefit of being a quickly-becoming-favored employee – to keep the firewater flowing, no one said word one to you.

Marv had been part of the owner’s attempt to change things at the rowdy establishment, and it had worked pretty well. Now that Marv was here, you did not touch the waitresses unless you wanted to end up at the hospital with a broken hand. In fact, even insulting the waitresses could earn your face an up-close-and-personal meeting with your table before your ass met the ground out front. This did tend to keep the misogynists and first-timers away, but the bar had enough regulars to support it and the regulars, by and large, liked Marv. He was a friendly guy, quick with a story and quicker to high five someone for their awesome stories. He also dispensed advice to people that needed it, and his fervently loyal nature was becoming more widely known. At the same time, you didn’t want to get too close to Marv, because he looked big and mean and scary and if you caught him in the right mood and gave him the right motivation, he was all of those things.

Tonight he was off. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there, he just wasn’t working. Instead he was perched precariously on a bar stool that looked horrendously small for his seven foot tall, bulky-as-all-hell frame, his right elbow propped up on the bar with a cigarette pinched between the index and forefinger of his right hand. In front of him were about six empty beer bottles, and next to those was one empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Clutched in his left hand, the lid on the bar, was another bottle of Jack Daniels, this one half empty. The regulars were watching him without trying to seem like they were. Everyone here was curious just how much alcohol it would take to get Marv drunk, though no one was really sure if a drunken Marv was such a good thing.

Marv knew they were watching. He didn’t care. This was his thinking place. And his party place. And his work place. And his drinking place. Okay, this place was pretty much his everything place. He was wearing his usual, a muscle shirt – he refused to call it a wifebeater, and glared nastily at anyone who did so in his presence – leather pants, heavy boots, and a damn fine leather coat. This one had survived longer than most. He’d acquired a new gun, and while she wouldn’t replace Gladys, Nikki would serve him just fine here. She was a big bear of a handgun, something most people would probably find unwieldly, but she fit his hand like a dream and for a man of his strength the recoil was negligible. She came with him everywhere, though he didn’t make that fact known. Somehow, he had a feeling that those geeks in tights would have something to say about it, and Marv didn’t feel like dealing with a bunch of nerds in pajamas right now.

He was clearly thinking pretty heavily today. He took a long puff on his cigarette and followed it up by gulping down a quarter of what was left in the remaining bottle of JD. He was going through the motions, his body on autopilot as his mind tried to work over some problem or another. Marv didn’t often share his inner thoughts with people. He’d be free with advice, he’d be free with stories of awesome fights, but he would not be free with his actual inner thoughts. What was he thinking about? No one knew. It only added to his mystique.