InsaneJournal

WHO: Simon and Jacen
WHAT: Kaylee's gone. Simon's drunk. It's been a long time since he's been punched and probably a long time since Jacen's punched someone. BAR FIGHT.
WHEN: Night
WHERE: Blue collar bar downtown
RATING: PG-13 for violence and swearing
Agreeing to this, Simon decided as he traced outlines of Chinese characters on the bar with his finger, was probably the first sign of madness. One night out of every week the staff at the clinic went out after work to a nearby bar and, from what Simon had understood, drank lan dong* beer and discussed the apparently extremely interesting outcomes of contests wherein one team ran at the other with a ball until enough time had elapsed for everyone to put their shirts back on and go home either satisfied or angry and either way smashing things. The doctors were usually asked as a courtesy, most of them were what Simon had been given to understand were known on Earth as “hippies” and wouldn’t have been caught dead in the decidedly blue collar bar. He still had no idea, beyond madness, why he’d agreed this week to everyone’s surprise (he knew they all thought he was the worst of the lot, Dr. Tam with his nose in the air, it didn’t particularly bother him, it was the common impression). He had even less idea why he’d stayed even after they’d all trickled off home and still less as to why he’d kept drinking long after he’d realized, with the clinical detachment of someone who’d read about drunknness as much as he’d experienced it, that his limbs and judgment were quickly sliding out of control.

Kaylee would have loved this place. It looks like the kind of backwater she would have called interesting. But she thinks everywhere is interesting he took another pull on the whiskey he’d ordered after he’d gotten tired of beer and ran his hand through his hair. He didn’t want to go home like this, impose his mood on River. It’s better for her, he thought, mind stumbling back to Kaylee somehow, she belongs in the black. It wasn’t as if I talked to her, as if I tried, but I couldn’t, I’m not free to properly-- suddenly walking around town seemed better than sitting in the bar. He slid off the stool, smiled wryly as his knees bent too far, almost spilling him to the ground, and pushed himself forwards. The last time he’d been this drunk they’d been in the mudder town, he remembered, drinking that swill that they’d called milk and they’d--

“Hey watch it, man.” Simon blinked, realizing only after the encounter was over that he’d bumped someone on their way back to the bar from a table near the door. He stared at the man for a moment, tall and beefy with a paunch and a shirt for one of those sports teams (Simon hated those stupid sports shirts. Those stupid men who wore them, who proved themselves by slapping you on the back so hard you stumbled, non-verbal proofs of strength and masculine paranoia practically wafting off of them, useless and flabby and bragging into their beers) before simply moving around him and continuing on towards the door. “Hey!” The man called after him, “Hey asshole! It’s called an apology!” Simon, again without quite realizing his intentions even as he was acting on them, turned and looked the man up and down slowly. “I don’t believe,” he said, voice slow and words very carefully enunciated to avoid slurring, “I can be held responsible for genetics. Or, in words you could understand, the condition of your face is far from my fault. I could put that in simpler terms but I’m not sure how it translates into grunting--”

The last time I was this drunk I got punched too Simon thought as the first punch knocked him to the floor, one way or another, it always comes back around to me getting punched. It must be a universal constant a boot met his ribs and he choked out a grunt, rolling over and clambering to his feet. The door was behind him, within reach, but somehow it seemed easier to stumble forward again, fist swinging.

The man, it turned out, had friends which went, Simon thought before thinking got mercifully lost in trying not to have all of his bones broken, to show that there really was no accounting for taste on earth.

*lan dong= "trash"