Taffer Notes: In Latchkey, I briefly mentioned a night in Kyle's life which ended him in lockup and with his shoes kind of ruined after he bumped into the dude that messed around with his fiancée.

Always wanted to write it down with a bit more detail, and since I hadn't done my 1k words for today yet, I decided to give it a try.

A challenge I gave myself this time: Little to no descriptions next to my usual sparse dialogue.

WHUMP

It wasn't like he'd picked the bar for a reason past their beer selection. No, not really. And he'd definitely hadn't walked in knowing damn well that it'd all go to shit, because tonight Kyle Crane had left his sense between the first cold beer cracked open on his porch, and Seb eyeballing him with a You sure? sitting unsaid between them while he'd let his truck roll into the parking lot. Best designated driver ever. Hands down.

The Hops Saloon was a cozy corner of a place, sitting between things bigger and flashier, and Kyle had used to love coming here.

Jessica had too.

Or maybe she'd just liked their burger sides, because she'd sure as hell not shared his enthusiasm in working methodically through the list of craft beers sorted on their shelves.

With or without her— but mostly before —he'd often broken off after a little sampling and skipped to the next door over, towards the hard thump of music and a colourful dance floor that'd eaten up the rest of the night. Good fucking times, those. Dance until his calves burnt. Until his shirt was soaked through, fused to his spine, and the last call rang out.

There was an idea in there somewhere— in finishing his beer— nudging Seb— and rolling out of the muted, golden light of the Hops, and into the sharp glare of neon instead. But nah. Tonight, Kyle kept his ass planted on the leather cushioned bar stool and focused on cycling through the selection on tap.

Why?

Because it'd been a shit day at the tail end of an even shittier week, which'd come tacked on to a fucking disaster of a month.

So he tried to wash it down. Drown out the itch of we had something that'd been difficult to ignore today. And Seb helped. Talked about deployments they both kind of missed, and those they could have lived without.

Like he could have lived without Jess, really.

Would have to.

Would.

Kyle groaned, leaned his head back, and tilted the bottle after it. Which had half a swallow of lukewarm beer left in it, and half of that made it down his chin. What a damn waste.

"Ah shit." He wiped at the mess with his sleeve and set the bottle back down with a clack of glass on wood.

"Had enough?" Seb's hand swam into view, navigated the bottle away, which probably saved it from toppling over, Kyle figured.

He burped. Which felt great, by the by. Real fucking great. "Nope."

"Yeah— yeah, I think you have. Come on man, let's bail." The Viking gestured for the bartender, jabbed a finger down at Kyle's bottle and mouthed something that probably spelled out bill or some other such shit, and Kyle stared at the mouth of said bottle like a dejected idiot.

But whatever. His head felt heavy anyway, and his stomach pinched, and when he slid off the chair, the world kind of went and did a bit of a dance like he should have been doing next door.

And then he saw him, and it wasn't like he'd picked the place hoping he would, or that he'd expected tonight to go to shit because he wanted it to.

"Woah, buddy, wait—" Seb's hand glanced off his arm trying to get a grip on him, but Kyle was drunk, not inept. He shook the grab with a twist of his shoulder that made the floor buck and the ceiling wobble.

None of which mattered. A red, hot haze pulled in tight. Burnt in his gut. It roared and it spat, and when the shit muffin turned and caught sight of him, the anger that Kyle'd kept carefully packaged up and slid out of sight, popped right free.

His name was Mathew. Mathew fucked-if-I-know, and Jess had met him at the Hops while Kyle'd been busy getting shot at.

And right now, the piss stain's eyes were getting kind of wide and he took a step back, even though all Kyle wanted to do was say Hi. Granted, the effort kind of translated wrong. Went all fist, meet face, and that fucking stung. Sharp pain flared on his knuckles, sprang right up his hand and wrist, and the noise that came after gave his stomach a real good squeeze.

Things got loud.

Wood scraped on wood. Voices tripped over each other. Seb shouted "Kyle!" and someone screamed "Break it up!" and Kyle thought that was really fucking funny for some reason. He also decided going for Mathew's face'd just smart again and punched him in the gut instead. He got two swings in. Two and a half, really, before Seb (had to be Seb, right?) wrenched his arms back and pulled him away.

From there on out, Mathew turned to a blur between his buddies coming to the rescue, and the floor starting to look really damn fine. Especially the bit between Kyle's shoes. Least until his stomach gave an ugly heave and he got vomit on his shoes— and the damn fine floor.

"Yeah, sorry, you're staying the night, bud. I'll pick you up in the morning."

Which sounded fair, Kyle thought. He deserved it. Deserved the hard, cold cot under him, and the glaring white light from the ceiling. Seb rapped his knuckles against the iron bars to the cell they'd stuffed him into, and exchanged a fleeting smile with the dude in uniform that'd locked him in here.

They'd kind of wanted to let him go, he remembered that from after they'd processed him. Something about the circumstances to it all, and an I'd have done the same. But Seb had insisted that he needed to learn a lesson. Or maybe two.

"You feed the dog then," Kyle mumbled and landed the back of his hand on his eyes to block out the light. When that didn't stop the world from spinning round and round, he planted one leg on the floor. That helped. A little.

"Don't worry, I'll look after Titus. You just sleep it off."

Kyle nodded. Flicked out his middle finger, and sent Seb off with a skewed salute of said finger tapping the side of his head. Which almost got him to poke his own fucking eye out.

The lights stayed on a little too long after that, which he deserved too, because yeah, he'd gone looking for trouble.

But whenever didn't he? Life was trouble, and he was trouble, and maybe it was better that way.