sports bar blues / sal + buck

Mother of all mistakes; he was an uncle at fourteen, a father at fifteen. A disgrace long, long before that. Thirty-three years old now - a grown goddamn man - you'd think he'd know better. But he's too busy wallowing in it. Burning his own bridges. Sal wasn't taught a thing about the family business, kept his nose out of it and shoved it down in the gutter instead. Maybe he's lucky for that.

It serves him well now; he winks at their waitress as she goes by, languid because he's been nursing the same warm beer for forty minutes just so she'll keep coming back to check if he’s in refill territory yet. No dice, babe. He turns the glass in his hands and flicks a chicken bone at Buck to pass the time, waiting for the nametag labelled Jessica to pop her bottle-red head back out from the kitchen corner.

He's also been teasing Buck about the bartender in the meantime, but his brother seems to prefer the chicken onslaught.

Buck's missing a wife and a kid too, and maybe that's the only reason Sal's a little bit easier on him. He was only thirteen when Buck got married. He was also only thirteen when, a month later, he tried to wiggle under the border fence and run away to 10.

No connection between the occasions, just funny coincidence.

The whole place suddenly goes up in cheers. Sal scowls out of reflex. Number 37, darling green-eyed Kody Vasquez of the Vipers scores in the quarter-finals Exy game broadcasting on the screen above them. The Vipers are still riding the fame of their ex-member walking out of the Games and it shows. The fan’s are high on it too - almost every idiot in that red jersey only bought one because Theo Horner was signing them during his victory tour. Getting into sports for the sake of a celebrity. Ridiculous.

Sal’s more inclined towards the Longhorns this season and every season. Despite their recent bout of lacklustre scoring, there isn’t a single member on their line-up that benches below 200. That’s the sort of thing a true fan looks for.

Vasquez does his victory lap around the Longhorns side of the court and Sal takes that as the perfect cue to start yelling abuse at the screen and slosh half his stale IPA across the bartop. A group of guys down the bar start to take notice. One of them's got a face as red as his jersey and he says the exact sort of sports related bullshit that gets brawls started in places like this. Sal picks at the banality of scorekeeping ethics until the guy stands up in all his red, beefy glory, looking two seconds away from wanting to take it either outside or down to the floor. Sal untangles his feet from the bar stool.

And we won't get into the specifics here. Long story short: our red fellow insults the Longhorns. Sal insults the Vipers. The rest goes about the way you'd expect. The group leaves disgruntled and Sal slumps back beside Buck with an ache in his jaw that says it's going to bruise tomorrow. He starts picking at the hot wings again and tries to act casual.

"Don't tell Mourn."