A night on the town
It had been a long day, and so they had come here after work to wind down. They had settled themselves in a corner of the pub, having a few drinks and a laugh and generally de-stressing.
Abby was currently huddled in the corner with Mark Andrews, Becker's second in command. The pair looked quite cosy, talking softly between themselves, and ignoring Connor's teasing.
Across from them, Becker was being hit on by a slightly-tipsy Dev. The soldier kept 'accidentally' touching Becker, pressing just a little too close, but Becker didn't seem to mind. If what Connor was seeing was right, Becker appeared to be enjoying it.
Sarah left the table she had been sharing with Neil, another of Becker's men, and headed for the bar again. She had been gone a few minutes when Connor noticed a commotion. Looking across, he saw the group of men blocking her way back. They had arrived about an hour earlier, making a nuisance of themselves from the moment they walked through the door.
Danny frowned and got to his feet. "I think I need another drink," he said, setting off for the bar.
"You just can't help riding to the rescue, can you?"
With a quick kiss to Connor's lips, Danny smiled. "I'll be back in a minute."
----------
"Where 'you going, honey?"
Sarah tried to sidestep the man but he moved into her path again.
"Please, just let me pass." She backed up as he moved closer, her back hitting the bar. Now she had nowhere to go. "My friends are right over there."
The man barely glanced their way. "I'm sure they won't mind; have a drink with us."
Sarah shook her head, trying her best to be polite to them. Her mother always said that it paid to be polite, even when dealing with drunk arseholes such as these, she thought. "Thank you, but I really should be getting back to them."
It seemed that politeness was lost on this group, however. His eyes narrowed and his friends closed in around them.
"What's the matter? Not good enough for you?" he sneered. "Stuck up bitch."
"Sarah? We were waiting for you."
At the sound of Danny's voice, the men turned and Sarah quickly pushed her way through to get to the former policeman's side.
"You OK?"
Sarah nodded, as the man said defensively, "We were just talking to her."
"Well I don't think she's interested. Take my advice and quit whilst you're ahead."
One of the men muttered under their breath, barely loud enough for him to hear, but he did.
"Try saying that to my face, dickhead."
"I said, 'fag'. Not like everyone can't see you all over the kid over there."
Danny glared, ready to argue, but Sarah gripped his arm. "Come on, let's go." She gave a gentle tug on his arm. "It's not worth it."
Leaving under their pissed-off glares, Danny and Sarah went back to their table.
"I don't think you made a very good impression," Becker observed, seeing the group of men by the bar cast another disgusted look their way. They had been doing that every time Danny and Connor got too close to each other.
Danny barely spared them a glance before smirking at Becker. "Looks as though you did, however," he said, indicating to Dev. The soldier was still standing rather unsteadily next to Becker, one arm draped around his commanding officer's shoulders. "Either put the guy out of his misery or tell him he's way off track," Danny advised. "Personally, I'd go for option 1."
Connor, listening in, pinched his arm. "Hey!"
"Doesn't mean I'm looking, Connor," Danny assured him.
"Glad to hear it."
Danny leaned over to kiss away the pout from Connor's lips, eliciting a disgusted noise from one of the men by the bar. He looked up as one of them came over, beer bottle swinging from his fingers.
"Ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
"Why?" Danny asked.
"'Not right."
Danny stood, ready to hit him, but Connor stopped him.
"Much as I'd like to see him get beaten to a pulp, I really don't want to spend the next few years only seeing you in prison."
Danny backed away, very deliberately sliding an arm around Connor, as though to prove a point. The man scowled at them both before turning that anger towards the barman as the entire group were asked to leave the premises.
----------
They left the pub a few hours later, heading back to the ARC, where they all intended to sleep for the night since none of them was fit to drive home.
Unfortunately, they had not got further than the end of the street when they passed the group men who had been thrown out of the bar earlier. They were sitting on the benches outside another pub.
"There they are," one said, noticing and pointing to their group. "Fucking poofs."
"Yeah," his friend agreed, staring as Danny slung his arm around Connor's shoulders. "Fucking wrong."
Sarah saw the men begin to approach and nudged Neil. This wasn't going to end well, not when they had three special forces soldiers and an ex policeman in their group who weren't likely to take any more shit from these idiots.
"Where d'you think you're going?" one demanded, stepping in front of them. "Your lot ain't welcome 'round here."
"Fuck off, mate," Danny told him dismissively.
The man's eyes narrowed and his friends circled around them.
"Look, we don't want any trouble," Neil said, glaring at Danny to shut up.
The man sneered. "Fuck you."
Andrews raised his eyebrows at Abby, trying to hold his smile back. This guy thought he was so hard, so untouchable, but they had fought armies and rampaging dinosaurs. This idiot was no more than a bug waiting to be swatted.
The man turned to glare, along with his friends, as Dev chose that moment to grope Becker's arse before pressing a kiss to the side of his neck.
"Fucking disgusting," his friend said. "I say we show 'em what happens to their likes around here."
As his partners-in-crime agreed, Connor looked beseechingly at Danny as the older man curled his hand into a fist.
"Let me, please," he said. "I've been practicing."
Connor's punch connected squarely with the man's nose, and he grinned delightedly that his hand to hand combat lessons had been paying off.
The man's friends all responded immediately, spoiling for a fight. They had no idea what they were letting themselves in for, Connor thought.
He sensed the change in the others; suddenly their drunken behaviour vanished, leaving them alert and ready for battle, like the good soldiers they had been trained as. Neil pulled Sarah to him, making sure that she was behind him, Andrews and Danny, just as Danny did with Connor. They were the only non-fighters of the group, despite Connor's lucky punch, and therefore the others would protect them. He had tried to move Abby out of the line of fire as well, but after remembering what Connor had said about her kickboxing skills, he reconsidered.
"Come on, kiddies, if you're so eager to get your arses kicked," Danny taunted them, grinning. He crooked a finger, beckoning them, before blowing a kiss in their direction.
"Neil, Danny- stay with Sarah and Connor," Becker murmured to them.
They both nodded as the others spread out in a semi-circle around the men, who suddenly didn't look quite as confident. It didn't stop them though, their alcohol-fuelled bravado refusing to let them back off. Within seconds the street had turned into a brawl, and rather uneven one. The men from the pub fought messily, throwing punches here and there and hoping to hit something. Connor assumed that this usually worked for them but they were up against trained fighters.
The soldiers fought like something out of a martial arts movie, graceful and fluidic. They were taking fewer hits than the others and landing more. It took only a short time to drop the five men, leaving them on the ground and clutching various injured parts of their bodies.
"I should have warned you" Becker said, feigning sympathy and crouching down next to the man who had been insulting him earlier, "that half of us are trained soldiers. And the rest? Well, they deal with worse things than you every day."
The man glowered, still trying to stop his nose from bleeding and began to get to his feet.
"I'd stay down if I were you, mate," Connor told him. "It's you who'll come off worst. You know, you really should be more careful who you piss off."
The man got up but took Connor's advice, dragging one of his friends to his feet as the others all got up and stumbled away.
"That was fun," Dev said as he made his way back to Becker's side. "You OK?"
"How come you guys don't have a scratch on you?" Danny grumbled. He had taken a fist to his right cheekbone early on and it was starting to bruise. "That pillock laid a good one on me."
Becker grinned at him. "It's not our fault you didn't move out of the way quickly enough," he teased.
"Yeah, funny," Danny said.
----------
The following morning found Danny standing in Lester's office, being reprimanded for turning up to work with a black eye.
"It wasn't our fault, sir. They started it."
Lester propped his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. "'Our', Quinn? Am I to understand that other members of your team were involved in this altercation?"
Lester stood and looked out of his office window, seeing the assembled group of soldiers and Anomaly team scatter when they saw him.
"You know what, Quinn?" he said, turning back to Danny. "I don't want to know. Go; get out of here."
Danny heaved a sigh of relief and made a hasty exit before Lester changed his mind.
------
End.