Beowulf needed a drink. Badly. And of course he wasn’t about to frequent the club in which he worked. Besides that wasn’t really the scene he was looking for. He didn’t even know what ‘sci-fi’ meant. He was just the bouncer and Area 51. He just let people in and kept the trouble makers out. That was all. He even got to wear his own clothes. But there was no way in Niflheim that he was going to try and get into the club on his night off. He wanted something a bit…darker. And that’s how he found the Stab Wound. It was much more to his taste. This was better than Area 51. Much better.
He had the bar tender pour him something strong. He needed it. It was just one of those days. Someone down the bar made some kind of comment about that being strong but Beowulf was in no mood for idle chatter. He was a Viking. He had been raised drinking. The water wasn’t safe back in Geatland so everyone drank. He wouldn’t have a problem tonight. He could have a few drinks and walk out of there completely fine. He couldn’t say as much for the rest of the people in here. But what he could say was that anyone stupid enough to get drunk was just asking for trouble. And that was why Beowulf carried a knife hidden in his leather jacket, plus the bigger hunting knife strapped to high thigh.
So, as per usual, life for Prince Humperdinck of Florin was increasingly frustrating. No, this time it wasn’t Buttercup rejecting him for that buggering pirate…well, at least it wasn’t that precisely. She sort of needed to be present for that. That in of itself was annoying. He had just found her, damn it, and now she decided she was going to disappear out of nowhere? That wasn’t how things worked. Lost things that were found did not get lost again, least of all after rejecting the one who found them. But no, it wasn’t merely Buttercup, although one could point out that she was the cause of all of his present grief. If she had just gone with him as soon as he found her, he wouldn’t have been stuck in this bloody city trying to make her see reason, and that meant he wouldn’t have been dealing with that stupid woman who, for some inexplicable reason, couldn’t just be killed for annoying the hell out of him.
Thus, because of the evils of the world that he just simply shouldn’t have had to deal with, Humperdinck found himself marching into his first bar. Because this was the sort of thing men did when they were angry at the world, and he didn’t give an ROUS’ ass if it was undignified. How he had been treated since he left home, that was undignified, so he had every bloody right to be undignified enough to even use the term bloody like some common peasant!
Anyway, that was why he had been sitting at that bar stool for a good hour and a half now, just brooding and ordering whatever sounded like it’d be strong enough, because of course he could take whatever they threw at him. He would very easily kick the sorry behinds of whatever alcoholic beverage they gave him. How hard could it be?
“Bloody, buggerin’….blonde…bimbo…” Humperdinck muttered after what was probably his fourth drink of the night. Why had it gotten quite that high? Well, frankly, he felt an odd sense of satisfaction in taking giant swigs of alcoholic beverages. Wasn’t that obvious? It just so happened that, contrary for his overly prideful attitude, his ability to hold his liquor left something to be desired. By now he was slumped over, banging his head against the counter in spite of the fact he was surely going to hate himself in the morning for doing so, and generally cursing at the world. “And fairies….stupid fairies….who needs ‘em?”
Beowulf wasn’t quite sure what he was drinking, but he didn’t really care. It was good and it burned a little as it went down. The bartender wasn’t the friendliest, but in a place like this you couldn’t expect that to be the case. The people here were not the best of the bunch, but they seemed to keep their distance from him. It might have been because of the hunting knife. It also might have been the glowers that he was sending.
He was particularly glowering at the young man not too far from where he sat, down the bar. It was stupid to bang one’s head against the bar. He was disrupting the whole mood of the place. And he was disrespecting women, which didn’t sit too well with Beowulf. He had always been taught that women should be respected. Always. No matter if they made you exceedingly uncomfortable or tried to link your arm in theirs and pull you off to shop for prom. It didn’t matter. They still needed to be respected. This man didn’t seem to have much of the same ingrained respect for women.
“Stop that,” the demanded, still sitting on his bar stool, glowering at the man. He did not appreciate this man coming into the bar and making so much noise. It was unseemly and it irked Beowulf. And Beowulf was not a man you wanted to irk. Especially when there were weapons around. Especially since there were two weapons on the Viking’s person.
“Fairies are not stupid,” he informed the young man. The young woman, Plum he believed her name was, was a fairy and she was tolerable. He had brought her to the hospital just the other day and stayed until she’d awoken. He’d wanted to make sure she was alright. She’d been very polite. But this bastarðr did not get to disrespect women like that. Especially not women with power.
Now, over in Florin, you didn’t get any sort of alcohol education unless you spent your free time in bars, something that, as you may have guessed, wasn’t exactly something Humperdinck invested time into. He was far too busy being spoiled, learning to fence and generally waiting for his father to just go and die already. So he really had no idea of how much it would slow his reaction time, being quite this drunk…hell, he didn’t think it was possible to get this drunk. So that was why when he realized that there was someone who was daring to order him around (admittedly, the man had just, rather calmly, told him to stop whatever it was he was doing, something that most reasonable people would’ve thought was more than fair), he found it a bit difficult to even turn his head.
Through eyes that were already clouded by the alcohol, Humperdinck glared without even moving his head up from the counter. God, was that just perfect, he was wearing all black like that thorn in his side, that so called Dread Pirate. What was going on with the world that all the male annoyances of his life were dressed head to toe in black? What was the point of such a dress code? Was the world conspiring to make him hate the color black, was that it? Because Humperdinck couldn’t think of a different explanation. And what was worse was that there was something very monosyllabic, the way the brute was speaking.
Rolling his eyes, he groaned, “Oh who asked you? Don’t you know it’s….rude to tell me not to rant?” Scoffing again, he grabbed onto the latest in the lines of alcoholic drinks that he had been buying. After all, he was a prince, cost was no bloody object. Neither was, apparently, being even ruder to someone who was probably even better trained in combat than you were. But Humperdinck didn’t think of that, because thinking wasn’t exactly his forte, least of all when he was getting drunk for the first time.
Drinking was common in Geatland. You weren’t a man if you couldn’t hold your mead to some degree. And Beowulf was most certainly a man. All Viking men were the manliest of men. It was written in their blood. It was ingrained into their souls and their hearts. That was why they were such ferocious warriors. And this young man, if he could even be called that, was less than manly at the moment. He appeared to be very drunk. And in an even worse temper.
Now Beowulf, on any other night could have ignored him had he not just blatantly disrespected women. In Beowulf’s culture women were legally less than men, but they were not to be disrespected. Women worked just as hard as the men. They took care of the household while raising children and taking care of a husband. That was no easy task. And this man should not disrespect the hard work that women did, nor should he disregard it. Beowulf had grown up at his mother’s side and spent so much time indoors that he had watched her and saw how hard she worked day in and day out. So it was only natural that he would take it heart.
He quickly, though calmly, grabbed the drink from Humperdinck’s hand and signaled to the bartender to cut him off. Beowulf wasn’t sure if he was just an angry drunk, but he was quite sure he probably wasn’t pleasant even when he wasn’t drunk. And if he didn’t know what was good for him, he would shut up before Beowulf made him.
“I am the nephew of a King, a prince in my country,” he informed Humperdinck. Beowulf didn’t usually mention the fact that he was considered a prince. That had always seemed a bit ridiculous, but perhaps this would make him seem a bigger, more commanding presence than he already was. “And I will tell you whatever I wish. It is my birthright.” He voice was low and steely. “You have had too much to drink. Go home or you will regret it.”
…oh, oh he was not. The great fool was not actually trying to tell him that he had had too much to drink. And he was not waving the title in his face as if that was going to make him more important than Humperdinck, who was also a prince, and was probably infinitely more important than whatever little piece of land this nephew of a King had. Oh this was just rich and infuriating at the very same time, and that was precisely why he began to rise, resting his hand where his sword happened to be at the moment just to double check that it was there, because clearly this man needed to be taught that he was not one to be trifled with.
“I’ll have you know that I am the sonofa King where I come from…’n where I come from? That’s a biiiiiit more impressive, wouldn’ya say, sir?” he slurred, still managing the sarcastic, entitled tone that he was oh so good at while sober…and honestly, it just sounded all the more annoying and pathetic when he was drunk. Still, he managed the smirk that he fancied was rather intimidating but really just made him look like a cartoon villain (which was basically what he was, really, when you think of it) like it was an art.
“As for regrets, I’d be worried for your neck…” Now, if he had been sober, he wouldn’t have done this very stupid thing that was frightening those who were sober enough to remember that wielded sword equaled death. He acted the idiot often, but not to the point where he didn’t know when it just wasn’t wise to draw his sword, and this was definitely not a moment where this was a good idea.
As it was? He wasn’t plastered, he was insulted, and chances were he was about to meet his own doom.
The son of a King? Beowulf was not impressed. He was far from impressed. Sons of kings should be men who were respected, who were leaders and respected their kings. There should not be men pretending to be all of the above. Men who pretended usually made the worst kings because they did not care for anyone other than themselves. If this was where the monarchy was headed, you could count Beowulf out. At least the Geats were a sensible group of people when it came to their monarchy.
And yet this prince was trying to threaten Beowulf with a sword. Honestly, that was something he shouldn’t have done. The sword was a weapon the Beowulf had practice with. All Vikings trained with swords, though battle axes were much more efficient and got the job done better. But they still used swords. The one this prince had was a very nice sword indeed, but Beowulf was not afraid of it. Instead he tapped the sword once to get a feel for the metal, the give of the sword and such things like that which were useful to the young Viking.
He eyed the drunk man, trying to get a feel for him and his reaction time. It was slowed by drink and even his speech was slurred. There wasn’t any good way to get the sword away from him without putting himself into danger and really, Beowulf didn’t want to spend an afterlife in Niflheim just because a drunk, angry heathen had beaten him and killed him. No, he was probably going to have to fight him. So Beowulf unsheathed the wide-edged hunting knife that had been strapped to his thigh. “You will regret this,” were his only words.