Okay. I'll make this short and sweet. This story is rated M for a reason, when it really should be NC-17.
Which means it includes all of three things:
1. Crude/Vulgar Language
2. Violence
3. Gratuitous Sex Scenes.

You have been warned.

The bar was dingy, nasty, and right up his alley.

He'd been here before, on nights where he'd had nothing better to do but drink, nights when the nightmares, asleep or waking, wouldn't leave him alone. Here was where he spent the nights he couldn't spend with Dom or anyone else for that matter, because, frankly, he didn't like anyone else. Not like the drinks did anything anyway. As he pushed open the grimy door made of fractured wood, looking upwards at the red-backlit sign, he remembered how he had learned long ago that it was nearly impossible to get a buzz, from even the hardest shit the bartender could throw at you. Whatever those nuts at Command put in those ration bars, it wasn't just protein; a Gear's metabolism was so fast that the alcohol would just burn up, barely even hit the stomach. Perhaps it was a fail-safe-- no more drunken bar fights and bad PR from the stupid grunts.

Hrm. Stupid grunts.

Walking up to the bar was easy, he felt like he had done it a thousand times. Low lights gave the place a red tint, probably to make the bloodstains in the wood floors and tables less noticeable. The planks creaked under his boots, hell, he probably weighed more than five normal guys put together. Some heads turned as he walked through. Being a Gear was an obvious thing, especially in physical appearance; after spending so much time in the armor, waddling more than walking to accommodate the thigh straps and padding, you ended up walking that way for the rest of your life, not to mention the sheer difference in musculature between an enlisted and an officer, nonetheless a civilian. Gears were just fuckin' huge compared to everyone else, and being built like a brick shithouse at six-foot-two was a good way to get noticed.

He ignored the few brave, curious stares, shoving his hands in his pockets and letting the fluff of the leather bomber jacket he was wearing hide his face. The last thing he wanted in a place like this was for someone to recognize him-- people in Jacinto thought Marcus Fenix was some sort of hero, judging by the reaction he got when someone found out his name. His name had already been in print for Aspho, not to mention the court martial fiasco, and those not old enough to remember that got a good dose of it after the Delta dropped the lightmass at Timgad. But then again, Marcus never talked much anyway, and not even the bartender, a guy he saw most nights he was off-duty, knew his name.

Sitting down, he rested his hands on the bar, folded, hunching over like he always did. Posture was for people like his father, those who had something to prove or impress people with, people who sat in an office and worked nine-to-five jobs and cared about that sort of thing because they had never been out on the battlefield, they had never done anything in their lives to make them truly alive. Not like slouching was a conscious decision. He just didn't give a fuck.

The bartender strolled over, cleaning a glass with a dirty rag. The old, surly, balding man peered intently at the soldier, eying the death's head pinned to the front of the weathered, black do-rag tied to his head. He recognized the guy, always wore that damn thing, but could never place his face. Whoever he was, he'd been through hell; plain as the scars on his face and all that pain in those bloodless blue eyes.

"What'll it be tonight, son," He said, knowing the answer before it came and avoiding the unwavering stare of a man who was dead in-side and wishing he was, out.

"The good stuff," He grumbled back, his voice like big tires rolling across gravel; always weary, those intense baby blues flicking back to some indiscriminate object on the shelf of the bar in front of him. His expression stayed unchanged as the man slid a dingy shot-glass full of one-hundred-proof vodka under his nose, and downed it without making a face, or even flinching at all. But the bartender knew the drill: refill the glass as often as possible, don't ask questions. This guy was one hard bastard.

As the bartend walked over to grab the bottle of 'the good stuff', as the soldier called it, the door squeaked open yet again, and in walked the exact opposite of a hard bastard. He had to start chewing on a toothpick to keep himself from whistling, the woman was arguably the prettiest thing he'd seen in this place since E-day. Women were hard to come by these days, not to mention pretty ones, and rarely ever did the ugly ones, with too much makeup and disproportionate thighs, grace this place with their sterile wombs; since if they were here that meant they were unusable as breeding stock. But no, this lady was flat-out gorgeous, legs that were just right and clean-shaven, by the looks of it, a cute little pouty mouth, and a rack that would make even locust stop and stare. Almost every guy in the joint looked, some of them slack-jawed. But soldier-boy kept staring at the wall.

The pretty thing didn't seem to notice the stares or even acknowledge them at all, she just walked straight in, heels still clicking, even on the shit-tastic wood flooring, short-cropped blonde hair falling just to her shoulders and hiding part of her face. Her dark eyes, somewhat mismatched with her platinum dome, were fixed ahead of her, like she was here for someone. Following her line of sight, the bartender felt he should offer up some warning-- she had her eyes not just fixed, but locked, on the only guy left sitting on this side of the bar, the one drinking one-hundred-proof vodka, and she didn't exactly look elated. Maybe there was a score to settle, he thought, seeing the COG emblem imprinted on the side of her shoulder pads, more style than function.

She sat down next to her target, straight-backed and proper, flicking the hair out of her face. A pretty girl like that didn't belong in a dirt-shit hole in the wall like this. If this was a lover's spat, then he wasn't going to stand around and watch... that guy could eat her alive, and he would bet money that she knew that better than she let on. When she sat down, a few guys in the back got restless, and he knew what they were thinking-- She's going for that loser? --but, if anything, the expression on her face was more sorrow or pity than anger or lust or something else.

Soldier-boy downed his second glass, still the same dour asshole that rumbled in earlier.

Shit, he thought, setting the bottle on the counter and walking away, pretending he had more things to clean. Let the bastard pour his own drinks tonight. He still wasn't going to stand around and watch.

"Hey stranger," She said quietly, easing gently into the bar stool next to him in this dirty shit hole these men called a bar. It was a long throwback from Marcus's childhood, from what she pieced together from files in her spare time and what she had heard from Dom, he had everything anyone could ever want, all the money in the world. She remembered, after she recieved the Embry Star for her mother, Adam Fenix had invited them all to the Redoubt Hotel for a nice dinner, but it turned out to be more of a disaster; Marcus just wasn't cut out for that sort of thing, no matter how he had been raised. If that was one end of the spectrum, this dead-end hole in the wall was the complete opposite, and suited him much better.

"How goes the fight?" She implored, knowing he wasn't in the best of moods.

"It goes," He growled, looking at her. She was beautiful alright, ever since he had first set eyes on her, she was beautiful, and due to her mother's overbearing stature, she didn't even know it. She had to have noticed the ogling stares of the men that surrounded her, but knowing her, she probably chocked it up to the simple lack of women. It was bullshit. The man in Marcus made his face soften at the frown in her red lips, made his eyes linger much too long on the open-necked, off-duty shirt she was wearing. The red lights made her normally pale skin glow with a healthy light, and her hair was down. He loved it when her hair was down.

Shit. He thought, face still blank as ever while his brains were churning away. Grabbing the glass bottle in front of him, he poured himself another glass of the good stuff. What the fuck is wrong with me?

"Indeed it does," She said, trailing off, thinking of other things. He watched with his utter intelligence, knowing that she was thinking of better days as she fiddled with her slender, gloved fingers; days when things were different, and war wasn't a problem on everyone's mind. It could drive a person crazy sometimes, thinking how long this planet had been at war. First the eighty years of the Pendulum wars, fought to the death over what seemed now like the most bass-ackwards reasons, and they fucking win. Then the whole world goes to shit for another fourteen, going on fifteen, because of some threat they didn't even see coming. There was no end to the fighting, not even now, not even after they bombed the shit out of the locust tunnels.

"Sorry to hear about your soldier, Gonzalez. My condolences." She said, glancing at him with her dark chocolate eyes, her makeup probably days old. As he glanced sidelong at her, he thought he could see the tell-tale bags under her eyes from days and days without rest.

The words hit home, and he nodded. Gil Gonzalez had been sniped in the neck by some locust bastard; an ambush that Marcus himself had walked them right into by stopping for a distress signal, when he knew there were no squads in the area. But it was a COG distress signal, it had to be authentic, right? Even if the code they were using was an old one. He should have listened to his fucking gut. Still, Marcus hadn't been the one hardest hit by the tragedy. His squad mate, Jace Stratton -- good kid, Marcus rather liked him, it reminded him of a younger version of Dom -- had gone blank for a while. The kid was still in shock. Sometimes, it took guys a lifetime to cry for their dead buddies, and he knew that, long after it mattered, Jace would.

He let out a hrmph, usually his expression for frustration, disappointment, discontent. "Appreciate it," He said, taking a swig of whatever foul shit he had been drinking. She knew he didn't feel a thing. "But words don't bring people back."

It was a morbid sentiment, but she knew he was right. One of the funny things about Marcus was the fact that he felt every death that happened in his squad. Really, he always felt personally responsible for anyone who died on his watch, that was just how the man was. It reminded her vaguely of Aspho, how Carlos's death had rocked his foundation in life; and even though that had been multiple times worse, it caused Marcus to have this innate drive to keep as many Gears alive as he possibly could. Which, given the man, was a lot of Gears.

A born leader, she thought to herself, looking sideways at his time-worn face as a small smile danced across her lips. If the war ever ended, she wondered vaguely what he would do. Maybe all the good citizens of Jacinto would vote him into Chairman; if not for his war record than for the sheer fact that they didn't want a guy like that roaming the streets at night. She almost laughed at the thought. Marcus would hate it, of course, he hated politics; his natural distrust of higher-ups like Prescott and Hoffman stemmed back to his father and the secrecy he was steeped in as a scientist, not just because Hoffman left him to rot in the Slab for a few years.

The jagged scars down his right cheek had not been there before those four long years. There were more scars, probably, and she wasn't sure if they were from whatever crazy experiments they conducted at that horrible place, or just locust that he had been defenseless to fight off. If anything, it was unnerving how he slipped right back into the combat like the forty years that were assigned to him were just a leaf blowing in the wind. There was still bad blood between he and Hoffman, there always would be, and Anya knew she would never understand why the Colonel had left a frigging war hero to rot in Ephyra's most dreaded incarceration facility, while letting all the rapists and pedophiles and serial killers and who-knew-what else go. That was really her only beef with Hoffman, and sometimes she got the feeling that the old man didn't even know why.

She wondered how Marcus ever made it through the day.