Fic: Love and Other Drugs
Title: Love and Other Drugs
Characters: Cook mainly, but others feature as well.
Rating: M
Words: 3,136
Summary: Post S4. Cook struggles to cope with Freddie's death. Things get angsty.
Warning: Language, and there is some violence, and other such unpleasant things.
Disclaimer: Not my characters
A/N: Thanks to eskimo_jo for being enthusiastic about working on a really depressing fic, and to crackfoxx and triptohere for giving this a read through.
Link to art!
There’s a cop car that sits outside of Naomi’s house from nine in the morning. A couple minutes before five, a new car takes over and then the same happens around one-ish, sitting idle until the first car appears again, pulling up first thing.
Cook knows, because he watches them.
They’re waiting for him to make a mistake, that’s all. He knows they won’t get another warrant for Naomi’s, not unless he gives them an excuse, so all he’s gotta do is lie low until they get fed up. It’s not as easy as that though, is the problem.
Yesterday, they buried Freddie.
They buried Freddie, and he couldn’t go. His best fucking mate, and he was stuck in the house making the tea instead.
He cried a lot yesterday. Cried like a baby, as if it would make a difference.
When they got back, Emily said the service was nice, as if that means anything at all, and Cook could only nod, as if it mattered to him what songs everyone sang. Naomi told him that Effy missed it as well, and Cook shrugged, as if he didn’t care.
Last night, in bed, he cried some more.
He hates Freddie for dying. The bastard. They were meant to be in it together, best mates for life, and Freddie couldn’t even give him that.
He wonders if Freddie even put up much of a fight. He wanted out anyway, didn’t he? With his packed bags, all ready to do a runner if Cook hadn’t of caught him. He’d already given up. Cook thinks, yeah, maybe it was easy for Freddie to just let it happen.
Cook hates him.
---
Living with the lesbians doesn’t go like how it does in the movies. He never hears them having sex, let alone getting an invite to join in, and the only thing he ever walks in on is them having serious conversations, the whole house thick with the tension of it.
He spends a week trapped in Naomi’s spare room; worse than prison it is, cause outside is so tempting, just right there and there’s no one to stop him from going out apart from himself. It’s trapped, that’s how he feels. Thoughts running round in his head, bouncing off the walls, nowhere for them to go, no way for him to let them out. Cook’s not a thinker. He’s an action kinda man; he goes out and does shit. Sitting around, thinking, it’s all the things he’s never been good at.
If he’s honest, he gets bored.
That’s no excuse, not really, for what he does, but he’s been trapped in this room, stealing drink and the odd bit of spliff that he finds hidden away, thinking about Freddie, thinking about Effy, thinking too much for too long.
Naomi, she’s just around. She just exists now, like the life’s sucked out of her, she can’t - won’t - do anything without Emily’s approval. It’s fucking depressing. What’s also fucking depressing is the amount of action it’s possible to get in this house. He’s had nothing for over a month, no prospect either.
So he makes a joke. About his cock being the answer to all her worries, and all Naomi’s gotta do is give in already.
She glares at him before replying. “Fuck off Cook, I’m not in the mood.”
Of course she’s not, cause Naomi’s never in the mood these days, but Cook’s fed up of sitting around waiting for something, anything to happen. “Ain’t you gonna fuck me Naomikins?”
“What?”
“That’s how you deal with your emotions though, innit?”
“What are you even…?” she starts, and then realises where he’s going. “Stop it.”
Cook takes a step closer to her and shrugs. “I’m ready to fuck and forget if you are.”
“Cook,” Naomi replies, warning tone thick.
He ignores her, pushes some more. “I’d use my fingers if it’d make things more familiar,” he says, wiggling them in her face. “Or you could pretend it’s plastic. Bet you love a bit of - ”
“Cook.”
“Come on Naomios, let’s go to it. Me and you.”
They’re backed right up against the wall now, millimetres apart. He can feel her breath on his cheek. “You’re scaring me,” she says.
Somewhere in his mind he thinks, this is the closest he’s been to anyone since him and Foster had their rumble. Somewhere else in his mind, he thinks he should shut the fuck up. He smiles instead. “Thought that’s how you liked it, babe.”
Naomi slaps him, forces him back a step. “Get out,” she says, her voice wavering only a little.
Gingerly, he moves some fingers to his cheek. It stings, and Cook stares at Naomi, who is still pressed against the living room wall, trembling. “What the fuck? You can’t even take a joke now?”
“You need to leave. I don’t want you here anymore. Don’t speak to Emily either, understand?”
Cook grins maliciously. “Ah. The lies are back are they? Knew it wouldn’t be long. Can’t help yourself, can you?”
There’s a pause as Naomi tries to pull herself together. “I’m going to phone the police.”
“You gonna dob me in? Well ’ard of you Naomikins.”
She sets herself and looks straight at him. “You can wait here if you want, it’d make it easier for them to find you.”
She looks serious, deadly so. As Cook’s weighing up his options, Naomi’s phone rings. She glances at it, sitting on the couch. “It’ll be Emily,” she says and stares at him, as if waiting for his permission. He steps out of her way, and she surges forwards to answer before it diverts to voicemail.
Cook runs.
---
He turns up at Keith’s an hour later, after doubling back, changing directions, all that stuff to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
Cook explains with a feeble, “Didn’t have anywhere else” and Keith just shrugs, as if he was expecting it all along, Cook to turn up looking battered and bruised with no other options left.
He sets up camp in the back office and has the life he’s always dreamed of. Lock in all night, sleep all day. Free booze as long as he can still stand, and the odd tab or bit of powder when it’s going as well.
It doesn’t help.
He’s had comedowns before, course. Bad ones, alright ones, the usual type. This feels like a constant pain though, and it’s worse, cause it just won’t fucking stop and his head feels like it might explode and all he can think of is the pain and Freddie and Effy and it doesn’t stop, not ever, not unless he’s hitting his hand against a wall until his knuckles get bloody and even then… It aches.
He tortures himself with thoughts, questions.
The big question that he asks himself, even when he knows he shouldn’t, is would Effy be totally fucked up if it was him? If Foster had killed him instead, then what? Would she just have shrugged and gone back to screwing Freds, or would it have been more? He’ll never know, of course he’ll never know. And if he’s really honest, then he doesn’t want to know, just in case the answer isn’t what he wants to hear. But it doesn’t stop him thinking it and running through all the options in his mind, considering all the scenarios and all of the combinations. He doesn’t know if any of them make it any better or worse even, not really. But he can’t help himself, like picking at a scab, reopening old wounds.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? They’re not really old wounds, not at all.
He doesn’t know when it changed from wanting in her knickers (and getting there very successfully) on day one of college, to throwing himself in front of a van in order to save her life (just a few weeks ago). There wasn’t a moment, or if there was then he can’t think of it. Before gateauxs? After she came to see him in prison? When they ran away together? When he introduced her to his dad? Possibly. He doesn’t know.
But it changed, there’s no denying it. Effy isn’t just some cheap thrill, and he should know, he’s had enough of them. No, she means more.
Which is why he also hates her.
Thin line, his dad used to say to him, before Cook crossed that line one too many times and his dad gave up altogether. Cook doesn’t think it’s a thin line. Cook thinks that line is fucking massive, because Effy put him through a lot of shit over the last two years.
He doesn’t want to see her. It’s Effy’s fault, after all, all of this.
He says as much to Jenkins one night, who stutters and stumbles all over the place trying to claim it’s not, but he’s wrong see, he’s the one that’s not so smart now. Cause if Effy hadn’t of started this thing, way back in the first week of college, if she’d have managed to put her fucking knickers on properly, or even a pair of trousers, then him and Freds, they’d have been just fine.
And JJ stutters some more and says that no, it’s all highly improbable and some other such ballsy science crap that doesn’t make any sense, because it’s a fact. Cook knows it. If she had of managed to keep her head straight, if she hadn’t have gone in that looney bin, if she hadn’t of talked to Foster, if she hadn’t of led them both on for the best part of two years, if she hadn’t of told Cook that she loved them both. If she hadn’t of said she loved Freddie more.
Cause now Freddie’s dead, and if it wasn’t for her, he’d be sitting next to them in the pub, laughing at something JJ had said, and spiking Cook’s drink with some hideously cheap spirit from Europe that he’d picked up from that Pedro guy down the skate park.
JJ looks deathly pale sitting across from him, silent now. And then. “Cook,” he squeaks.
“What?”
“This…it’s not Effy’s fault.”
Cook’s head snaps up to meet JJ’s eye. He’s shaking, fucking shaking it’s taken that much for him to be able to say something. “I didn’t realise you’d grown a pair of balls JJ,” Cook responds.
There’s silence. “Maybe not then,” Cook concedes.
There’s more silence. And then, more firmly, “It’s not Effy’s fault that Freddie… that he’s… Foster murdered him.”
Cook throws his pint glass at the wall and stands, the sounds of shattering glass and his chair scraping back silencing the rest of the pub. “Shut up!” he screams, pointing a finger towards JJ’s chest. “Effy did this. It’s her fault.”
“Cook, please, don’t, let’s-”
“Why you on her side? She sucking you off, is that it?”
“I’m not on anyone’s side and no, she does not put her mouth…down there,” JJ hisses, a blush creeping up his cheeks. He hangs his head. “She asks for you.”
Cook frowns. “You’ve seen her?”
“Yes. She wants to… well, I think she would like to talk to you.”
Cook snorts. “You run messages for her? Got you round her little finger an’ all, ain’t she?”
JJ shakes his head. “It’s not like that. She doesn’t see many people in the home, visiting hours and -”
“She’s back in that place?”
“Yes, you didn’t know? It’s not good Cook. She’s not good.”
Cook doesn’t reply, instead, punches the jukebox on his way out.
---
Keith tells him that it’s time to grow up. He tells Keith to go fuck himself.
Keith, well, he don’t take too kindly to that as it turns out. Before Cook’s really aware of what’s happening, Keith has him pinned up against the wall and he’s being told to get his fucking mouth washed out.
He struggles, but Keith is a big boy, and he’s had his fair share of scraps, so Cook realises pretty quickly that he ain’t getting out of this one easily.
“You listen here kid, and you listen good. You piss your life away and you’re no better than your mate lying in that box, understand?”
“Don’t you fucking talk about him,” Cook spits, struggling some more, getting real fucking angry now.
Keith punches Cook in the stomach; the air is knocked right out his lungs. He gasps, big mouthfuls, trying to get some of it back.
Keith watches, waits until Cook’s stopped panting. “Listen. You can’t change that he’s dead. It’s too late for that. It’s time for you to start pulling your weight.” He lets Cook go, and he collapses to the floor, sobbing. Keith leaves him there, in a heap, throwing over his shoulder that Cook had better pay for the broken glass and the damage to the jukebox. Cook throws the nearest thing to hand - another glass - at the now closed door, a feeble attempt at retaliation.
He cries for what might be hours, slumped against the wall. It’s tears he didn’t think he had anymore, tears he thought he’d got rid of a long time ago, but still they keep coming.
Once he’s managed to calm himself down and has wiped his eyes, it’s obvious what he’s got to do.
He leaves.
---
Right about now is the time that he’d normally turn up at Freddie’s shed, six pack in hand and an apology all ready to go. And Freddie, well, yeah they’ve had some proper fall outs over the years, but he wasn’t ever that difficult to turn round, except when it came to Effy. Cook reckons this isn’t about Effy though - well it is, cause everything between him and Freds over the last few years was about Effy on some level, but this is different. This time it isn’t Cook that’s fucked it up. This time, it’s Freddie.
It’s Freddie who died, and who didn’t fight hard enough and who won’t get the chance to say sorry or goodbye, or any of the stuff that you should say to your best mate before you fuck off for good.
Cook has no one left. It’s that simple. He’s honest to God alone now. His mum, and Pads by default, Freddie, Naomi, JJ, Keith, gone. There’s no one left. Cook’s got fuck all, except that police car chasing him round everywhere he goes. He’s got that. It’s shit. Everything’s up the shitter, and it’s all down to Freddie.
Or maybe it’s all down to him.
Effy needs someone. And he loves her. Can’t breathe because of it sometimes. And Cook knows he might be second best, but he might be all she’s got, and that’s got to count for something, it’s got to. Cause if it doesn’t…
He’s not going to give up on her. Not like they all gave up on him, not like Freddie gave up on them all.
Maybe it’s wrong of him. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe everything’s his fucking fault and he’s fucking it up even more just by being there. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Fuck maybe.
He makes the call.
The countdown begins, and Cook starts running hard.
---
He passes himself off as a cousin, but the woman on the front desk looks like she couldn’t give a flying fuck who he was, so long as he pissed off again and she could get back to watching daytime TV.
Effy’s room - second floor, third on the left - is empty when he gets there.
He waits. There’s a clock on the wall, ticking by the seconds, and it makes him anxious, not knowing if she’s going to get there before it’s all too late. By the time Effy does show up, he’s a nervous wreck, fidgeting like mad, trying to use up some of this extra energy.
She, on the other hand, looks composed as ever. The drugs maybe. Or maybe she’s over it. Or maybe… fuck maybe.
“Wondered when you’d turn up,” she says. “I thought it would have been sooner.”
Cook shrugs. “Yeah, well I had some stuff to sort. You know,” and here is where he struggles to find the words to explain what exactly he’s been doing over the last month. “Some things to think about.”
Effy nods, slowly, as if processing her thoughts. “Everyone always thought… But he was the brave one really, wasn’t he?”
Cook bites the inside of his cheek, and eventually, he nods agreement. Despite everything that he’s thought about Freddie since they were five years old, and especially despite what he’s thought about him in the last month since they found him, Effy’s right. Freddie did something Cook never could; he let himself be. He never hid, he put their friendship on the line and let his heart do what it wanted. He didn’t make it a joke, a game. Freddie called it as it was, far too openly for Cook to keep up.
And maybe, in the end, that’s why he won. Not that this feels like anyone won. Cook takes a deep breath, knowing that time is against them now. “How long you got in here?”
Effy shrugs. “Depends.”
“On?”
“How mental they think I am.”
“And how mental are you?”
She smiles, like a ghost from the past. “Very,” she says, all light-hearted and devilish, as if they could go back to playing that game they did, and as if that would be enough for either of them, even though they’re both smart enough now to know it won’t be.
“No, Eff. Serious.”
She shrugs again, and turns away. “They won’t say. Might be a while.”
Cook pulls his hands through his hair. He glances towards the clock and estimates that he’s got a minute left, tops. “Look, I know she visits, so say sorry to Naomi for me, will you?”
“For what?” Effy asks, eyebrow cocked, and if he didn’t know that Naomi wouldn’t be able to bring herself to talk about it, he’d think that she already knew.
“Something stupid.”
“Can’t you tell her yourself?”
Cook shakes his head. “I think I’m going away.”
“Where?”
“Not far.”
“How long?”
He shrugs. “Might be a while.”
Effy looks entirely confused. Cook sees the policeman standing outside the door, and knows that it’s over.
“Wait for me, yeah? I’ll wait for you.”
The door opens. The cop asks for James Cook. Cook glances at him, then acknowledges his presence with a “yip”, turning his eyes back on Effy. The cuffs are cold, the metal is wrapped round his wrists too tight. Effy’s still not moved.
The cop begins to pull him away. Cook starts to panic that he might not get his answer. “Eff. Wait, please? If it’s me first, I’ll wait, ok?”
Effy stares.
“Just say yes, please. I swear it Effy.”
Finally, Effy nods.
Characters: Cook mainly, but others feature as well.
Rating: M
Words: 3,136
Summary: Post S4. Cook struggles to cope with Freddie's death. Things get angsty.
Warning: Language, and there is some violence, and other such unpleasant things.
Disclaimer: Not my characters
A/N: Thanks to eskimo_jo for being enthusiastic about working on a really depressing fic, and to crackfoxx and triptohere for giving this a read through.
Link to art!
There’s a cop car that sits outside of Naomi’s house from nine in the morning. A couple minutes before five, a new car takes over and then the same happens around one-ish, sitting idle until the first car appears again, pulling up first thing.
Cook knows, because he watches them.
They’re waiting for him to make a mistake, that’s all. He knows they won’t get another warrant for Naomi’s, not unless he gives them an excuse, so all he’s gotta do is lie low until they get fed up. It’s not as easy as that though, is the problem.
Yesterday, they buried Freddie.
They buried Freddie, and he couldn’t go. His best fucking mate, and he was stuck in the house making the tea instead.
He cried a lot yesterday. Cried like a baby, as if it would make a difference.
When they got back, Emily said the service was nice, as if that means anything at all, and Cook could only nod, as if it mattered to him what songs everyone sang. Naomi told him that Effy missed it as well, and Cook shrugged, as if he didn’t care.
Last night, in bed, he cried some more.
He hates Freddie for dying. The bastard. They were meant to be in it together, best mates for life, and Freddie couldn’t even give him that.
He wonders if Freddie even put up much of a fight. He wanted out anyway, didn’t he? With his packed bags, all ready to do a runner if Cook hadn’t of caught him. He’d already given up. Cook thinks, yeah, maybe it was easy for Freddie to just let it happen.
Cook hates him.
---
Living with the lesbians doesn’t go like how it does in the movies. He never hears them having sex, let alone getting an invite to join in, and the only thing he ever walks in on is them having serious conversations, the whole house thick with the tension of it.
He spends a week trapped in Naomi’s spare room; worse than prison it is, cause outside is so tempting, just right there and there’s no one to stop him from going out apart from himself. It’s trapped, that’s how he feels. Thoughts running round in his head, bouncing off the walls, nowhere for them to go, no way for him to let them out. Cook’s not a thinker. He’s an action kinda man; he goes out and does shit. Sitting around, thinking, it’s all the things he’s never been good at.
If he’s honest, he gets bored.
That’s no excuse, not really, for what he does, but he’s been trapped in this room, stealing drink and the odd bit of spliff that he finds hidden away, thinking about Freddie, thinking about Effy, thinking too much for too long.
Naomi, she’s just around. She just exists now, like the life’s sucked out of her, she can’t - won’t - do anything without Emily’s approval. It’s fucking depressing. What’s also fucking depressing is the amount of action it’s possible to get in this house. He’s had nothing for over a month, no prospect either.
So he makes a joke. About his cock being the answer to all her worries, and all Naomi’s gotta do is give in already.
She glares at him before replying. “Fuck off Cook, I’m not in the mood.”
Of course she’s not, cause Naomi’s never in the mood these days, but Cook’s fed up of sitting around waiting for something, anything to happen. “Ain’t you gonna fuck me Naomikins?”
“What?”
“That’s how you deal with your emotions though, innit?”
“What are you even…?” she starts, and then realises where he’s going. “Stop it.”
Cook takes a step closer to her and shrugs. “I’m ready to fuck and forget if you are.”
“Cook,” Naomi replies, warning tone thick.
He ignores her, pushes some more. “I’d use my fingers if it’d make things more familiar,” he says, wiggling them in her face. “Or you could pretend it’s plastic. Bet you love a bit of - ”
“Cook.”
“Come on Naomios, let’s go to it. Me and you.”
They’re backed right up against the wall now, millimetres apart. He can feel her breath on his cheek. “You’re scaring me,” she says.
Somewhere in his mind he thinks, this is the closest he’s been to anyone since him and Foster had their rumble. Somewhere else in his mind, he thinks he should shut the fuck up. He smiles instead. “Thought that’s how you liked it, babe.”
Naomi slaps him, forces him back a step. “Get out,” she says, her voice wavering only a little.
Gingerly, he moves some fingers to his cheek. It stings, and Cook stares at Naomi, who is still pressed against the living room wall, trembling. “What the fuck? You can’t even take a joke now?”
“You need to leave. I don’t want you here anymore. Don’t speak to Emily either, understand?”
Cook grins maliciously. “Ah. The lies are back are they? Knew it wouldn’t be long. Can’t help yourself, can you?”
There’s a pause as Naomi tries to pull herself together. “I’m going to phone the police.”
“You gonna dob me in? Well ’ard of you Naomikins.”
She sets herself and looks straight at him. “You can wait here if you want, it’d make it easier for them to find you.”
She looks serious, deadly so. As Cook’s weighing up his options, Naomi’s phone rings. She glances at it, sitting on the couch. “It’ll be Emily,” she says and stares at him, as if waiting for his permission. He steps out of her way, and she surges forwards to answer before it diverts to voicemail.
Cook runs.
---
He turns up at Keith’s an hour later, after doubling back, changing directions, all that stuff to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
Cook explains with a feeble, “Didn’t have anywhere else” and Keith just shrugs, as if he was expecting it all along, Cook to turn up looking battered and bruised with no other options left.
He sets up camp in the back office and has the life he’s always dreamed of. Lock in all night, sleep all day. Free booze as long as he can still stand, and the odd tab or bit of powder when it’s going as well.
It doesn’t help.
He’s had comedowns before, course. Bad ones, alright ones, the usual type. This feels like a constant pain though, and it’s worse, cause it just won’t fucking stop and his head feels like it might explode and all he can think of is the pain and Freddie and Effy and it doesn’t stop, not ever, not unless he’s hitting his hand against a wall until his knuckles get bloody and even then… It aches.
He tortures himself with thoughts, questions.
The big question that he asks himself, even when he knows he shouldn’t, is would Effy be totally fucked up if it was him? If Foster had killed him instead, then what? Would she just have shrugged and gone back to screwing Freds, or would it have been more? He’ll never know, of course he’ll never know. And if he’s really honest, then he doesn’t want to know, just in case the answer isn’t what he wants to hear. But it doesn’t stop him thinking it and running through all the options in his mind, considering all the scenarios and all of the combinations. He doesn’t know if any of them make it any better or worse even, not really. But he can’t help himself, like picking at a scab, reopening old wounds.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? They’re not really old wounds, not at all.
He doesn’t know when it changed from wanting in her knickers (and getting there very successfully) on day one of college, to throwing himself in front of a van in order to save her life (just a few weeks ago). There wasn’t a moment, or if there was then he can’t think of it. Before gateauxs? After she came to see him in prison? When they ran away together? When he introduced her to his dad? Possibly. He doesn’t know.
But it changed, there’s no denying it. Effy isn’t just some cheap thrill, and he should know, he’s had enough of them. No, she means more.
Which is why he also hates her.
Thin line, his dad used to say to him, before Cook crossed that line one too many times and his dad gave up altogether. Cook doesn’t think it’s a thin line. Cook thinks that line is fucking massive, because Effy put him through a lot of shit over the last two years.
He doesn’t want to see her. It’s Effy’s fault, after all, all of this.
He says as much to Jenkins one night, who stutters and stumbles all over the place trying to claim it’s not, but he’s wrong see, he’s the one that’s not so smart now. Cause if Effy hadn’t of started this thing, way back in the first week of college, if she’d have managed to put her fucking knickers on properly, or even a pair of trousers, then him and Freds, they’d have been just fine.
And JJ stutters some more and says that no, it’s all highly improbable and some other such ballsy science crap that doesn’t make any sense, because it’s a fact. Cook knows it. If she had of managed to keep her head straight, if she hadn’t have gone in that looney bin, if she hadn’t of talked to Foster, if she hadn’t of led them both on for the best part of two years, if she hadn’t of told Cook that she loved them both. If she hadn’t of said she loved Freddie more.
Cause now Freddie’s dead, and if it wasn’t for her, he’d be sitting next to them in the pub, laughing at something JJ had said, and spiking Cook’s drink with some hideously cheap spirit from Europe that he’d picked up from that Pedro guy down the skate park.
JJ looks deathly pale sitting across from him, silent now. And then. “Cook,” he squeaks.
“What?”
“This…it’s not Effy’s fault.”
Cook’s head snaps up to meet JJ’s eye. He’s shaking, fucking shaking it’s taken that much for him to be able to say something. “I didn’t realise you’d grown a pair of balls JJ,” Cook responds.
There’s silence. “Maybe not then,” Cook concedes.
There’s more silence. And then, more firmly, “It’s not Effy’s fault that Freddie… that he’s… Foster murdered him.”
Cook throws his pint glass at the wall and stands, the sounds of shattering glass and his chair scraping back silencing the rest of the pub. “Shut up!” he screams, pointing a finger towards JJ’s chest. “Effy did this. It’s her fault.”
“Cook, please, don’t, let’s-”
“Why you on her side? She sucking you off, is that it?”
“I’m not on anyone’s side and no, she does not put her mouth…down there,” JJ hisses, a blush creeping up his cheeks. He hangs his head. “She asks for you.”
Cook frowns. “You’ve seen her?”
“Yes. She wants to… well, I think she would like to talk to you.”
Cook snorts. “You run messages for her? Got you round her little finger an’ all, ain’t she?”
JJ shakes his head. “It’s not like that. She doesn’t see many people in the home, visiting hours and -”
“She’s back in that place?”
“Yes, you didn’t know? It’s not good Cook. She’s not good.”
Cook doesn’t reply, instead, punches the jukebox on his way out.
---
Keith tells him that it’s time to grow up. He tells Keith to go fuck himself.
Keith, well, he don’t take too kindly to that as it turns out. Before Cook’s really aware of what’s happening, Keith has him pinned up against the wall and he’s being told to get his fucking mouth washed out.
He struggles, but Keith is a big boy, and he’s had his fair share of scraps, so Cook realises pretty quickly that he ain’t getting out of this one easily.
“You listen here kid, and you listen good. You piss your life away and you’re no better than your mate lying in that box, understand?”
“Don’t you fucking talk about him,” Cook spits, struggling some more, getting real fucking angry now.
Keith punches Cook in the stomach; the air is knocked right out his lungs. He gasps, big mouthfuls, trying to get some of it back.
Keith watches, waits until Cook’s stopped panting. “Listen. You can’t change that he’s dead. It’s too late for that. It’s time for you to start pulling your weight.” He lets Cook go, and he collapses to the floor, sobbing. Keith leaves him there, in a heap, throwing over his shoulder that Cook had better pay for the broken glass and the damage to the jukebox. Cook throws the nearest thing to hand - another glass - at the now closed door, a feeble attempt at retaliation.
He cries for what might be hours, slumped against the wall. It’s tears he didn’t think he had anymore, tears he thought he’d got rid of a long time ago, but still they keep coming.
Once he’s managed to calm himself down and has wiped his eyes, it’s obvious what he’s got to do.
He leaves.
---
Right about now is the time that he’d normally turn up at Freddie’s shed, six pack in hand and an apology all ready to go. And Freddie, well, yeah they’ve had some proper fall outs over the years, but he wasn’t ever that difficult to turn round, except when it came to Effy. Cook reckons this isn’t about Effy though - well it is, cause everything between him and Freds over the last few years was about Effy on some level, but this is different. This time it isn’t Cook that’s fucked it up. This time, it’s Freddie.
It’s Freddie who died, and who didn’t fight hard enough and who won’t get the chance to say sorry or goodbye, or any of the stuff that you should say to your best mate before you fuck off for good.
Cook has no one left. It’s that simple. He’s honest to God alone now. His mum, and Pads by default, Freddie, Naomi, JJ, Keith, gone. There’s no one left. Cook’s got fuck all, except that police car chasing him round everywhere he goes. He’s got that. It’s shit. Everything’s up the shitter, and it’s all down to Freddie.
Or maybe it’s all down to him.
Effy needs someone. And he loves her. Can’t breathe because of it sometimes. And Cook knows he might be second best, but he might be all she’s got, and that’s got to count for something, it’s got to. Cause if it doesn’t…
He’s not going to give up on her. Not like they all gave up on him, not like Freddie gave up on them all.
Maybe it’s wrong of him. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe everything’s his fucking fault and he’s fucking it up even more just by being there. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Fuck maybe.
He makes the call.
The countdown begins, and Cook starts running hard.
---
He passes himself off as a cousin, but the woman on the front desk looks like she couldn’t give a flying fuck who he was, so long as he pissed off again and she could get back to watching daytime TV.
Effy’s room - second floor, third on the left - is empty when he gets there.
He waits. There’s a clock on the wall, ticking by the seconds, and it makes him anxious, not knowing if she’s going to get there before it’s all too late. By the time Effy does show up, he’s a nervous wreck, fidgeting like mad, trying to use up some of this extra energy.
She, on the other hand, looks composed as ever. The drugs maybe. Or maybe she’s over it. Or maybe… fuck maybe.
“Wondered when you’d turn up,” she says. “I thought it would have been sooner.”
Cook shrugs. “Yeah, well I had some stuff to sort. You know,” and here is where he struggles to find the words to explain what exactly he’s been doing over the last month. “Some things to think about.”
Effy nods, slowly, as if processing her thoughts. “Everyone always thought… But he was the brave one really, wasn’t he?”
Cook bites the inside of his cheek, and eventually, he nods agreement. Despite everything that he’s thought about Freddie since they were five years old, and especially despite what he’s thought about him in the last month since they found him, Effy’s right. Freddie did something Cook never could; he let himself be. He never hid, he put their friendship on the line and let his heart do what it wanted. He didn’t make it a joke, a game. Freddie called it as it was, far too openly for Cook to keep up.
And maybe, in the end, that’s why he won. Not that this feels like anyone won. Cook takes a deep breath, knowing that time is against them now. “How long you got in here?”
Effy shrugs. “Depends.”
“On?”
“How mental they think I am.”
“And how mental are you?”
She smiles, like a ghost from the past. “Very,” she says, all light-hearted and devilish, as if they could go back to playing that game they did, and as if that would be enough for either of them, even though they’re both smart enough now to know it won’t be.
“No, Eff. Serious.”
She shrugs again, and turns away. “They won’t say. Might be a while.”
Cook pulls his hands through his hair. He glances towards the clock and estimates that he’s got a minute left, tops. “Look, I know she visits, so say sorry to Naomi for me, will you?”
“For what?” Effy asks, eyebrow cocked, and if he didn’t know that Naomi wouldn’t be able to bring herself to talk about it, he’d think that she already knew.
“Something stupid.”
“Can’t you tell her yourself?”
Cook shakes his head. “I think I’m going away.”
“Where?”
“Not far.”
“How long?”
He shrugs. “Might be a while.”
Effy looks entirely confused. Cook sees the policeman standing outside the door, and knows that it’s over.
“Wait for me, yeah? I’ll wait for you.”
The door opens. The cop asks for James Cook. Cook glances at him, then acknowledges his presence with a “yip”, turning his eyes back on Effy. The cuffs are cold, the metal is wrapped round his wrists too tight. Effy’s still not moved.
The cop begins to pull him away. Cook starts to panic that he might not get his answer. “Eff. Wait, please? If it’s me first, I’ll wait, ok?”
Effy stares.
“Just say yes, please. I swear it Effy.”
Finally, Effy nods.