shoot you down.
The History Boys.
Lockwood. Posner. Accidents and assurances.
More of another exercise in character study than anything else. Title comes from the song by the Stone Roses.
Funny, Lockwood thinks.
He kicks away unwashed sheets, tangled around his ankles, and struggles to pull himself into sitting position.
Truth be told, he doesn't actually think funny, or odd, or how peculiar!, or any of those other whitewashed phrases of generic astonishment, designed to keep people stupid and unexpressive. The exact words running through his mind at that moment are: This is fucking mad.
He coughs into his hand, not as discreetly as he'd like, and finds that his breath smells of curry and mint. Not quite ideal, but still. Could be plenty worse. (And no matter what, it's definitely better than the faint scent of piss which seems to haunt the aftershave of his more than pretentious neighbour down the end of the hall.) Best focus on something else, instead; like, for instance, the fact that his forehead feels like Churchill decided to make a comfortable ottoman out of it. Beneath the throbbing in his skull, his memories from last night drift and part like a cloudy haze, and he wades through them, trying to remember exactly just what the fuck hap--
"Are you sure?" Posner asks, watching him with wide eyes, hands wrung together and legs swinging nervously from his perch on the bed.
--pened. Yeah.
Well, shite.
He rubs the side of his jaw and stares in the direction of the toilet, not feeling ill enough to rush in there yet. The duvet reeks of smoke, which is not unusual, but he remembers himself mumbling an apology about it, which was.
Posner, surprisingly enough, was quite the fan of the Roses, and in his own drunken attempt at impressing him, a homemade cassette usually buried under a vast landscape of dirty laundry immediately surfaced. Soon enough, 'I Wanna Be Adored' was pulsing from the crumbling speakers shoved against the side of his dresser. They'd belonged to Lockwood's dad, once, those speakers; he'd been a fan of music, too, although more of that from a different era - Townshend and Marriott and Davies, all of those guys - something that hadn't rubbed off onto his son until after his death. An accident.
He digs the heel of his hand into his eyes, remembering Dad for a moment, and how he'd pulled their shitty little family-style Passat with the peeling paint job into the wrong lane at the wrong time - history, now - and Posner getting separated from Scripps when they came up to Cambridge for the weekend, and himself, pissed and happy and entirely too affectionate, slinging an arm around Posner's neck and dragging him back to his room, well, that'd been another fine example of an accident--
"We're going to wake up tomorrow, and-- well, I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and it'll be..." Posner swallows hard. "...you're drunk. This may as well not even be happening. You'll just think you had off chicken for dinner, or something, and--"
"I had Chinese takeaway tonight, actually," Lockwood grins, and, before Posner can keep protesting, removes a badge from his blazer, one closest to the edge of the lapel - The Kinks, bright blue and scratched and well-loved - and deftly fixes it onto the breast of Posner's own raggedy navy jumper.
"That real enough for you?"
Instead of looking gratified, Posner just laughs. There's a biting element of "What, am I your girlfriend, now?" evident in his tone, and that's when Lockwood realises that he's changed, too. Still. He's made up his mind.
"Right, so. First things first. Take off those Coke bottles, 'cos I'm going to feel real fucking bad if I end up breaking them before the night's over."
He thinks about the other night, and his now empty bed, glad when it doesn't make him cringe.
"Are you sure?" Posner had persisted, and his answering gaze had fallen on him, relaxed and confident:
"This isn't some exam, boy-o. This is real life." He'd smiled. "We're allowed to make mistakes."
Lockwood. Posner. Accidents and assurances.
More of another exercise in character study than anything else. Title comes from the song by the Stone Roses.
Funny, Lockwood thinks.
He kicks away unwashed sheets, tangled around his ankles, and struggles to pull himself into sitting position.
Truth be told, he doesn't actually think funny, or odd, or how peculiar!, or any of those other whitewashed phrases of generic astonishment, designed to keep people stupid and unexpressive. The exact words running through his mind at that moment are: This is fucking mad.
He coughs into his hand, not as discreetly as he'd like, and finds that his breath smells of curry and mint. Not quite ideal, but still. Could be plenty worse. (And no matter what, it's definitely better than the faint scent of piss which seems to haunt the aftershave of his more than pretentious neighbour down the end of the hall.) Best focus on something else, instead; like, for instance, the fact that his forehead feels like Churchill decided to make a comfortable ottoman out of it. Beneath the throbbing in his skull, his memories from last night drift and part like a cloudy haze, and he wades through them, trying to remember exactly just what the fuck hap--
"Are you sure?" Posner asks, watching him with wide eyes, hands wrung together and legs swinging nervously from his perch on the bed.
--pened. Yeah.
Well, shite.
He rubs the side of his jaw and stares in the direction of the toilet, not feeling ill enough to rush in there yet. The duvet reeks of smoke, which is not unusual, but he remembers himself mumbling an apology about it, which was.
Posner, surprisingly enough, was quite the fan of the Roses, and in his own drunken attempt at impressing him, a homemade cassette usually buried under a vast landscape of dirty laundry immediately surfaced. Soon enough, 'I Wanna Be Adored' was pulsing from the crumbling speakers shoved against the side of his dresser. They'd belonged to Lockwood's dad, once, those speakers; he'd been a fan of music, too, although more of that from a different era - Townshend and Marriott and Davies, all of those guys - something that hadn't rubbed off onto his son until after his death. An accident.
He digs the heel of his hand into his eyes, remembering Dad for a moment, and how he'd pulled their shitty little family-style Passat with the peeling paint job into the wrong lane at the wrong time - history, now - and Posner getting separated from Scripps when they came up to Cambridge for the weekend, and himself, pissed and happy and entirely too affectionate, slinging an arm around Posner's neck and dragging him back to his room, well, that'd been another fine example of an accident--
"We're going to wake up tomorrow, and-- well, I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and it'll be..." Posner swallows hard. "...you're drunk. This may as well not even be happening. You'll just think you had off chicken for dinner, or something, and--"
"I had Chinese takeaway tonight, actually," Lockwood grins, and, before Posner can keep protesting, removes a badge from his blazer, one closest to the edge of the lapel - The Kinks, bright blue and scratched and well-loved - and deftly fixes it onto the breast of Posner's own raggedy navy jumper.
"That real enough for you?"
Instead of looking gratified, Posner just laughs. There's a biting element of "What, am I your girlfriend, now?" evident in his tone, and that's when Lockwood realises that he's changed, too. Still. He's made up his mind.
"Right, so. First things first. Take off those Coke bottles, 'cos I'm going to feel real fucking bad if I end up breaking them before the night's over."
He thinks about the other night, and his now empty bed, glad when it doesn't make him cringe.
"Are you sure?" Posner had persisted, and his answering gaze had fallen on him, relaxed and confident:
"This isn't some exam, boy-o. This is real life." He'd smiled. "We're allowed to make mistakes."