Outside it’s springtime.\u00c2\u00a0 Fresh bright blades of grass poke up through cracks in the pavement as if they’d caused them, beating up at the underside of the road all winter to finally escape in small straggling bursts – the way the kids get out of Hattin at about this time every year.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s some kind of bird on a half-fallen wire, doing something it probably thinks is singing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s really fucking cheerful.<\/p>\n
So it can just all fuck off and die, because inside it’s Wren Has A Hangover time.\u00c2\u00a0 The really good kind of hangover, the kind you get when you weren’t just amazingly drunk last night, you were also overextending yourself menting (the crowd was HUGE) and on top of that you’d lost one of your earplugs halfway through the set.\u00c2\u00a0 Three completely separate headaches piling on top of one another like a fucking headache orgy, thrusting their skanky rot-riddled headache-pricks through your tender little brainmeats.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck this, fuck it all, fuck the sunlight, fuck the lack of a curtain on this fucking window, and fuck that fucking bird.<\/p>\n
He rolls over and ends up half on top of another body.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out it’s the drummer.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck that guy too.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, Wren’s jeans are still on so they probably didn’t do that literally – which is good, because he doesn’t actually like the guy.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t have much of a personality and insists on playing some car part he scavved somewhere as part of his kit, in every single song, just to show off that he has it or some shit.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds like somebody trying to buttfuck a robot and missing, in Wren’s opinion.\u00c2\u00a0 One of these days he’s going to get pissed off and lean on the guy to quit playing it, and fuck that’s going to cause so much drama.<\/p>\n
Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe coffee would happen, and then there’d be something worth not hating in the world.<\/p>\n
SOMEONE WANTS TO MAKE A FRESH POT OF COFFEE RIGHT NOW.<\/p>\n
He rolls in the opposite direction until he finds the edge of the mattress and then the floor.\u00c2\u00a0 Presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until he sees sparks.\u00c2\u00a0 Hands up, fingers through his hair, deep breath.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s vertical and awake and SOMEONE WANTS TO MAKE A FRESH POT OF COFFEE RIGHT NOW.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest of the guys are either awake already or slept in a different room.\u00c2\u00a0 Did they pack the gear up last night?\u00c2\u00a0 What the hell even time is it?<\/p>\n
It takes him two tries to find the doorway instead of the wall next to it.<\/p>\n
“Morning, asshole.\u00c2\u00a0 I got your coffee on.”\u00c2\u00a0 Kells.\u00c2\u00a0 The lead guitarist – ‘Killer Kells’ if you read the strap on her instrument.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s a morning person and he hates her.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you be a fucking morning person when you’re in a band that finishes shows up at, like, dawn?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s unfair is what it is.\u00c2\u00a0 On the other hand she wanted to make a fresh pot of coffee right now and she never gets mad past lip-service when he does shit like that, so he loves her.\u00c2\u00a0 Would probably kill a man for her.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially if she had a cup of coffee in her hands when she asked him to do it.<\/p>\n
There’s people milling around the kitchen and the other room, but he doesn’t know them and they’re smart enough not to talk to him when he’s obviously undead.\u00c2\u00a0 He loves them all too.\u00c2\u00a0 That coffee smells amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 He sits down on the floor, back against a cabinet, and closes his eyes again.\u00c2\u00a0 The other people walk over his outstretched legs like it’s nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a wayhouse, so it pretty much is nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 He and the rest of the Fledglings paid their stay last night with the show, so he has just as much of a right to this piece of floor as anybody else in the place.\u00c2\u00a0 Same with the coffee.<\/p>\n
Which Kells, sweet fucking blessed angel that she is, has just put into his hands.\u00c2\u00a0 “You want sugar you do it yourself,” she tells him.\u00c2\u00a0 “You’re lucky I made it in the first place.\u00c2\u00a0 Asshole.”<\/p>\n
“I love you,” he tells her.\u00c2\u00a0 Silence for proper appreciation of the coffee, even though it’s way too fucking hot and he’s going to regret taking such a big sip of it right away in, like – oh, there we go, regret right now.\u00c2\u00a0 “How’d we do last night?”<\/p>\n
“Ran out of stickers, and the quicker that guy gets us the next batch of vinyl the better off we’re gonna be.”<\/p>\n
“So not bad?”<\/p>\n
“Not fuckin’ bad.”<\/p>\n
“We got a place lined up for tomorrow yet?”<\/p>\n
“Tiny and The Rat are out talking to some guys.\u00c2\u00a0 Joey still asleep?\u00c2\u00a0 You sure he’s still breathing?”<\/p>\n
“God, could he not be?\u00c2\u00a0 I shoulda put a pillow on his head before I got up. I wonder how hard it’d be to get Tiny to drop that fucking ting-ting next time we’re unloading.”<\/p>\n
“You do it and there’ll be drama.”<\/p>\n
“God, don’t I fucking know it.”\u00c2\u00a0 He still regrets that first sip of coffee.\u00c2\u00a0 He regrets it more with each additional sip.\u00c2\u00a0 Fucking hot coffee.\u00c2\u00a0 Fucking band drama.\u00c2\u00a0 Fucking ting-tings.<\/p>\n
“There’s a jenny staying here tonight.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah?\u00c2\u00a0 And?\u00c2\u00a0 One of us gotta suck some dick so we can keep our equipment charged or you just telling me as the daily news?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, well, he said he likes redheads.”<\/p>\n
He glares at her over the top of his mug.<\/p>\n
“You’re flipping me off with your mind.”<\/p>\n
“Yup.”<\/p>\n
“Asshole.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Outside it’s springtime.\u00c2\u00a0 Fresh bright blades of grass poke up through cracks in the pavement as if they’d caused them, beating up at the underside of the road all winter to finally escape in small straggling bursts – the way … Continue reading