adrian march (caeteradesunt) wrote in repose, @ 2017-08-11 19:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, adrian march |
narrative: b&b - adrian m
Who: Technically speaking, Adrian March.
When: Recently.
Warnings: Strong language
Recommended Listening: While reading.
What: A push notification.
YOU HAVE
ONE UNHEARD MESSAGE
The notification is on Adrian's screen when he wakes up at three in the morning and checks his phone for the time. It's Saturday. Or it is now, now that he's awake.
He has a voicemail from a number he doesn't recognize, and he instinctively knows, as he squints at the screen, backlight-blind, that something woke him up. A sound in the room? His mouth tastes as if it's been hanging open while he slept, and he feels only partially awake, stung, head pounding and fuzzy. He doesn't remember drinking, but he has the sinking feeling that he has been. He feels like he's still drunk now.
The notification confronts him with the flat grey icon of an unwinding tape on the friendly pull-down menu, and a '1'.
YOU HAVE ONE NEW VOICEMAIL
He could leave it until morning. That seems wise. He could drink some water and have a piss, and try to sleep, which seems wise also. He reaches for the edge of the sheet, groggily seeking to find whether he even covered himself in blankets before falling on the bed face down. His hand skims across bare skin at his hip.
What is he wearing?
He groans, and he levers himself up and back, sitting on his heels. His head hangs against his chest while the room spins in increasingly nauseating directions. His hair is sweat-matted, clinging to the back of his neck. It seems too warm, and he's aware of the clamminess of the bedding where it gathers around the backs of his ankles, in whorls and eddies of damp linen. The phone lies prone on the bed, shining light into the room with an unblinking, unseeing eye. His neck aches.
He opens one eye, then the other. He's wearing nothing on top, completely shirtless, and as he becomes aware of the presence of a livid bruise arcing across his chest he shuts his eyes again. He feels it now, as he didn't before he saw it. He feels the throbbing ache in the bruise, beating in sympathy with the ache in his head.
He has a pair of jeans on that he's fairly confident don't belong to him. They're too loose around the hips. They don't fit. Borrowed? From who? When?
With a sickening lurch, he leans forward toward the phone, catching himself on one hand. He's numb with panic. He needs to check the date again.
It's Saturday.
He remembers work on Thursday. He scrabbles for memory, shutting his eyes while he tries to think. Friday. He must have been at work Friday, mustn't he? What did he do on Friday? What did he do today?
It's like sticking his hand into a hole in the ground. It's cold down there, and he comes up grasping, empty.
He just makes it to the bathroom before losing the contents of his stomach. The cold, slick porcelain of the toilet is almost comforting. Wrapping his arm around it and filling his nostrils with bile brings the world into sharp relief, and the warm light of the B&B's friendly bathroom nightlight bathes everything in a practically romantic gleam as he loses something he doesn't remember eating, and whiskey.
He's not wearing any shoes. As he flushes the toilet, as he washes his hands, slowly, methodically, as he rinses his mouth out again and again by sucking cold water straight from the flow of the tap, he wonders if there are any shoes anywhere in the room, or if he lost those too.
He doesn't look in the mirror, or turn on the bathroom light. Whatever the damage is, he doesn't want to see it. He knows his left eye isn't quite opening all the way, and it's not from night blindness. Bile stinks sour in his nose, but he can't brush his teeth. He can only rinse with water, and that leaves the residual acid burn, but he's just too tired. Too tired, too tired.
When he moves back into the bedroom, one hand on the doorframe at the bathroom door, the room beyond is still lit by the cold glow of his phone, which lies facing the ceiling.
He shuts the door behind him, sits on the end of the bed, and looks at the phone. For several minutes, he does nothing else - just looks at it while it looks at the ceiling, shining defiantly on, limning everything with a clear blue light. The room is still as it should be, if nothing else. All the lampshades are still on the lamps. Nothing is amiss, though he can't see the clothes he wore to work on Thursday anywhere.
There are no shoes by the front door.
He finally shucks the ill-fitting jeans that smell like someone's cigarettes, and picks up the phone. He pulls the comforter up from where it's rolled off the end of the bed, and he glances at the wall behind the headboard.
Newt's beyond it, or he might be. Adrian could knock and ask for company. He could petition for comfort, but he's done that too much already. What would Newt tell him? What would he say? Get along? Learn to live with each other?
Adrian folds his legs up, hauls the comforter over his shoulders, and taps the notification. After a moment it connects and plays the message. He presses the button for the speakerphone, and he listens to the voice with his hand cupped around the phone, resting in his lap, staring at the timer as it ticks slowly upward.
Thirty seconds later, the message ends.
In the background, there are human voices, and there is music playing, and a voice, with an American accent, talking around a cigarette. I bet you feel like shit right now. Don't you? You're probably pissed, which I get. I just want you to get something through your stupid fucking head, and if you're too hungover right now to listen, then turn this shit off and wait. I want this to fucking penetrate. I want to get through to you. Really. Because we have to live with each other, you and me. We have been, you just didn't know it until now. You know how hard I worked to make this shit work? How much shit I went through, and now you're threatening me? That's not how this is gonna go. Do you feel shitty? Good. You're gonna feel shitty. You're gonna be tired. You're gonna miss work. You're gonna wonder where I was and who I was with, and who was filming it on their phone. Want a video of yourself blowing a stranger going viral? I can make that happen. Want to wake up drunk the next time you've got fucking results to present? We can make that a reality, my friend. You watch me. You're asking yourself if you're being blackmailed. Yes. You're being fucking blackmailed. And if the job doesn't mean so much to you as it used to, then absorb this - I'm in your fucking head. I hear what you say about me. I'm the one who keeps your fucking secrets, so don't think you can hold anything back from me. Whatever you plan, I'll know. Whatever you try to do to get rid of me, I'll know about before you start step one. And I'll keep right on fucking your 'bestest friend' while you try. I bet that pulled you up short. I bet you're cold as ice right now. Take a couple ibuprofen and drink a glass of water. And quit fucking threatening me. |