Notes: As part of the Skins Big Bang on Livejournal, this year we've been having a game of drabble tag, since I've written LOADS of drabbles I thought it was time I shared some of them on here. Each drabble (which, for those of you who don't know, is a story in around 100 words) is headed with the prompt used and the person who left the prompt. This is a collection of James Cook related drabbles.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

The Splashing About Collection

1. Pamela: I've always been told murderers have terrible dreams.
Hannay: Oh, but only at first. Got over that a long time ago. When I first did a crime, I was quite squeamish about it. I was a most sensitive child.
-Dialogue from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (tromana)

Cook dreamed in red. He hadn't always.

It all began the night he found Freddie's blood drenched clothes in Foster's house. It all really began when he used his fists to knock the cunt unconscious before smashing him up with his own bat. The bat he probably used to kill Freddie.

The first time Cook ever hit someone, he was ten and he punched Freddie in the mouth for calling his mum hot.

He wasn't afraid of a punch up, of feeling the skin and bone of his knuckle colliding with someone's cheek or nose. At first the feel of bone breaking made him recoil, feel sick to his stomach.

Then that night with Foster, it got better. Suddenly it all became so much easier to crush bone, to smell blood.

2. Love at first sight/Lust at first sight (reddawg82)

If anyone had asked him on that first day of college if he loved Effy, he would have said no.

The Cookie Monster didn't believe in love at first sight. What sort of fucked up crap was that all about? He didn't decide on the first day of secondary school that he loved Freddie and JJ like family, it took work. They spent hours on end in Freddie's shed getting drunk, jacking off to porn magazines and trying their hand at JJ's concoctions of pills. Until his mum banned him from ever taking his medication out of the house.

No, love at first sight was a myth. Some sort of fucked up concept made up so that people would buy each other Valentine's Day cards, like Christmas or Easter. None of it mattered.

That didn't mean there wasn't passion. A raw, animalistic connection. Lust. That was more like it. Lust at first sight, now that was something he understood completely.

3. Take me... Want to be your victim... (reddawg82)

Freddie was dead. Effy was fucked up. Everyone's lives were in tatters. He'd already run from the police, escaped prison. What was left for him now? What was left to do but avenge Freddie's death?

Murder.

He'd been murdered. By Foster.

What choice did he have? He was Cook. He didn't sit back and watch someone fuck everyone over; he fought back until he came out victorious.

This time he wasn't fighting fists with fists though. The man had a bat. A round piece of wood stained red. Probably from the last murder he'd committed.

Freddie.

Cook held in a deep breath, opened his mouth and let out a long, loud scream. Shouting his name. If he wanted to kill him, he could do. Whatever it took, Cook would go down fighting because no matter what, he had to leave the world knowing he'd done everything he could for his longest, closest friend.

4. Bitchfuck (reddawg82)

He loved her. The skank. Fucking his best mate behind his back, fucking them both like they had some sort of arrangement. Cook didn't do arrangements, he didn't share and he'd never have a threesome with another guy. He fucking loved her and he couldn't bear the thought of Freddie getting to bone her. It fucked with his head, fucked with his heart too and he couldn't fuck anyone else without thinking of her. She was such a bitchfuck. He just had to have her, he needed her. Not just for a shag, but because he'd never loved anyone else.

5. You think you're so fucking clever, don't you? (tromana)

You think you're so fucking clever, don't you?

Well you're not.

You never have been.

You just splash about, like a baby in a bath, with no cares in the world; you didn't even notice that Effy was going downhill. How can you love someone and not notice that their whole world is slowly falling apart?

You barely realised how bad it was for Naomi, after the mistake you both shared and the one she made on her own. You should have been there for her, for them both. Instead you just got on with your life, ran from the responsibilities you had, pissed your life away with more drugs and booze.

You're not clever, you're stupid. You're so fucking stupid and it's about time you realised that.

6. And I won't sit down
And I won't shut up
And most of all I will not grow up (keffyrules)

People are always telling me what to do.

All I ever got was demands, people wanting me to do as they said. Get up. Go to school. Get to lessons. Tuck that shirt in. Sit down. Shut up. Get your books out.

Why the fuck should I?

Nobody realised that I couldn't write properly. That I held my pen different to the rest of the class. That I mixed up letters and made mistakes. They didn't care.

Now I'm not there; no school, no college. Just life, where I can do what the fuck I want any time I fucking please. Maybe that's why I spend my days smoking, drinking and having sex with any girl that'll have me. I'm the Cookie Monster. I'm a big kid with too much juice, too much energy.

Nobody's gonna tell me to grow up because this is who I am, this is who I became when everyone gave demands and didn't listen to what I had to say.

7. Seduce and destroy (youtoxic)

He fucked her not because he loved her, or wanted to love her, but because he could. She set out a challenge and he graciously accepted. He seduced her with his talent for rule breaking and it all paid off in the nurses office. He didn't think about it then, how it would change everything. He didn't think about Freddie, how hurt he would be. As they say, one small moment can cause a ripple that can destroy everything. He didn't notice it then, but eventually, that ripple caused Freddie's death and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

8. I'm dying on the battlefield but I see the angel coming down from heaven. I want her to take me. (youtoxic)

I clutched my stomach, coughing and spluttering up blood from the internal injuries I'd sustained. He left a while ago. I'm not sure when or how, but I must have drifted off, he probably have thought I'd die of my injuries. But I woke up. Maybe I had died; maybe I was waiting to be taken to heaven or more likely, hell. As I lay there, on the stone cold floor I could see her face staring down at me.

'Effy?' I whisper.

She doesn't speak, doesn't really do anything but reach out a hand and brush the hair back from my face. With her there, I'll go; I'll go anywhere she wants me to. I always would. I see blue flashing lights through the window, the last thing I saw before I drifted off again.

9. When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
-Winston Churchill quote (keffyrules)

He stood over the body with his eyes glazed over and his heart thumping in his chest. He'd knocked him out, kicked him and punched him until he stopped moving, stopped talking. Had he killed him? He wasn't sure.

'Oi?' he asked, pushing his body with his foot, shaking him slightly until he let out a long, loud groan.

'Help, me,' Foster gasped, choking on what Cook could only assume was blood in his throat. He deserved to choke, he deserved to suffer the same amount of pain he'd caused Freddie and Karen and Effy too.

'I'll tell you what,' Cook grinned, kneeling beside him. 'I'll help you.'

He gripped hold of Foster's hand, pulled him hard until the older man had reached his feet. He bent over slightly, still gripping Cook's hand. He could be nice when he wanted to be, he could be a fucking angel.

'Alright old man?' he smirked, lifting his knee until it collided with Foster's groin, knocking him down again. Then Cook thrust his foot against his stomach and ribs, feeling each one break up as he kicked faster and harder. He stopped groaning, looked like he stopped breathing too. Usually he'd have stopped before now, this time; he didn't care how far he went. 'I'll help you, I'll fucking help you to the grave.'

10. A kiss with a fist is better than none (youtoxic)

After I left the cellar, the stench of blood oozing out from under my shoes, I marched down the street like a fucking victorious bastard coming back from some battle. My knuckles were broken and bruised, painful as I clenched my hand into a fist. I didn't care. I was walking fuck knows where, kissing my fist and punching the air. I'd avenged Freddie's death, I'd beating that fucking cunt to death. I was probably going to end up inside again, but for once, I didn't give a fuck.

11. Forbidden fruit (reddawg82)

You loved her and you knew that she loved you too. You weren't sure how, you just felt it, deep down inside every time she kissed you. When she wasn't fucking Cook, anyway. He'd already claimed her, then again, he always claimed everyone. Maybe that's why you let his mum give you head, because she was the one person Cook would never fuck. She was the forbidden fruit and you were Adam. Once he found out, you could do nothing but stand there, naked, with a truth that banished you from the greatest place life had to offer.