"You utterly reek of alcohol."
Hamish ignored his father. Well, one of. He had two, you see. But he wasn't focussed on that. He was a little more concerned with getting up the seventeen stairs to his attic room, where he could sleep. At least until crazy daddy dearest decided to mangle his violin, that is.
See, he was in high school, right? Seventeen and all that. And he wasn't half bad to look at, at least not according to the blokes and birds he went to school with. And a big part of high school and being seventeen and attractive is going to parties and getting drunk and sleeping with people. At least that's what the movies and crap telly programs said.
And if getting drunk or high or laid or whatever calmed the incessant buzzing in his head caused by an all the time overload of useless information, so what? It's not like he needed to know that his Chemistry partner's sister was cheating on her boyfriend with another girl, even if it was obvious by the state of her nails and the way she kept checking her phone. Sometimes he just channeled all that restlessness into piano or voice or something but it was so much easier to calm his brain with his friends Jack Daniels, Smirnoff, and Heineken.
He trudged up the steps to his room. Pulled open the door of his mini fridge, tossed a bottle of water in the general direction of his bed, and then collapsed on said bed. When he woke up however many hours later, it was to the soft clearing-of-the-throat of his other father. Hamish opened bleary blue eyes and then rolled them skyward. Groping blindly for the water he procured earlier, he took a long, oddly peevish pull from the bottle.
"Can I help you, dad?" This was sarcastic. Hamish hadn't been interested in either father since before his balls dropped. His dad sucked his teeth and casually maneuvered his body to block the doorway.
"Have fun last night?" Hamish rolled his eyes again, and regretted it. He kicked a pile of clothes around, looking for the bottle of pain relievers he nicked from a friend's parent's house.
"Answering a question with a question is cheating." Ah, there. The obnoxious teenager swallowed two pills dry before searching for a clean tee and boxers.
"Right. Let's just get on with the lecture, shall we? That way you can ignore everything I have to say and go on sleeping and boozing your way through school. Sound good?" Hamish dearly wanted to know where his father found this moral high ground.
"Sounds peachy, dad." Clean tee, okay... now where were the boxers?
"Right then." But John didn't lecture. He just stood in the doorway and looked at Hamish. He sighed.
"Hamish, I wish you'd tell me what I did. What we did." Hamish paused. Neither parent went down this track very often. Usually they just ranted and railed at him. Honestly, he preferred that. This... sadness, this grief made him uncomfortable.
"Well, that's where you're wrong, daddy dear. You didn't do anything. I did." There was an en suite bathroom in the attic room, and Hamish strolled inside to brush his teeth.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. I grew up!" He heard John snort.
"Mm, yes. Partying is a very grown-up thing to do." He hesitated. "Hamish, what would you do if you wound up in the emergency room and Dad and I didn't show up?" Hamish gargled louder than necessary and spat.
"Why I would surely faint like the delicate flower I am, father."
"No, I mean it. You've been smart about your drinking so far, but one day you'll either drink too much or someone will slip you something. You'll be in AE before you know it, getting your stomach pumped." Hamish scrutinized his reflection. Did he need to shave today?
"It's a terribly uncomfortable process, or so I've heard. You could ask your dad, if you like, but that would require speaking to one of us beyond caustic remarks, so that's probably not going to happen. You get this thick plastic tube shoved down your throat and esophagus, and then they trickle warm water or saline down and then back up again." Hamish carried a small phial of liquid charcoal on his person at all times, just in case, so the scenario his father was depicting was somewhat unlikely.
John continued, "Or worse, you could end up dying of alcohol poisoning or taken advantage of. Waking up in a puddle of your own vomit, assuming, of course, that you wake up at all." Hamish gave no response, whereas John gave an exasperated sigh.
"Alright, then. I'm going in to the clinic, and your mad father's dashed of to the Yard. Eat something, won't you?" Hamish heard his father start down the stairs, and then turn around and head back up. He heard him grasp the edge of the doorway and lick his lips.
"I love you. I know you probably have doubts about that, but I do." John hesitated at the door for a few more seconds, before turning and going down the stairs. Hamish looked back in the mirror and considered punching the glass. He decided he didn't need bruised and bloody knuckles.
He wasn't really sure what he needed.
(AN: So this is totally seperate from Baby Names. I've started watching Skins and have decided that Nicholas Hoult is my perfect Hamish. So I had to write a bratty, obnoxious Hamish!fic. Dunno if I'll write more.)