The Dark Streets of London
Acepilot

AN - These days I've been drawing my inspiration from two volumes that have taken up residence on my desk. One is "The Complete Lyrics of Nick Cave 1978-2001". Not just lyrics, but also a stunning lecture on "The Secret Life of the Love Song" (also, technically, the life of the love story), this array of lyrics covers it all, from love and darkness to love and beauty. Those lyrics, and the teachings of Cave, inspired "Love Your Way". This second book has been inspired by another great post-punk artist. "Poguetry" recently joined "The Complete Lyrics of Cave" on my already crowded table. The highly...insightful, and often contemplative lyrics of Shane McGowan featured within inspired this second book. Particularly the song featured in this chapter, "A Pair of Brown Eyes". Some people argue that drawing inspiration for creative writing from poetry and music is some form of cheating or plagiarism, but I'd argue that the finest influences to be found are in the works of the best artists of our time. I realize that this has been an extensive Author's Note with no relevant bearing on the story whatsoever, but I just thought you might like to know where I drew my inspiration from. This is the second and final chapter of "The Dark Streets of London".

And a special thanks to Ixiah for pointing out some of the flaws in this chapter which resulted in me fixing them.

Disclaimer - the characters that appear in this fic originally from "All Grown Up" are property of KlaskyCsupo. The other characters (most obviously The Novacaine Mutiny, Phil's band) are property of Acepilot.

Phil

"Phil! Phil! Open up, Phil!"

I kind of lazily undo the latch on my door and let Tim in, if only to keep him from beating the door down. "Whaddya want?"

He gazes at me in a state of seeming disbelief. "Christ, Phil. When you missed the gig tonight I knew something was wrong, but - "

"Two years to the day," I tell him. "Two years to the day."

A dawning realisation appears on his face. "Ah. This is relevant concerning this...Kimmi character that we've heard so little about?"

I nod slowly and raise the bottle of Teacher's in my hand. "Here's to anniversaries."

Tim snatches the bottle out of my hand before I can drink any of it, and I reach out to grab it again. I end up staggering halfway over to a chair as all the blood in my body chooses that exact moment to rush to my head. "Cheating bastard."

"Phil, this shit is going to kill you."

In my inebriated state I can't do much better than glare at his fuzzy form. "No it won't. It hasn't yet."

He shakes his head and slumps down into the nearest chair. "We got Nathan to go on in your place. He did a pretty good job."

"Good, good," I agree, trying to work out the simplest way to get back my bottle of scotch.

"He could replace you full time. He wants to." Tim sighs. "Do you know why we're not letting him?"

I shrug. "No. Why?"

"Because you're not that bad a guy, Phil. You're a great friend." He meets me eye-to-eye. "But this...this has to stop. It's past a point of being healthy."

I raise my hands, palms out, toward him, then tip them back, exposing my wrists. Exposing my scars. "Past that point long before I met you."

He nods. I knew he had to have noticed. I was just surprised no-one said anything. "Phil, would this girl - this Kimmi - want you to be sitting around drinking?"

I have to fight the urge to spit. "What would she care? She didn't want me."

"Wasn't she your friend? Your roommate?" he asks.

I nod. Slowly, sullenly. Not wanting to admit defeat.

"Would she want you to sit around drinking and smoking?"

I sigh and look down at the floor. "No."

He settles into the headrest of his chair. "Phil, we're your friends. All of us. And we're worried about you. Seriously worried. If this gets much worse, then we're going to be left picking up pieces that we don't know what to do with. The creative kicks you get when you're drunk aren't worth the damage you're doing to yourself. Remember that."

I nod. "I know."

"So do it for us. Give it up for us. Or, if you can't give it up for us, find something you can give it up for. Something you can work towards, or just imagine...or whatever. Just...find something that'll let you get rid of this. Because I, for one, don't want to lose you to it, Phil. You're too good a musician - and far too good a friend, when you're sober - to let fall away."

Kimmi

"Who the hell could that be?"

I shrug and pick up the phone. "Probably telemarketers. Mush-mushi."

And there's silence.

"Hello? Look, I heard the beeps. This has got to be at least interstate. Why waste all this money on a prank call?"

"Who is it?" Tommy asks, curious.

"I dunno," I tell him, looking concernedly at the cradle which is displaying a "caller-id incompatible" message. "I'm hanging up now. Sayonara." I hang up the phone. Rattled.

Phil

"Alright, we're just going to take it down a notch here," Tim announces to the audience.

He looks over to me and I nod, grabbing my stool and repositioning my mic. I sit down, brand-new, never-before-played on stage acoustic resting on my thigh. I lightly strum it and look up and nod once more, putting the mic a little closer to my mouth.

I can feel adrenaline pumping through my body. This is it. This is the real test.

My first dry show.

"We're going to play a song now. By a group called The Pogues."

I'm not surprised at the applause that gets. St. Patrick's Week at Brixton. Of course the Pogues will get a great reaction.

I take a deep breath. I seem to be taking a lot of those tonight. There's no alcohol running through me for the first time in...I don't know how long. Nothing to distract me from the music, nothing to take my mind away from her. So tonight, I play with her in my heart. I play with her being the only thing I see. Not the audience, not the girls, nothing. She's in front of my eyes.

She keeps me going.

I finger a G-chord and pick the three strings until I hear Jamie pick up the bass line. Then I quietly, gently, strum out a traditional folk tune. This is entirely unlike anything I've ever played on stage before. Before, I've only ever been about the violence of love and horrors and darkness. Not that this song is light and beautiful. But there's no power chords and screams. Just soft, simple music.

I just have to think of her.

Lil

After ten minutes I decide that I'm evidently not convincing whoever it is that's knocking at my door that I'm not home. So I get up and answer it, a scowl on my face.

A scowl which disappears the instant I see who's on the other side.

"I brought dinner," Chuckie tells me, holding up a brown paper bag with a sheepish, innocent smile on his face.

I grin at him and step back from the doorway, allowing him in.

"What brought this on?" I ask.

"Hunger," he tells me. "When I get hungry, I eat."

"Ha ha ha."

He grins at me. "Can't blame me for trying." He shrugs off his jacket. "No, I was just worried about you. Hadn't heard from you for a while - " he pauses and looks around my apartment. "Have you redecorated again?"

I nod. "Yeah. Couple of weeks ago."

He quirks an eyebrow but remains otherwise silent. "Right. Anyway, I just thought I'd swing by and see how you were doing. Make sure everything was okay."

I nod. "No problems here."

He's not buying it. But he backs off, for the moment anyway. "What would you prefer? The pasta or the stew? I might have some chicken in here too..."

"You're becoming quite the domestic," I tell him. "What brought all this energy to fruition?"

He shrugs as he begins dumping the contents of his paper bag on my kitchen bench. "Lack of other things to do."

"Pent up sexual tension?" I ask, knowingly.

He grins.

I take that positively. He never used to be able to crack a smile when anything was inferred about his...relationship with Angelica. But...maybe, finally, he's getting some closure.

"Two weeks," he tells me. "Not since the party."

I nod. "Good on you." I sigh slowly. "So, how hard has it been?"

The grin wavers. "Harder than I'd like to admit."

"Fair enough," I tell him.

He sits down and tears aggressively into a piece of chicken. I crack open the tupperware containing his legendary pasta, and he digs through the bag to find me a small zip-lock bag of grated cheese. "So, my question is..."

"Two years, huh?" I finish for him. "Yeah, it occurred to me, too."

"Do you wish you had him back?" he asks, delicately.

I nod. "Every day. I wish that he hadn't left while we were fighting. I wish that he hadn't left at all, come to that. But...I don't know. Maybe it's been better for me than I'd like to admit."

"How so?" he asks.

"Well, he was all I'd ever known," I muse. "As much as it pains me to be so far apart from him, maybe this has been some great character building exercise. This has helped me find out who I am."

"I was talking to Suzie about it," he admits. "She thought you might say that."

Why does it not surprise me that Suzie can see straight through me without even being here to do it?

"He's my twin brother," I tell him. "And he left angry with me."

"You've changed," he tells me.

"I had to."

He nods.

"Do you think you and Angelica will ever sort it all out?" I ask.

He shrugs, and his eyes adopt a far-off, misty quality. He's looking straight through me, straight through the wall behind me, into a future that I can't see. One with Angelica. One without Angelica. Who knows. "I hope so."

"Why?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know."

Which is probably as good an answer as I'm going to get.

"Pass the salt, please," I ask.

And he does.

"Do you love her?" I ask.

He nods.

And we eat in peace.

Phil

I launch into an impromptu guitar solo, sliding my fingers up and down the cool steel strings and hoping to hell I don't bugger this up. Tim pats me on the back as he walks past to get his bottle of water and I have to kind of grin at the display of support. I can feel everyone's eyes on me. I used to always know that everyone was watching but it never really bothered me before. But now I'm acutely aware of it. There's nothing else to be aware of.

It had never occurred to me how much of a different experience this would be.

I can hear Tim's subdued gargling. I can make out Eddie and Marc's near-silent argument over what count to come in on. All these things that I can normally block out so easily. They're all as large as life. Filling my mind. It's insane.

But I've got her there to hold my hand.

We go for a walk through the park near our apartment and I smile as she tells one of her jokes. She rests her head on my shoulder and we watch the sunset as we walk onwards. Discussing meaningless, menial things. The weather. The latest sport scores. We sit on a park bench and I run a hand through her hair as we kiss.

I don't need a drink. For the first time in years, I don't need anything, other than knowing she's there.

And she is.