get dizzy on caffeine

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“You’re the worst,” Briar declared without any heat, plopping herself into the uncomfortable chair next to his bed. With all the magic in the world, you would think someone could charm the chairs to be a little more comfortable or the tea to taste a little bit better, but she also supposed that wasn’t anyone’s priority in a hospital. “You’d have to be very hard up before I’d consider being the one to give you a sponge bath. Aren’t you supposed to get out of here soon, or are they just so seduced by your personality that they decided to keep you around as long as possible?” 

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“Nah. Nurse Doug has not fallen victim to my charm. Sometimes, maybe endeared? But not enough to Florence Scama-- I mean, Florence Nightingale me. Did she even do anything, like, nefarious?” Davey asked while picking at a thread on his Mungo’s blanket. They’d gotten a lot comfier over the years. That or they finally added fabric softener to their laundry. “I should be outta here soon.” He kept his fingers crossed, hoping to God he didn’t jinx himself. Whatever got him out of here before the holidays, or before Gladys was having to lie to his mother to cover up for him. She was the world’s worst goddamn liar.

He forced a smile to Briar. He was also bad at lying. “Not soon enough, eh?”

“About time for my sponge bath?” Davey’s brows wiggled all too annoyingly in the presence of his best friend while he set down the borrowed paperback copy of the too-on-the-nose book, The Outsiders. The cover-page reflected the sunlight streaming in, bouncing off December sleet. Things were running a bit slow here at Mungo’s, understandably understaffed and rather backed up. The potion Davey needed to finalize recovery should’ve been here earlier that afternoon, but had been delayed yet again. It was one prison after another.

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Marlene’s tongue tapped where her teeth should have split into rows, eager to teasingly ornament the bashful expression on her face. It was a mistake to indulge herself in Davey’s smile, one she had made enough times now to know better. Moth’s wings simmered in the bottom of her stomach, only enough friction against its walls to make her nauseous. There were only two ways to cure that sick, dizzy feeling: to walk away, or to walk into the same damn mistake again with eyes wide open.

Her heart was still torn between the two when the ground moved out from under her, knocking her to her feet. Alarm bells sounded behind the pitch black curtains of her eyes, the gym’s emergency siren piercing through one ear to the other. She was afraid to move. She was afraid to look. She was afraid of what she might hear when the alarm stopped—

But she couldn’t wait for that. Marlene reached to push herself back up, digging into crystalline, gravelly glass on elbows and hands, thick shards raining down from her hair. Eleven sets of eyes, drowning in fear, suffocated on tears and wails that made nary a dent in the blaring alarm, followed the motions.

“Okay, everyone up.” Could they hear her? Marlene climbed to her feet in example. Her voice softened, reserving urgency for her hands. She reached for Brian Proudfoot. She noticed for the first time then that the window had gone missing. That the gym full of wixen beyond it had turned gray, red, chaotic. None of the people running past looked anything like Davey. It punched the heart out of her chest as cleanly as the glass from the pane.

“Everyone hold hands.” A bubble went up around Marlene and the circle of children. It locked the panic in with them, the one thing she couldn’t shield from them—or herself. There was only one way to escape it, and it was the door all the way at the front of the building. “Alright, let’s go.”

 .

This was no sign that this was never meant to be. Rather, a lesson that Davey needed to learn heavily and thoroughly. The sooner he believed to let love go and to let love grow the healthier, because he was nobody’s rescuer. He was nobody’s savior, as hard as he tried to be. He could not even save his own fucking self. Davey thrashed underneath the bench press he had decided to distract himself with. Rather than the exercise freeing him, he was burdened beneath it’s hefty chin bar.

Blonde hair disappear from view. His friend was unseen, alone with more children than he could count on his hands -- at least, it’s what it felt like when peering at her only seconds before the ear shattering alarms had began.

He was unsure how long it took to dig himself free of the rubble and bar, but once he could move at his god given pace, he was quick. Davey blinked through red, now bearing witness as another explosion rocked place of escape for so many. Now, he could only pray everyone fled in search of new safety. It felt wherever Davey went, trouble followed. It was a stupid weight of guilt to feel and he no longer could, as steel came into contact with his spine. 

Davey’s back was broken, along with his spirit, along with the hope that his best friend had saved herself. Life was not kind to those who deserved it and life was even crueler to people like him.

Imprisoned in his mind now, he did not feel his body being discovered. He would not know for awhile.

WHEN: Wednesday, 10 November, 1980 WHERE: Fiendfyre Gym, Banchory WHO: Davey Gudgeon ( @daveygudgeon​ ) & Marlene McKinnon

“I’m not bringing out the parachute until everyone’s shoes are in their cubbies!”

At last, Marlene had found the magic words. She huffed out a semi-sigh of relief as the pupils in her gymboree class scattered like leaves in the wind, eager to follow her instruction. All of them but one. Marlene narrowed her eyes directly at Brian Proudfoot, whose grin had always been mischievous, but had grown positively devious in the days since he’d turned four. There was something sinister about the way he sauntered over to his cubby, something that made Marlene watch with suspicion.

Luckily for Brian Proudfoot, there was a distraction on the horizon. The corner of Marlene’s eye itched with a peculiar familiarity until she followed it. Davey Gudgeon, on the other side of the window to her classroom, blissfully unaware of the ruckus on the other side of the wall. Until Marlene knocked on the window and waved, anyway.

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Bench press this, bench press that. Rest a good sixty seconds, move onto the dumbbells, which he’d always preferred. There was something ultimately satisfying watching your strength increase as the numbers went up day by day, week by week. If you were lucky, hour by hour. Hours, yup, that’s what he’d spent his time doing for recreation back in Appleby’s facility. He had to remind himself every now and then, sometimes those hours were quite valuable, and that he should’ve been doing something else with them.

The other half of Davey’s brain, the one he most often followed after, said fuck it. Because what did it matter when their world was continuously falling apart and attempting and failing to rebuild? It was only fucking November 10th. The world falling apart couldn’t have waited until after the goddamn holidays were over? After Davey had gotten situated back into the real world? He felt just as lost as anybody now. Would he ever get that Christmas roast dinner? He wanted a yorkshire pudding, extra brown gravy.

It was goofily that he grinned back at Marlene, mocking her wave. It was a familiarity that occasionally reminded him he was home. And that perhaps there wouldn’t be much to worry about, as long as he kept his head down, took care of himself, and showed the people he loved how much he loved them. Even if the membership were a paid exclusive, he would’ve found his way in, just for the normality of the blonde he’d grown to enjoy. He didn’t want to disrupt her class -- as he knew he could with a bunch of hyped up on endorphins kids. He stayed back, observing often. He missed those days, when the parachute was all you cared for. Did they even know what was happening outside of these walls?

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The sigh that Doc let out was more dramatic than necessary, though, given Davey’s costume, he didn’t think it could compare. “Work is work. We’re busy, constantly. My boss has been missing for a few months now, so we’re all trying to pitch in and pick up any slack. And with all of this Statute business popping up—well, it’s fucking hell, actually.”

“Yeah, ‘m starting to wonder if I was safer behind those walls, instead of these ones.” He pointed between the suit, the building, and the overall fuckin’ world. “Shitty about your boss. I suppose y’all already ruled out an intentional leaving. I mean, as much as the next person, I get wanting to pick up and start a whole new life where you’re unknown.” He could never do it, but he always wondered what type of person it took to follow through. “Doubt you wanna talk about it more than you’re already worrying, but I’ll listen over a pint. That or you tell me all about life as a husband. I wouldn’t mind a fairytale ending right now.” Better dream material, eh? For hopeful ones.

.

Doc put his hands out, in case any further assistance was necessary as Davey wrestled with the freak-show of a costume. The act wasn’t graceful. But he did find a certain sense of poetry in it all. “Sounds to me like you’re just trying to prove that you don’t need his help. Which is noble, don’t get me wrong, but I also think you’re selling yourself short.” Davey was more than just dead end jobs.

“The one worthy gig I had, I managed to muck it all up with my fat gob.” Davey’s annoyance was shot only at himself and nowhere near Doc, who was only laying down the cold hard truth. It wasn’t even chilly, at that. The validation of a friend was the much needed plaster on this wound, the corners of Davey’s mouth quirking up slightly in appreciation. “That degree treating you well then, eh?” Surely three years of University had earned him more than a mouse costume. He stripped himself of the rest of the mascot, glad to have only worn a pair of light, footballer shorts underneath it all. Getting in and out of the mouse was more strenuous than lifting weights with the boys back in the recreation yard. Fuck’s sake.

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“Davey, mate, while I appreciate your dedication to work, do you think, uh, this is necessary?” Doc admired that Davey was doing everything he could to get back on his feet. There was plenty to be said for trying. Only in this instance, he wasn’t sure that the pros of a decent paying job were enough to outweigh the cons of being stuffed into a costume that looked like a possessed rat.

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“I reckon it is necessary,” Davey all but sighed, yanking the mouse head off of his own. It took a good few seconds and he stumbled back in the process, but in the end, a boy with matted hair and a sweaty forehead was revealed. “I know if I tell you any of this, you’ll take it to the grave.” That’s why Davey Gudgeon loved Doc, because he’d been away since April, but they’d fallen back into a natural step already. “My dad’s been helping me get on my feet,” his dark eyes adverted to his feet and he heard his father’s voice ring in his head, reminding him how cowardly that gesture looked. These two boys were no stranger to deadbeats. “I should probably drain him for everything he’s made of, yeah? Yet I’m here as a rodent, working my arse off to pay him back. What the fuck’s up with me?” 

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“What? No. ‘Course not, mate. You look perfectly average and normal. Not a thing wrong with your eyes.” The lie was flimsy at best, but Doc figured that Davey knew well enough by now what he actually looked like. Something equivalent to a deranged Easter Bunny.

.

There was nothing normal about a seven foot mouse dressed in a wool jumper, but Davey was sure working with what he had, placing one foot in front of the other. While he didn’t officially start work until the 31st of October at this muggle establishment, they’d requested he come in and give the mascot a test. He might’ve looked like a bottom feeder now, picking up the jobs nobody had wanted. I mean, who in their right mind took up the janitorial shift at the Commons? Davey Gudgeon, that’s who. And now he was a rodent. A rather smelly one, he had to admit.

“Well, I goddamn wish I were. The skunk I smoke smells a fuck ton better than the skunk that’s died in this thing, fucking hell, mate, stay back if you want to make it home alive to your wife.”

Dressed in the mascot costume he was hired to adorn, he side-eyed Doc. “Do I look high?”

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“No,” Marlene giggled. She pulled out her own iFlown, safe inside the walls of a Tutshill Tornados themed case. “They’re funny. Here, I’ll show you one, before you go.”

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Marlene ripped a scrap of paper off the corner of a sign-in sheet. “You don’t have to text me.” But she had already slid the parchment with her number on it towards Davey, unwilling to think of what she might feel if he did reject it. “I mostly just send people stupid WixWatches anyway.”

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“That like a game where you learn to tell time? Nice, nice.” 

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“Shut up.” Marlene leaned over the edge of the desk, peering down at the little black rectangle in Davey’s hand. An iFlown? She blinked, unable to believe her eyes, even in the too bright, too sterile lights of the gym. And to think, they had fought over this—and for good reason, too. Considering the company belonged to Davey’s estranged half-brother, Marlene couldn’t blame him for keeping his distance, even as the iFlown had grown in popularity, flying off the shelves.

All of that begged the question, asked with a skin chapping harshness that only could only come with Marlene’s blunt curiosity— “What the fuck are you doing with one of those?”

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“Was a present, you know, for being such a good little prisoner.” 

It was funny how Davey believed he might’ve lost a piece of himself while there, yet the witty comebacks still flew from his tongue full force. He ignored the fact that his humor could have very well been a defense mechanism of sorts -- that was too much to unpack in front of an ex-girlfriend at her place of work. It was too much for him to do sitting on a couch alone, lighter dangling between his fingers. 

It was all too much, because even thinking about the gadget in his hand alone seemed to exhaust him. He wasn’t ready to speak about the ‘whys’, even if it might’ve felt like Marlene, above all, might’ve been the most deserving of an explanation. This topic had caused arguments before. His stubbornness presented itself as forever unwavering. Now he stood here, chuckling nervously, “C’mon, just give me your number.”

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Marlene exhaled, lighter now than she knew she could be in the presence of Davey Gudgeon. She had hung precariously in the balance between her offer and his answer, wondering why she had asked, ready to question the motives of any answer. Did he feel obligated to go? Would he reject her because he thought she couldn’t be platonic? Would it change his answer, if he knew about John, or Sturgis, or the yoga teacher in LA?

But this was a different answer. An unexpected answer. A welcome answer. A sincere and honest answer she could trust. “Deal,” Marlene agreed. “If you see a good one coming out, you’ll have to let me know.”

“I suppose I’d have to message you on one of those fuckin’ iFlown things, huh?” He’d yet to divulge to anyone the truths that lay behind his release, but it was expensive. There were only a number of people Davey knew with so many zeroes at the end of their account balances. The miniscule iFlown settled in his calloused hands might’ve told the entire story to someone like Briar, but he felt safe to whip out the product which was a carbon black. They could exchange numbers. It was a start, perhaps one of his healthier ones.

.

“Not for most things.” It was difficult not to stare at Davey, as long as it had been since she’d seen him. As different as he seemed now. Marlene could see the roots of him rippling beneath the surface—but were they seeking freedom, or a hiding spot? If she’d found him difficult to read before, she found it impossible now. Courage and pity intertwined in the nervous ball of energy lumped in her throat, until Marlene couldn’t decipher which of them was talking.

“I’d go with you, if you want company. It might be nice not to have to watch it for the first time with, like, a super fan, and both my house mates have already seen it, like twenty times between the two of them, or something.”

.

The fork in the road beckoned Davey each way, every single one having benefits and consequences he could very well face if he didn’t think this through. He considered Marlene’s feelings, of course, but he knew it was his own he was meant to prioritize. Once he’d gotten himself into that habit, maybe, just maybe he could consider the benefits of Marlene, or anyone else, in his life. She did not need to be strung along the Davey train and he did not need to be operating something of so much power so soon. He wanted to hang by himself. At least he’d felt he and Marlene were at the place where he could say as such. Hopefully his perceptions wouldn’t betray him in the long run. Plus, every piece of pocket change needed to go towards rent of his own. No room for a matinee just yet. A gym membership would be a stretch enough.

“Why don’t we wait for a film we both give two shits about, how ‘bout that instead?”

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Marlene let one too many beat pass before she realized it was her turn to speak, and then another as she realized she had never actually gone and seen the film.

“How was it?” she asked, painting the pasty flush of her face a bright shade of pink with the words. “The Star Wars, I mean. Not—the other thing.” A flustered hand poorly masked her blush as she swallowed a groan at another failed interaction with Davey. What would it take for her to give up talking whenever he was around anymore? Then again, if a whole prison sentence apart hadn’t been enough time for her to learn that lesson, would she ever?

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“Haven’t actually seen it yet,” it dawned on him, too caught up in the regular motions of life to entertain the idea of entertainment at all. Davey’s “me” time only consisted of smoking with Regan and, now, heading to the gym. Yesterday he’d tried taking a run, but had stumbled into a mess of his own making  -- his thoughts. The rattling of the equipment used to keep him in tune while in Appleby’s facility. Maybe it’d do the same for him now. Or not, if Marlene McKinnon was only meters away.

He might’ve chuckled at the twist of her tongue previously, but Davey Gudgeon was too caught up in the realness of the moment to. For a moment there, he almost reached out to make sure this was not a cruel trick or dream he’d wake from in his shared cell. Davey had to learn to reclaim his thoughts. He’d get there.

Marlene and Davey were both too quiet. Onlookers who knew them would’ve been worried, or placing bets on what blabbermouth would let their gob go loose first. He finally opened his mouth to speak, eyes boring into a sign behind her, “Do I need a membership?” It was something, at least. He was too proud to label this interaction as awkward. He’d lost everything, everything apart from this single shred of pride he called his dignity. Was this rock bottom, was he broken?