Archive of Our Own

Hi babe

Gonna hv to cancel later

Sumthin’s come up

Three stares down at his phone as he decants strawberry flavoured vodka into a bottle from where he is safely tucked out of sight from customers behind the back of the restaurant bar. He is so distracted rereading the message that has just flashed up on the screen that he doesn’t notice the bottle is full, and sickly sweet smelling booze trickles out of the nozzle and overflows all over the marble counter. 

“Oh shit!”

He puts the bottle down with an audible thump, shakes the sticky liquid from his hands, and reaches for a j-cloth to clean up the mess he has just made. At the same time, he reaches for his phone with his non-dominant hand, toggling awkwardly with it to unlock Face ID so he can read what it says properly. 

He didn’t misunderstand the messages then. Three might not be so good at reading and writing but that is definitely Leah’s name and that is definitely Leah’s number and that is definitely Leah cancelling their plans for the evening with little to no explanation. 

Which is… Yeah, ok, so he can’t be too mad about it, because they’re not technically together. They’ve just been sleeping together for a couple of months, like a friends-with-benefits type situation, but it was Leah’s idea for them to meet up this evening. Three had spent all of last night messaging her back and forth with his left fist cradled around his dick and his right thumb choreographing an evening of  pleasure for her. Literally, the last message before this one had been a picture of Leah fisting a leopard print harness in the foreground of a rather impressive dildo collection with the caption, hw far cn u stretch? And, like, Three is no stranger to a bit of anal play but that sort of talk can really get to a man, right? Maybe a teeny-weeny part of him had been quite excited to get his shit modestly rocked by a vibrating six ” rainbow strap-on, and maybe he now feels even more silly that he almost broke his neck in the shower this morning trying to clean up with a razor around his arsehole just for her. 

But, like, this isn’t even the first time she’s done this? Actually, and it’s not like he’s counting, but this is the fourth time Leah has done this - made plans with him to meet up and fuck around and then cancelling them super last minute, that is. The first time, she said it was because her best friend’s dog ran away and she went to help him look for it (it was running around Finsbury Park chasing the ducks apparently). The second time, she said she’d been offered some extra shifts that the restaurant where she worked and she needed the hours because she wanted the money for Download Festival. 

The third time, there was no explanation. 

It’s been a while since Three has properly dated anyone, but he has enough common sense to know that the wild fling he and Leah (“You know Leah, the one with the earlobes and the Mandala tattoo on the side of her face”) were probably through. 

But, then, it’s not like they were dating anyway, was it, so he can’t really be mad. He can send a text message back, though, so he does; something as nonchalant and vague as her own, no doubt incorrectly spelt but why should he put the effort in to proofread it? If Leah was truly offended by terrible spelling, she’d have cut things off with him long ago. Also, she can’t type for shit either. 

“Three!” 

The voice makes him jump, and he looks up guiltily from where he is still rubbing lamely at the spilled vodka. He quickly realises that it’s all cleaned up now, and he’s just been standing there wiping down an already tidy bar, phone in his hand like a child who’s been caught with his fist firmly implanted in the cookie jar. 

Luckily it’s only Ginny, and she’s cool as fuck. “I’ve been calling you on channel two for, like, five minutes,” she complains, setting a plastic crate of empty beer glasses on the back bar. She glances at him and throws her arms in the air dramatically. “Dude, where’s your radio?”

Three touches his ear - sure enough, his ear piece is missing. He looks around sheepishly, feeling a bit guilty when he sees it abandoned next to the till, left there from where he’d ducked out earlier for a cigarette. “What do you need?” he asks, side stepping over to the other side of the bar and trying unsuccessfully to slip it behind his back. 

Ginny rolls her eyes at his terrible display of secrecy. “Three pints of Guinness,” she recites, “And a Bloody Mary for Table 47 at the back. Quickly, please, they keep looking over here.” Three glances in the direction of the table in question. He’s met with a fierce scowl - the asymmetric white blond bob and the tapping of a fresh set of acrylics on the varnished wood are enough to put some metaphorical pep in his metaphorical step. 

“On it,” he mutters, crouching his absurdly long torso down to root around in the mini fridge beneath the bar for the tomato juice that no one ever touches. 

“If you’d kept your radio in, you wouldn’t need to rush,” Ginny reminds him unhelpfully, reaching for her bottle of Ribena that she also keeps tucked behind the tills. She takes a little swig; the bottle makes a sucking sound as she sups on it thoughtfully. “What time do you finish today?” 

Three checks the time on his phone. If he happens to check for a non-existent blue tick as well, well, that’s his business. “Five,” he says, popping the tab of a can of Guinness and letting it pour out into an appropriately labelled glass. 

“Have you got any plans for when you’ve finished? Some of the guys were talking about going to the Devonshire Arms later. Billy finishes at eight today.” 

Still nothing from Leah. The little green dot telling him she’s online, though, stings a bit. Ouch. He thinks an evening spent getting suitably trashed in a rock pub in Kentish Town with Ginny and her boyfriend and some of the other people at work would be a nice substitute to getting his dick wet but-

“I’ve got band practice,” he says and Ginny hums. 

“Oh, shit, yeah, your Sleep Broken thing.” 

“Token.” Three meticulously balances a stick of celery in the Bloody Mary. He assesses his handiwork and decides it’ll do for the Karen and her crew on Table 47. “And it’s not my band, I’m just helping them out. But I might swing by later if you guys are still out.”

He’s not been rota’d in to start until six in the evening tomorrow. It will give him plenty of time to sleep of any hangovers induced by a last minute ill-advised drinking session. Who knows, maybe Leah will have a change of heart and decide that she does want him to come over. Then Three wouldn’t have worn his good Lynx body spray for no reason after all. 

Fuck, he’s such a loser. 

He raps his knuckles against the bar beside the tray of finished drinks. “These are ready, by the way.”

Ginny grumbles under her breath as Three squeezes past her to finger through his coat pocket for his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers. She scowls at him. “Again? Mark is gonna be pissed, you know.”

“You gonna snitch?” he asks, licking the paper. It feels dry and sandy on the tip of his tongue. Ginny shrugs. 

“No, but I still think you should switch to vaping. It’s way more convenient.” 

“Nah, I’m good.” He picks up his phone. After a second, he swipes up and thumbs away WhatsApp, closing it for good. The bubble of humiliated anxiety that had been sitting in his tummy dissipates slightly in the wake of not having to look at Leah’s flakiness. “I’ll run these, yeah?” he says, “Table 47 look ready to ask for a manager.”

“I am a manager,” Ginny mutters grumpily. 

Three carries the drinks over to the table. “Three Guinness?” he says, putting the glasses on the table in front of the men when they lazily wave a hand. “And for you, darling,” he says, giving the woman her Bloody Mary. He accompanies it with a cheeky grin, flashing crooked teeth - the kind that used to make the teachers at school melt a little bit when they saw him. 

The Karen is not so easily swayed. “Are you the manager here?” she asks frostily. 

“I am not, unfortunately, my love, but I can find one for you.” He looks over at Ginny, who shakes her head, eyes wide. “I know you were waiting a long time for your drinks, though. How about I swing by with something on the house for you?” The woman raises a thin eyebrow. “Try the drink,” Three tells her, “It’s good, right?” A small, curt nod. “Wicked, I’ll get you another one. On the house, for your troubles.”

He bounces back to the bar, sticking his tongue out and crossing his eyes at Ginny, who shakes her head and tries to hide a smirk in her collar. “You’re a very bad man,” she tells him, already reaching for the celery sticks. 

“But that’s why you love me,” Three pouts. 

“God help me, but I do,” she says wistfully, then gives him a playful shove. “I’ll do these, go for your cigarette.”

Three escapes to the back alley behind the bar where he nimbly finishes rolling his fag. Usually he smokes quickly - has got it down to a fine art at this point, but right now he takes his time, savouring the feeling of smoke in the back of his throat before exhaling through his nose. 

It’s been a quiet shift. He finishes just as all the nine-to-fivers get done with their big city jobs for the day. He’s glad that he’ll be missing the busy shift for once; there’s no worse patron to serve drinks to then a rude, obnoxious banker. They’re the type who will take one look at his bleached hair (a botched home job gone wrong, so he dyed it orange and told everyone it was intentional) or his stretched earlobes or his shitty stick-and-poke tattoos he let his ex-flat mate do in their bathroom at two A.M. because they got cross-faded on wine and weed (thinking about it, it’s a wonder that he never contracted sepsis). They see all of this and turn their noses up at him; think they’re better than him because they work in a fancy office wearing expensive suits. They talk to him like shit, the drunker that they get; think they can do what they like to him and he won’t bite back because he’s only a lowly bartender with a nicotine habit and bad dye job, and they’re big-wigs with Important Jobs. 

Three sucks harder on his cigarette, puffs of grey smoke mingling with his breaths in the cold night air. It’s November now; a chill is settling in, and he stupidly left his jacket hanging from a peg in the staff room. According to his phone, he only has thirty minutes left of his shift before he can clock out, and then he needs to get the tube over to Two’s flat in Vauxhall.

Three’s stomach tightens weirdly at the thought of his new bandmates. He’s no stranger to playing music; he’s been fucking around with instruments since he was seven, when Uncle Ronnie brought his first guitar from the pawn shop on the high street. All through secondary school, he’d tried (unsuccessfully) to get a band together, to write music and play some gigs. And like, he’d done a few shows, but nothing that really took off from the ground. All his mates had gone to university by then, and Three was still stuck working odd jobs and living in his childhood bedroom in his mum’s council flat on the estate. 

He didn’t want to end up like the guys he’d seen hanging around there growing up; the kind who were drunk at eight in the morning and who spent their days bumming cigarettes on broken brick walls. So he’d worked hard, saved up his money from his job stacking shelves in Aldi and, combining it with the money that Grandma Mary had left to him when she died, moved to London when he was twenty. 

Now he rents a house with five other people; Three lives on the top floor and he shares a kitchen with a nice Romanian guy called Sebastian. They nod at each other sometimes, when Sebastian is getting in from his day job working for Wandsworth Borough Council, and Three is leaving for his evening shift at the pub. It’s not a great job; the pay is on the shittier side and the customers are worse, but it keeps his bills paid and the hours are flexible enough that he can fit band practice around his working week. 

Three had met Two through a friend of a friend of a friend, one evening in St James’ park when he’d rocked up after his shift with a six pack of Kopparberg Dark Fruits. He’d been shoved in Two’s direction with a hurried introduction (“This is Three, he plays music too”), and Two had looked up at him from beneath his impossibly long blonde eyelashes, had taken a swig of beer and said, “So you like music, huh.” 

Three was a chatty bastard at the best of times, but there was something about this tiny, tattooed man with an imposing stare and an air of such self importance about him, he genuinely did not know what to say. So, instead, he’d taken a big gulp of his cider and tried not to cough from all the carbonation. “Uh, yeah,” he’d said, coughing awkwardly into his sleeve. Two nodded. 

“You play?” 

“I can play the guitar.” 

“Hm.” The noise was dismissive, short. It ruffled Three the wrong way, especially when Two said, “You any good?”

“Excuse me?” 

“I’m just asking.” Two had shrugged a heavily inked shoulder. In the evening summer sun, the park had been crowded - Londoners of all backgrounds had flocked to the fields in their shorts and flip-flops in the way that they always did when the sun was able to peep through the clouds. Two was no exception to this, except he’d been wearing a pair of faded vans, not flip-flops. “Do you play the guitar or do you play the guitar.” 

This prick. “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to answer that question, mate,” Three had said, a little sharp. 

If Two realised he was annoyed, he didn’t do anything about it. “You ever played the bass?” 

“No,” Three snapped and Two had frowned, a little crease appearing between a set of thick, expressive brows. “But it can’t be that hard, can it,” he added, swigging from the bottle again. He shouldn’t have had that tequila shot before leaving work. Two was still watching him. 

“My mate saw you play last week. He said you were really weird” he said suddenly, and Three’s cider went down the wrong way. Bubbles spluttered out of his nose and down his chin as he gasped and wheezed for breath. 

“Fucking hell,” he croaked, rubbing his fist across his chest in an effort to try and regulate his breathing. 

Two patiently waited for him to finish hacking up a lung before he continued, like nothing had happened, “It’s ok, he’s a bit weird too.” Three just stared at him. Who was this guy? This strange little man who went around pointing his finger at people and labelling them consequently as odd, like he had any right to do so. 

“Right,” was all he said, because what else was he supposed to say? Thank you? Fuck you? Neither seemed entirely appropriate. 

“We need a bassist for our band,” Two had said nonchalantly. “My mate, he sings. I play the drums.” Three waited for him to reel off the other members, but when Two just looked at him with that same, disconcertingly open earnestness, he realised that was it. 

“Oh, there’s just two of you,” he said dumbly. 

“Well, Vessel does everything else normally. But he can’t exactly be playing the guitar, the bass, the piano and singing all at the same time on stage, can he. We’ve got some gigs coming up in a few months and we need members to come play with us onstage. He said you looked like you’d fit our vibe quite well.” 

He wasn’t drunk enough for this shit. “Thanks? I think?” 

“Give me your number.” Two’s hand was already outstretched. “I’ll give you my address. We rehearse at my house at least three days a week. You should come over, play with us some time.” 

His head was reeling. “Listen, mate, respectfully? I don’t know you from Eve. You just go around handing out your mobile number to anybody who looks like they might like heavy metal?”

Two actually looked annoyed. “I already told you, my friend saw you play last week. You did a gig at The Bedford.” Three blinked. He had played a show at The Bedford last week in Balham, but he had also got outrageously drunk afterwards. He cast his hazy mind back, trying to remember if he’d been approached by any unusual circus types. 

But… no, he hadn’t. He didn’t doubt that, even in his exceptionally inebriated state, he’d have remembered meeting someone after the gig, especially if their candour was as blunt and to-the-point as Two. 

This was further supported by Two sniffing and adding, “To be honest, he said you looked bored stiff.” 

And that really was too far. “Fuck you, man.” 

“You don’t need to get offended,” Two said, like Three was the one being unreasonable. “He also said that you’re too talented to be wasting your time in a band like that.” What the fuck was this? Like, yeah, sometimes Three wished he could let loose a little bit and get a bit freaky onstage. And sometimes he wished that the singer wouldn’t strain their vocals so much to hit those high notes, or that the guitarist would go a little bit harder on his solos. He wished that the bassist wouldn’t rock up to very single rehearsal so high he couldn’t open his eyes, and that the drummer could actually keep in time. But, like, it’s not his place to say anything or whatever; he was just happy to be playing music, because when he did all of his crazy had an outlet, and all his nervous energy could be channelled, and the fact that everything slowed down enough for him to breathe and focus on a beat and a rhythm for a few minutes when the rest of the time the world seemed to move too fast and he felt like he was always running to keep up- 

Two was watching him expectantly and Three had scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Who even are you, man?” 

Two actually smiled. “The band is called Sleep Token. Text me if you want to swing by and I’ll give you my address.” 

Then he’d put his number into Three’s phone (full name and everything) and walked off as if nothing had happened. It was one of the weirdest experiences of Three’s life, and he’d woken up after a house party when he was sixteen in a field with his shoes on his hands and his trousers on backwards with no recollection of how it had happened, so.

And then he’d got a call from his mum - his brother was in jail again for attempting to rob someone with a kitchen knife, and he’d gone to play a show with his shitty band with the singer who couldn’t sing and the drummer who couldn’t drum and the guitarist who couldn’t shred and the bassist who couldn’t keep his eyes open and he’d thought I can’t do this anymore. 

So he’d walked out, right in the middle of the gig, and he’d texted Two and sometime between him getting on the Northern Lane at Kentish Town and getting off the overground to walk to his flat in Crystal Palace, he’d arranged to go to Two’s house in Vauxhall to jam with him and the singer, Vessel.

And it had been fine. Good even. 

Two was still an uptight bastard, but Three went to use the toilet in his bathroom the first time he was there and saw the way that all of the toilet rolls were stacked to be facing the exact say way, how the soap was lined up in alphabetical order, and realised that maybe there was a little more to Two’s blunt need to perfection than just a metaphorical stick nestled firmly up his arse. 

And he does need that - perfection, that is, because the Sleep Token thing they’ve got going on is good. It’s really good. 

It’s always been the two of them - Two and Vessel, who seems to be a musical Jack of all trades. He’s tall - that’s the first thing Three had noticed about him, only an inch or so shorter than himself, which is rare because Three is a beanpole of a man and has to duck his head when he gets on the tube. He’s introverted, crazily so, quiet and shy and subdued until he gets a microphone in his hands and it’s like he changes into another person. 

He sings and riffs and moans and snarls, and his body curls up like he can’t contain all of the power within his voice. 

The first time Three met him at the house, Vessel had smiled shyly at him. He’d seen Three play, he explained, and he hoped it wasn’t weird for him to ask but he wanted him in their band and liked the energy he could bring. 

Three had been more fixated on the fact that Vessel was clad in a woolly black turtle neck and a hoodie at the height of summer, like it wasn’t a toasty twenty-three-degrees outside. He’s known them for four months now and he has never seen Vessel in a short sleeved shirt. 

Not that it’s important - Three un-ironically dons odd socks on the regular, he’s hardly in a position to be dolling out styling tips. 

He’s not the only one Vessel has collected for his and Two’s little pet project. There’s a guitarist; polite, if a little quiet, and a keyboardist who Vessel says he knew from uni and who has one of the most angelic voices Three has ever heard. 

He’d left Two’s house that day with a folder of sheet music which he couldn’t read, and a USB stick full of videos of Vessel playing the songs that he needed to learn on bass guitar for him to copy. He realised very quickly that the two of them did not fuck around, so he knuckled down and practiced until his fingers were raw and sore and the tips of them felt like fucking calluses. 

It pays off, though, when he gets to go and play and be a little weird, and he’ll glance over and Vessel will be grinning at Two where he’s seated behind his drum kit, smiling with those pearly white teeth that make Three feel a little bit self conscious about his own. 

Finishing his cigarette, he grinds the butt under the heel of his beaten up Vans. Twenty minutes till his shift finishes. Still nothing from Leah. 

Fuck her, he thinks, wounded, and walks back into the bar, wiping his hand on his jeans. He slips behind the counter, where Ginny is chatting with Finn, who is switching out with Three at five. 

Ginny grins at him, digging her shoulder into his side. Because of the extortionate height difference between them, she ends up knuckling into his ribs, making him wince. 

“You staying for a quick drink after your shift, at least?” Three frowns. He shouldn’t - he’s well aware that he’s been drinking a lot more lately. He can see it in the swell of his belly and the spots that have broken out across his chin; in the dark circles and the slightly bloodshot quality of the whites of his eyes. 

“I mean, I could probably stay for one,” he says and Ginny beams. 

“A pint, yeah?” 

“A pint,” he confirms, slipping back behind the bar. “Singular.”

_

He ends up staying for two drinks, because he’s a weak man with no morels and an addictive personality. Three drinks, actually, if you count the shot of Tequila Rose that Finn slipped him when on the way past when he’d almost finished his bottle of Peroni. 

He drinks them quickly, because he knows he’s on a time crunch, and leaves the bar feeling a bit tidily from the bubbles rushing to his head. Beer and a milky shot are not a good combination but he’s hoping the journey from Camden Town to Vauxhall will sober him up a little bit. 

He’s got his backpack slung over one shoulder, his Parker drawn up tight around his chin and he sucks lazily on a cigarette as he weaves through the streams of people. It’s the height of rush hour, commuters eager to begin their Friday nights, be that heading for a night out or going straight to their homes. 

Headphones in and Nine Inch Nails on shuffle, Three integrates himself seamlessly into the river of people trickling through the ticket barriers at Camden Town tube station. The commute from his flat in Crystal Palace to the pub takes just under an hour on a good day, but the journey to Two’s is ridiculously short by comparison. Three follows the overhead signs for the Northern line, moving dazedly past posters for the latest films, books and theatre shows to come out in London. He shuffles as far down the platform as he can go; a harried sounding station guard is urging people to make their way to the end of the platform to accommodate the high volume of commuters, his voice getting progressively more harassed with every passing second. 

Three loves the underground. It’s quick and efficient, and he never has to wait too long for a tube to come. A telltale wind kicks up, an almighty roar fills the tunnel, and a train bound for Morden shoots to a halt. The doors ping open and Three politely waits for the people getting off to disembark from the train before joining the pressing crush of those trying to board. He spies a narrow gap by the doors where he can press his body; he may be tall but he’s slim, and he presses himself into the gap with a definitive sigh. 

The journey is smooth; one stop to Euston and then changing platforms to board a train heading to Brixton. It was always the same; the crowd thins out at Oxford Circus, only to quickly be replaced by other commuters. Three manages to grab a seat which he then offers to a heavily pregnant woman who smiles at him gratefully. 

At Green Park, he gets a brief bar of reception, and his phone buzzes. The message from Leah (“thanks for understanding, you’re a legend babe, we’ll meet up soon”) sours his stomach and suddenly NIN isn’t heavy enough. Cannibal Corpse it is for the rest of the commute, it seems. 

The train gets progressively less busy the closer it gets to the end of the line. Before he knows it, the automated voice is announcing their impending arrival into Vauxhall, and Three is shouldering his bag and stretching out the crick in his neck, waiting for the doors to open so he can get off. 

Walking up the left hand side of the escalator, he can already feel the windy November air blowing down from the pavement. He pauses outside the station to role himself a cigarette. After a moments deliberation, he tucks that one behind his ear for later and sorts himself another one. 

Two lives twenty minutes from the station in a house that is owned by his aunt and uncle. They rent out the house to him, charging him significantly less than anything else one might find in the area (Three knows this because he overheard Two chatting with the keyboardist one evening after band practice whilst Vessel gargled salt water or whatever the fuck he did to soothe his voice). It’s a little disconcerting when Three rocks up to the house and sees that there are no lights on inside. 

He digs his phone out of the pocket of his coat and texts Two; keeps it polite because Two is kinda like his boss in the band and he doesn’t want to piss him off. The reply he gets back is as instantaneous as it is blunt; appointment ran over, running late, all spelt and punctuated correctly. Three sort of wants to ask what he’s supposed to do for the next hour whilst he waits for Two to get to the house, when another message pops up on his phone: Stay put, Vessel will be there soon. 

And it’s kind of freaky, but as soon as Three reads it, he looks up and sees Vessel’s loping figure sloping down the road towards him. Vessel has a very strange walk; he doesn’t swing his arms like most people do, and Three never noticed how stooped he was, but Vessel’s posture implies that he has a crooked spine. He reminds Three a bit of a giraffe, or perhaps even a flamingo, with his long torso and neck bundled up in a black hoodie and a coat. His hood is pulled down far enough over his eyes that Three is shocked he can see anything, but he’s known Vessel long enough to be familiar with the shape of his long nose and thin lips; the pointed jut of his chin and the elegant slope of his cheekbones.  

Three stamps out the cold as he waits for Vessel to cross the road to join him, tucking his bare hands under his armpits in a pitiful attempt to keep them warm. Vessel lazily waves his hand when he joins him, the movement stiff and awkward. “Hey.”

“Alright?” 

Vessel glances at the house. “Been waiting long?” The deepness of his voice is always jarring to Three. He’s extremely well-spoken, also; Three’s vernacular is far more common. He’s not said it to them, but he privately thinks that Vessel and Two are posh boys. Two gives off the vibe that he’d spent a gap year traipsing around South-East Asia; Vessel just screams grammar school. 

“Just got here.” Three shakes his hands; he swears his fingers are going numb. “Fucking hell, it’s cold. Two say where he was?”

“He’s stuck at work,” Vessel shrugs. “We can go and wait for him inside.” 

“How would we-” Three swallows his words when Vessel walks past him and fishes a set of keys out of his pocket. He fits one into the lock on the front door of Two’s house and opens it with a satisfying click. “You have a key?” Three asks dumbly, and Vessel blinks. 

“Yeah?” he says, “It’s Two.” Oh, like that explains everything. Three watches, a little gobsmacked, as Vessel walks into the house like he owns it, removing his coat and beginning to toe off his shoes. “Are you coming? Or did you want to stay outside where it’s cooler?” Vessel asks. It’s not snappy or malicious; he’s serious, Three realises, and he jerks like he’s been electrocuted and books it up the stairs to follow him inside. 

The first thing he does is to remove his shoes. Two had made it abundantly clear that he did not want any dirty footprints on the carpet. 

“Just leave your coat,” Vessel says casually, like he owns the place and god, maybe Three should be paying more attention because somehow Vessel has made it down to the kitchen and fetched two beers, one of which he holds out to Three. The other hangs loosely between his long fingers as he taps it absentmindedly against his thigh. “You want?”

And, like, he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t, but the buzz he’d felt when he left the bar earlier has dimmed from the train ride over here, and Vessel is having one, and who is Three to make him drink alone? So he takes the beer and follows Vessel down into the basement where Two keeps his drums and Vessel stores all the musical equipment. Together they’ve transformed it into a sort of mini recording studio. It’s got everything one could theoretically need to make music; a series of different microphones, Two’s enormous drum kit, a Yamaha keyboard played by Vessel and the keyboardist respectively, and a couple of guitars and bass guitars. The guitarist brings his own to play at rehearsals, and the rest are Vessel’s which he keeps at Two’s house for convenience. From Three’s understanding, Vessel is here most evenings anyway. 

Pushed against the far wall are a couple of matching sofas; one that dips in the middle, which Vessel sinks down into, and gestures for Three to join him on the sofa perpendicular. 

Three finds himself perching on the edge of the couch; his long legs get folded up underneath him, leaving him sitting in a hunched position that is no doubt terrible for his posture. For lack of anything to do, he takes a swig of beer and then says, belated, “Two won’t mind us drinking his booze?”

“Actually, I brought these,” Vessel says, swirling his own drink again so that the liquid torpedoes in a spiral inside the glass. “But there’s a whole liquor cabinet upstairs I’m sure he won’t mind us pinching something from.”

Three privately thinks, based on his character assessment of Two, that he will very much mind them drinking his alcohol without him there. Two gives the vibe that he measures how many millilitres are left in his orange juice carton after he drinks it, but then Vessel is gulping from his own bottle again and, holy shit, that’s half of it gone. He finds himself rushing to keep up, thinks damn, maybe Vessel does know how to party. 

The noise it makes when Vessel pulls his lips away from the bottle is like a sticky kiss. Three fidgets in his seat a little, and tries to squash the sudden strange squirming that’s kicked up in his belly by taking a big draught of yeasty beer. Jesus, it felt warm. Did Two leave his heating on all the time or something? 

“It’s a smart heater,” Vessel says, giving him a funny look, but again, it’s not malicious. It’s almost fond, like he thinks Three is a bit endearing. Huh. 

“I didn’t mean to ask that,” Three admits. He didn’t really mean to say that either, but Vessel is leaning forwards with interest, big brown doe eyes keen and pinning Three with an earnest gaze that makes his toes wiggle. He curls his feet under him self-consciously. 

“It’s ok,” Vessel says easily. 

“Sometimes my mouth gets away from me. I used to get into trouble for it all the time when I was a kid. It drove my mum mad.”

“It’s honestly fine,” Vessel says, the timbre of his voice gentle and affirming. He drinks his beer like it’s water and Three tries to pace him but it’s hard. He’s already full-up from the drinks he had earlier, the foam from the beer sitting solid in his belly. “Is it just you and your mum then?”

“Yeah,” Three says, “Well, and my brother, but he’s in prison. Dad hasn’t been in the picture since I was five.” Suddenly, he slaps his hand to his forehead. “Jesus, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.” He puts his beer down by his feet and scrubs his face tiredly. “Look, I’m just gonna be honest with you, this isn’t my first drink tonight.” 

“It’s not mine either,” Vessel says, but before Three can unpack that further, he asks, “So you’re not from London?”

“Um, Essex.” Three nods. “Yeah, moved here when I was twenty. I didn’t get the grades I needed to get into uni with all my mates but I couldn’t stay there, y’know?” Vessel nods sagely, perched on the edge of his seat. He reminds Three of a very lanky, very crooked bird. “Grafted for a bit, found a flat and got a job working at the pub. I’ve been here ever since.”

“And the bands you were playing in?”

“Well, I started learning the guitar when I was in Year 4,” Three shrugs. “It was the only thing I found that could silence all the-” He pauses and twists his finger by his temple. “I’ve been in a lot of bands though,” he admits. “But I could never find one that stuck.”

“I know what you mean,” Vessel nods. “But I think you match our style pretty well.”

“I’ve never been in a band like this,” Three says wistfully. 

“Oh?”

“I mean, I’ve never been in a band that’s asked me to cover my face, for one thing.” Three laughs awkwardly. “Didn’t realise I was that ugly.”

Vessel actually looks alarmed. “Is that why you think we do it?” he asked, sounding a bit horrified. 

“No?” But like. 

“I don’t think you’re ugly,” Vessel tells him. Jesus, does the the guy just not blink? Three isn’t sure what’s happening right now. He squirms a bit.

“You’ve gotta admit, it’s kinda weird, no? Don’t you, like, want people to know who you are?”

“Actually, I really, really don’t.” 

“But, like, you’re so good. You could be so famous, and like, people will really like this shit-” God, he sounds pathetic even to his own ears. “Fuck, man, ignore me. I’m not making any sense right now.” He looks down at his beer bottle, picks it up and swirls the contents of it listlessly. “Fuck it.” He finishes it in three big gulps. 

“You want something else?” Vessel asks and Three shakes his head. 

“I shouldn’t, mate, I’m already a bit tipsy, I think.” 

Vessel shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

Three looks around, a little uncertain. He’s never been on his own with Vessel for so long. “Actually, I might go for a ciggie,” he says. Vessel nods. 

“I’ll come up with you, I want another drink anyway.” 

Three follows him up the stairs; Vessel turns off into the living room and Three can hear the clanking of bottles. Vessel hadn’t been joking that Two had a full on liquor cabinet. Fucking posh boy, he thinks, wondering out into the concrete garden at the back of Two’s house. It’s only little, but there’s some wilting spinach bushes growing in cracked vases by the back door, and a small, uncomfortable looking garden bench with a coffee cup to dispose cigarettes into. Three sinks down onto the wooden frame and takes the cigarette he pre-rolled earlier from behind his ear. It’s cold out, and he’s regretful that he didn’t bring his jacket. 

Scrubbing his face again with his hand, he mentally tries to sober himself up. He feels weird, unsettled and itchy in his skin, like he’s even less in control than he normally is. It’s been a few days since he played, he reckons, caught up between fitful bouts of sleep and grinding night shifts at the bar. Mum keeps calling him about visiting his brother with Uncle Ronnie one weekend, and he really doesn’t want too. Their first proper live gig is in two weeks, and Leah is effectively breaking up with him, even though they weren’t dating in the first place. It’s all a bit of a mess really. 

Mashing his cigarette into the forgotten butts already left in the coffee cup, he goes back into the flat. Vessel isn’t in the living room when Three pokes his head through the door so he doesn’t hang around; he doesn’t think Two would appreciate him poking around his flat too much. 

He can hear voices as he descends the creaky steps of the basement again; low, murmuring whispers and soft giggles. The keyboardist has turned up then. She and Vessel are now sitting on the couch Three had previously occupied. She’s got a can of cider in her hand, fluffy socks on the couch, and Vessel’s head is bent low to hers. They look up when they hear him coming, but make no effort to move. 

The sight of the two of them together makes Three feel weird; suddenly he wants to know if they’ve ever fucked; it would make sense, right? She’s pretty, if a little plain, and Vessel is cute in that kind of boy next door; my first boyfriend sort of way and whoa, whoa, whoa, what the fuck is he doing?

She greets him with a polite smile, but it’s Vessel she’s there to see. It’s always Vessel, with his strange magnetism and odd allure that seems to draw people to him like moths to a flame. “Alright?” Three nods, putting his hands in his pockets. He’s beginning to wish he’d taken Vessel up on that offer for another drink, just to have something to do with his hands. 

She tells Vessel that the guitarist is on his way; he’s dropped his daughter off with her mother and will be heading to them shortly. “Two’s just leaving work now,” Vessel says and Three internally groans, because now he feels like he’s third wheeling at a party that no one was invited to. 

He goes and gets one of the bass guitars, for lack of anything else to do, sits in Vessel’s vacated seat and tunes it up so that it’ll be ready to go. The keyboardist notices him eyeing up her cider and belatedly offers him one, and Three isn’t polite enough to decline. 

The guitarist turns up with cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic; clearly, Three missed the memo. In the time they’re waiting for Two, he has two more drinks and as many cigarettes in the garden. He has to duck into the downstairs toilet and spray himself with Fabreeze because he’s convinced he stinks of tobacco. 

By the time Two arrives, everyone is deep into their cups and itching to play. Two hangs his rucksack from the hook and says, “Give me a minute to change, yeah?” And Three sinks down further into the cushions, feeling a bit lightheaded from all the mixing. 

A weight settles beside him and when he opens his eyes, he sees it’s Vessel, looking a little more rugged and a little more flushed and a lot more drunk than he had when he let Three into the house. He thinks back to earlier (“Look, I’m just gonna be honest with you, this isn’t my first drink tonight.”; “It’s not mine either.”), and he wonders just how much Vessel has had today. 

“You alright?” He isn’t slurring, but his accent is less pronounced. Three wonders if he should have kept a better eye on him, then wiggles in his chair. 

“Yeah, just tired,” he says, “This sofa is comfy.” 

“You seem quiet.” Vessel muscles up to him, large hand on his knee. And, like, Three has big hands, long fingers; it sort of comes with being tall, all lanky limbs and thin narrow feet - it used to drive his mum crazy because they could never find school shoes slim enough for him. That’s a moot point but Vessel, Vessel is big. He hides it well, swamping his shape beneath layers of black fabric, hoodies and slacks and long sleeves shirts, but Three knows he’s tall. His hands are defined and refined; his fingers long and elegant, strengthened by all the time he spends playing musical instruments. 

The veins on the back of his hands are pronounced, the knobs of his knuckles smooth and shapely. Three is staring. Three should stop staring. Three is going to have a heart attack because Vessel has just put one of his pretty, pretty hands on Three’s knee, and he’s wearing ripped jeans, and Vessel is warm, and he is warm and what the fuck is happening-

“Ready to rock,” he croaks, and mentally kicks himself. What a fucking dumb ass thing to say. Vessel doesn’t laugh at him. Vessel squeezes his knee. Vessel smiles at him, draws his bottom lip between his pretty white teeth. Three knows that look, because it’s how Leah used to look at him. It’s the same look she’d give him when they were watching a slasher on her laptop and she’d reach into his sweats and put her hand around his dick. It’s the same look she’d do when she’d get on her knees before the edge of the bed, guiding his prick towards her mouth. 

Holy shit, does Vessel want to suck his dick? 

The thought is so jarring that Three actually jerks a little, standing up quickly and tugging his T-shirt down a little bit further. 

Two comes down with a plate of toast smeared with Marmite. He’s holding the plate up beneath his chin so he doesn’t spill any crumbs on the floor. He looks considerably more comfortable, having changed from his black slacks and button down shirt to sweat pants and a Slipknot T-shirt. “Ready?” he asks, wiping the corner of his little finger across the corner of his mouth to clear away any residual food. 

Vessel rises to his feet and almost looses his balance. Three puts a hand up to steady him, and realises he’s accidentally touched Vessel’s bony arse. Shit shit shit. He quickly readjusts his hold to his hip. “Steady, mate, you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Vessel says, wobbling away. He digs into his bag and produces a bottle from Sports Direct. “Just need some water.” 

Two drifts over to him as the guitarist checks his tuning again. “You guys have been drinking,” he says quietly and Three shrugs. He can see Vessel squirrelling around out of the corner of his eye and it’s making him nervous.  

“Little bit.” 

“How much has he had?” Two tilts his head in Vessel’s direction. Three glances over and shrugs. His ears feel hot. 

“Dunno. Four or five.” 

“You let him drink that much?” Two glares at him and it ignites something fiery in Three’s belly. 

“Fucking hell, mate, I didn’t know it was my responsibility to keep an eye on him,” he snaps. 

“You guys ready?” Vessel says into the microphone. A whining feedback dribbles from its mouth, and Two winces at the noise. Three takes the distraction to jog to his spot of the left side of the little makeshift stage they’ve marked off with masking tape, shouldering his bass guitar and shaking out his wrists. 

“Put your mask on,” Two says, a little snotty in Three’s humble opinion, sitting down behind his drum kit and picking up his sticks. Three groans. 

“I can’t see anything when I’m wearing it,” he points out. 

“Which is why you need to practice with it now, put it on.” There is no room for arguments. Everyone has donned their cheap ski masks brought from Amazon; the keyboardist has used fabric paint to dab the band’s logo onto it. Three sighs but puts his on. Everything instantly becomes muffled as he adjusts the strap of his bass. He thumbs over the thickest string, listens to the way the sound thuds from his amplifier like the pulsing beat of a heart, and everything goes quiet. 

“Let’s start with Thread The Needle,” Vessel says. He’s put his ridiculously long hood up again, and has donned a cheap harlequin mask that Two had picked up from the costume store. Only his mouth and jaw are visible, but there’s something unsettling about the anonymity it gives him when you can’t see his eyes. 

Three lets himself sink into the song. He closes his eyes and listens as Vessel sings, gets lost in the sound of his voice. There is something almost hypnotic about the steady timbre of his voice, emotional and soulful and inexplicably sad. It can’t be denied, when Vessel sings, he puts his everything into it. Not only in his voice, but in his body language as well.