Bright Red | Skins | PG-13
Title: Bright Red (The Oversharing is Caring Remix)
Gift For: hardlygolden
Series: Skins UK
Spoilers: None, Pre-Canon
Pairing: Gen or Freddie/Cook (however you please)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,618
Warnings: Recreational drug use.
Summary: Sharing is caring. As always, Cook takes everything to the extreme.
A/N: Written for Remix Redux 10. Crossposted to AO3.
Sometimes Freddie measures his and Cook’s relationship in the sheer number of times he refrains from punching him. Taking into considering the amount of times that happens in a day, the length of their friendship looks bloody endless.
“Lend us your room tonight, mate,” Cook says as he struts into Freddie’s bedroom, all popped collar and mismatched socks.
Freddie peers up from his magazine and eyes Cook. “No. Who’s us?”
“Me ‘n Katie uh - MacSomething - uh. The one with the brilliant tits.” Cook grins and drops onto the bed, belly-flop style, and crushes Freddie’s feet beneath his stomach.
“Oh, her.” Freddie pauses, then returns to his article. “Yeah, that’s so not on.”
“Fuck you,” Cook says easily. “You won’t be able to say no when I show up at your door with her. I know you.”
Freddie bites back a sigh and chucks the magazine at Cook. “Obviously you don’t know me, because there’s no way in hell I’m letting you spunk all over my bed.”
“I’ll make her swallow it.”
“Cook.”
“We could share her.”
“Cook.”
“What?” Cook sits up and his grin his like a shark’s. “I’m up for it if you are.”
Freddie pinches the bridge of his nose and grimaces. “If I don’t want you spunking on my bed, I don’t want you spunking on me.”
Cook barks a laugh and bounces on the mattress with pent up energy, making the bed squeak almost obscenely. “That’s what they all say at first. So? Lend me your bed.”
“What’s wrong with your bed?”
Cook’s gaze flicks down to his knees - lingers just long enough for it to be strange. But when he looks up again, Freddie can only see a cocky bastard who’s used to getting what he wants, when he wants.
“I like yours better,” Cook says.
Freddie’s jaw clenches. “This one time.”
“This one time.” Cook leans in to a land an obnoxious, smacking kiss on Freddie’s cheek. “Oh man,” he says, his gaze glinting with glee, “I’m gonna jizz on everything you love.”
“COOK.”
***
Cook stays over for three nights. He wears Freddie’s clothes, uses his toothbrush, and shares his bed.
Share, of course, means Cook flings himself out like a starfish and gives Freddie a sliver of mattress to sleep on.
When Freddie wakes up to the bed vibrating and Cook’s erratic, shallow breaths, Freddie shrieks. Not like a girl. But he does shriek and shoot off the bed.
“For fuck’s sake! Go home, Cook.”
“Fine. Since you ruined the moment, anyway.”
Cook is still smirking when Freddie slams the front door in his face. When Freddie returns to his room, he can’t help but draw back the curtains and peer out onto the apricot dawn streets.
Sitting on the boot of someone’s rusty car is Cook, looking up at the sunrise. He’s wearing Freddie’s shirt, and it’s too small, making him look like an overgrown kid.
Sometimes Freddie wonders where Cook considers home, anyway.
***
Five in the fucking morning is not a time in which Freddie wants anyone to be throwing stones at his window.
As it is, because it’s Cook, and because he actually looks like a lost little kid on his birthday, Freddie heaves a sigh and trudges downstairs to retrieve him.
“What?” he asks upon yanking open the door and leaning against the frame. “What, Cook?”
“I don’t want to go home yet,” Cook says, his voice crackling like static, like he’s actually far away.
Freddie narrows his eyes. “Have you slept yet?”
Cook smirks. “When do I ever?”
Later, when they’re both sitting on the bed and the grey morning light is creeping between the blinds, Freddie leans off the side of the mattress and returns with his skateboard in hand.
“I was gonna buy you something, but I’m skint and my dad wouldn’t lend me any money for a proper present. So -” He thrusts the board onto Cook’s lap. “Here.”
Cook doesn’t even look at Freddie - can’t seem to lift his eyes from the skateboard. “I -” His gaze caresses the lines of the board, his fingertips pausing at a scar left by the time Cook had borrowed the board and gone crashing into a car. “It’s brilliant, Freds, it is, but -”
Freddie cocks his head. “But what?”
“But it’s yours, you know?”
Freddie nearly laughs. “And you borrow everything of mine, so what’s the problem?”
“Not anything that matters like this.” Cook’s smile is wavering as he places the skateboard onto Freddie’s lap and leans back on his hands. “You take better care of shit, yeah?”
Freddie can feel himself frowning. “Yeah, but -”
“I’m going to sleep,” Cook says, and promptly collapses onto Freddie’s mattress with a sigh. A long span of silence stretches, where Freddie just sits there, staring blankly at his board. Then, with a gruff mutter, Cook says into the pillow, “I fuckin’ love you, mate.”
Sometimes Freddie really doesn’t get it. But eventually, he does.
***
“Give it here,” Cook says by way of greeting, as he approaches Freddie outside school. He’s already motioning for Freddie’s fag, and Freddie rolls his eyes, but hands it over.
Cook’s lips curved around the fag, his eyes on Freddie while he inhales deep. “So,” he says, ribbons of blue smoke drifting from his mouth, “We on for tonight?”
“Not if I’m paying for you.” Freddie snatches the smoke from Cook’s fingers.
“I’ll pay you back,” Cook says - as he’s always saying.
Freddie raises an eyebrow. “How?”
Cook wiggles his eyebrows with a toothy smile. “In sexual favours.”
“Ugh.”
“Come on, mate!” Cook sidles up beside him and flings his arm around Freddie’s neck, drawing him in. “Isn’t this what we do? What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours.”
“And what do you have to offer, Cook?”
“Uh.” Cook’s smile is bright and hopefully. “The pleasure of me company?” At Freddie’s dark look, Cook adds, “And drugs.”
Heaving a sigh, Freddie squirms from Cook’s grasp and says, “You better get me well wasted tonight.”
Cook’s whoop of victory isn’t really all that reassuring.
***
Everything is a sweltering jungle of colour, spiderwebs of sound as Freddie turns and turns, tangled and dizzy. Heartbeat bass smacks against his sweat-damp skin, crimson lips smiling in all directions - booze and pills are a heavy cloak over Freddie’s head, upending him, wavering him in place.
Cook is there, hair like a thorny halo, eyes and smile black in the sea of everyone else’s. He reaches out, grips the nape of Freddie’s neck with a calloused hand and pulls him in. Cook’s breath is humid against Freddie’s ear, and all Freddie wants to do is rip away and gulp down fresh air.
But, even more, he wants this - doesn’t want this buzz to ever fade.
“Last one!” Cook says in his ear, pitching his tone above the thunderous din of dubstep.
Freddie sees the colour of Cook’s voice, and it’s red. Of course it would be red.
“Give it here,” Freddie says, holding out his palm between them. The dips between his fingers look shadowed; lonely. Huh.
Cook’s shifting beside him, and when Freddie looks up, Cook has his tongue stuck out. The corners of his mouth nearly reach his ears, and on the flat of his tongue is a single white pill.
And Freddie doesn’t think twice. What’s Cook’s is his, yeah?
Yeah.
The clumsy mash of their lips is quick, purposeful, because for once Freddy really knows what he wants from Cook. Tongues curl and probe, and the pill slides down Freddie’s throat like a firefly, like swallowing magic.
When he drags back with a gasp, Cook’s fingers are tightly laced in Freddie’s hair, and all Freddie sees is a world in shades of red.
***
After that, things are different, and not in the way Freddie expects.
Things are different in the nothing changes at all.
Cook continues to borrow without intent to return. He’s remains too close and personal, too much like a Molotov cocktail - all glass, booze, and flame.
When Cook brings Katie - or is this Alice? - back to Freddie’s house one evening, Cook shoos the girl upstairs with a smack on the arse.
“What the fuck?” Freddie knows he’s staring. He knows he’s obvious.
“Freds,” Cook says. He’s slouching, hands shoved in too-tight pockets and eyes downcast. He’s got this half-smile on, but it’s more like a frown than anything.
“It’s like -” Cook pauses, swallows. “Like this. I don’t take care of my stuff real good, yeah? I always cock things up. And some shit -” Cook meets Freddie’s eyes, his lips curled. “Some shit I fuck up just so I don’t have to share it. So that time...” Cook claps Freddie on the shoulder, squeezes, releases. He brushes past Freddie and starts up the stairs. “I was just trying to fuck you up. Sorry, mate.”
After a moment of silent shock, Freddie is surprised to find he’s not raging - just relieved. Cook is just Cook; carelessly acting on instinct, like a wild animal.
“Oiy.” Freddie goes to the bottom of the stairs and looks up as Cook pauses and peers over his shoulder. “Next time you want to show me off as your friend, don’t snog me, yeah? Your breath is foul.”
Cook blinks and then snorts a laugh, that sharp grin slicing across his features. He throws Freddie the bird and says, “Fuck you,” before disappearing down the hall.
Freddie rolls his eyes and mumbles, “Hell no.”
***
Sometimes Freddie measures his and Cook’s relationship in the sheer number of times they give something up for the other, rather than share and inevitably ruin it. Which, taking into consideration the amount of times that has happened in their lives, the length of their friendship looks bloody infinite.