So, because I can't sleep:
My brain came up with THIS instead. It's not very good. But it's a little 700-ish word look into what I think Cook's start to the week might be. It's all messy and gah. But dude. Whatever.
Just to let the world know: I own nothing! It's all E4's fault!
Monday morning goes like this:
At 9am, the plastic Goofy alarm clock in Cook’s room will go off with a grating buzz which cuts through his drugs-hazed hangover. He got the clock when he was fourteen, as a birthday present from his mum's Aunt Doreen. It's the stupid kind of gift that clueless adults get for the teenagers they still think of as the kids who puked up jelly and ice cream at birthday parties. When he was fourteen, Cook had already had sex with three girls, had his stomach pumped twice and was selling weed on the side to pay for more sex, booze and weed. Well, he reckons,you only live once. If you're going to hell you might as well go in style.
At the moment the clock will be somewhere under the bed, where he kicked it by accident when he was drunk one time - he can't remember which one, he's always fucking wasted when he comes back to this shithole - and he can’t be arsed to try and find it. He’ll ignore it until the back of his brain - the reptilian part, he dredges up from some boring-as-fuck study-skills lecture he dozed through - realises that all the alcohol he drank last night has to go somewhere, and he’ll lurch into his dingy closet of a bathroom to take a piss. One semi-clean shirt from the crumpled pile on the floor and a spray of Lynx later, he’s out through the chipboard door, out of his shitty bedsit, and out onto the grimy streets of Bristol.
Cook puts a swagger into his walk; an easy roll which (he likes to think) intimidates blokes and draws in the girls. Girls like a guy with confidence. He knows this, it’s how he gets as many birds as he does - it doesn’t matter how ugly or how broke or how fucked-up you are, as long as you've got the balls to carry it off like he does. It's not just about the walk - it's a way of tilting the world on its axis slightly so that everything slides towards you, a way of filling up the room just by walking into it. JJ, the brainy little fucker, could probably come up with a mathematical equation for it. He probably already has. Bollocks + 4x(tequila) + square root of the loneliness, on a scale of one to ten, of the bird in question = SHAG, or some shit like that. Whatever it is, it's a gift. Some guys have it and some guys don't. Cook has it in spades.
He will have been out late last night, doing what Cook does best - boozing, cruising, fighting, and fucking - until the sun started to colour in the washed-out greys of the early morning and he stumbled home after countless pints and a curry to crash out fully-clothed on his narrow bed at 6am, with the reek of pot and cigarette smoke to cover the smell of stale sweat and the beer seeping out through his pores.
He’ll pass the twenty-four-hour Polish supermarket and the chip van where he might stop and buy breakfast. He'll tip the last of the bag into his mouth before tossing away the greasy wrapper without a backwards glance on his way past the petrol station where he buys the mucky lad’s mags that Freddie’s too much a of pussy to get for himself. Actually, Cook thinks it’s fucking embarrassing - a man of his calibre doesn’t need a porno magazine, after all, if he wants a blowjob or a shag he can find plenty of real birds up for it. Still, he has a reputation to maintain, and there’s always the chance that he’ll find a picture of the Head and paste her face onto one of the buxom, bare-breasted sex kittens to photocopy and stick inside everyone’s lockers later.
Around 10am, Cook will saunter into college, two hours late. He’ll walk into the classroom and take his favourite seat right at the front, dead under the Kieran's nose. The old bastard won’t say anything - one thing Cook likes about the barmy Irish fucker is that he hates this school as much as the rest of them. He’ll just roll his eyes and grunt and get back to bitching about the fascist-pig government oppressing the hardworking underbelly of British society, or some shit like that. Cook really doesn’t give a fuck. Instead, he’ll spread his limbs out wide, taking up more space than should be physically possible, and turn his head to leer at Effy, who’ll be sitting at the back with her arms crossed. The sheet of paper in front of her is always blank.
On a good day, she’ll look back, matching him stare for stare. Some days he gets the feeling that she’s looking straight through him and everyone else in the room, as if they’re smudges of colour on background that only she can see. The others are mostly losers - well, there’s Freddie, who’s his best mate but a bit of a twat about things like sharing his birds and his spliffs, and that fruitcake Panda girl, who’s always good for a laugh - but he’s fucking Cook, man. If anyone should fucking make Effy notice them, it should be him. Some days, she’ll stare straight ahead, without looking at anyone at all. Her eyes will burn holes in the board and her fingers, with their chipped varnish and bitten nails, will rest loose on her arms. Her body will slouch back in her chair, her sharp chin will life, and the corners of her mouth will turn up in that slow, silent, Effy smile. And that's when Cook knows he’s in for a whole fucking world of trouble.