(no subject)
Hello Goodbye
Pairing: Carl/Peter
Rating: E (language warning, though)
Genre: Angst with a happy ending?
Beta: calli_thaala
Word Count: 1127
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Heavily.
Notes: I sort of wangled my way into calli_thaala's Beatles series. She has a companion piece, which you should also read. And, I know I've been all over this comm this week. Sorry?
If you asked, which you are, so I’ll answer, cos I’m an amenable sod like that, I’d tell you of four or five times that stick out the most. I’m over forty now but sometimes, looking back, it’s like it all happened yesterday. I remember being 19, or 25, or 27, much more clearly than I remember yesterday. That’s what coke’ll do to you, I guess. Something to do with the neurons, or something.
He said yes, I said no.
In a way, I feel like my life is divided into three: before Peter, with Peter, and after Peter. I mean, I was at uni before I met him so of course I’d done things before that, had other friends, seen gigs, travelled places, even played in other bands. But all that paled into insignificance when I met Peter, as if my entire life had just been rehearsal for that moment. I hated that, later.
He said hello, I said goodbye.
19. This weird kid, this overgrown adolescent, has wangled his way into my life in a way I didn’t expect. Somehow my bed is full of his legs, my heart is full of his poetry, and my guitar is full of his songs. Sometimes we’ll lie side by side on a battered mattress, hips touching, blowing smoke at the ceiling, and we’ll talk about the future and how we’re going to blow up the music world. How we’ll have them all eating out of our hands.
It’s so easy to believe, innit, when it’s put like that?
I say hello. Hello, hello.
24. Early 2003. On tour somewhere, it doesn’t matter where. John’s playing Let It Be on a battered acoustic that belongs to no one. Peter tells him it’s a shit Beatles song, takes the guitar and starts playing Yesterday. I tell him that’s shit and it descends into fistfights. Gary separates us, tells us to settle down, and says that everyone knows that I Am The Walrus is the best Beatles song anyway.
I say high, you say low.
Summer 2004. We can’t be in the same room together any more. Can’t look at each other without recriminations and fighting. I feel like my heart’s been ripped in two. I can’t think, can’t write, can’t sleep. I’m back on the medication. Annalisa and my mother are having furtive conversations about my Depression. With a capital D, evidently.
I barely see Peter. He’s off doing his own thing. But I do see him once, when he fetches up at my door at 8am, having clearly not been to bed in a number of days. I daren’t let him in - Anna would go mad - so I stand on the doorstep and regard him. He rails at me, he’s upset, he scratches at his arm and finally he asks what the future holds for the Libertines. It is one of the worst conversations I have ever had, even now.
I remember his eyes, accusing.
You say why, I say I don’t know.
2005. I don’t even remember 2005, although I’m assured it happened. It was only at the end of the year that things started to make sense again. I saw Peter once, twice, maybe a third time. In actual person, I mean. I saw him in every newspaper in the world, looking wasted. It tore my heart, it made me question every decision I ever made, every little thing I ever said to him.
And, oh, the songs. The amount of crap I wrote that year, scribbled on sheets of paper, stuff that I wouldn’t even play to my girlfriend never mind the world.
I didn’t listen to any of his stuff. Couldn’t trust myself. Not even I am that much of a masochist.
You say stop, and I say go, go, go.
2006. All of that year is lost to coke, guitars, Anthony, Gary, Didz, Dirty Pretty Things, touring. Getting fed up of having to mention Pete in interviews, of having to explain myself time after time. But the touring, the gigs, the camaraderie, the fun we had, the songs - I’m proud of those. That was a good year. Peter-less, for the most part. Not because I hated him, or anything. Just because our worlds didn’t collide.
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.
Do a Beatles song with me, he said, that year, or maybe early into the next. Like I said, it all gets jumbled now, like my speech. Please, he said. We were talking by then, as friends, not all the time but off and on, a text here or there, a meeting every now and then. I wasn’t sure at first, thought he’d make a mockery of it, or not show up, or something. But it went so well and even now I like to listen to our version. I feel like we echoed something that day. I’m not saying we’re up there with Lennon and McCartney in terms of song writing, would never say that at all, but I do think we achieved something with that song.
Plus, my mother liked it. You couldn’t say that about half the stuff I actually wrote.
You say yes, I say no.
His band broke up, mine drifted apart. Nothing so dramatic as last time for me, no severed ties, just long umbilical cords. Anthony went back to the States with his pretty wife, and had a baby girl. I’m still playing, still around, still meeting fans. Women with children who are teenagers tell me what the band meant to them. They ask to see my tattoo and I show it to them, faded to green now, seeped so far into the skin that I forget it’s there.
Sometimes, we’ll play a gig together, him and me. Two acoustic guitars, two stools, lots of water. No smoke - they banned that years ago, weirdly. We’ll play the old stuff, but calmer and slowed down. Because that’s what we are. Calmer and slowed down.
Sometimes, on tour, we’ll lie in one double bed at night, in a faceless, forgotten hotel, and we’ll fuck or we’ll fight, or we’ll chat all night about nothing in particular. We’re not as close as we were, not in the old days, but love doesn’t run like that in a middle-aged body, it’s not as passionate. He asks about the future but I’ve learnt that it isn’t as easy as saying things, or even believing things. Life turns on a sixpence. We’re alright, I say. Sometimes I’ll put an arm round his neck and sing nonsense at him, make him laugh. Sometimes -
Oh, but I’m rambling. See, I told you, the coke.
Hela, heba helloa. Hello, hello. I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.
Pairing: Carl/Peter
Rating: E (language warning, though)
Genre: Angst with a happy ending?
Beta: calli_thaala
Word Count: 1127
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Heavily.
Notes: I sort of wangled my way into calli_thaala's Beatles series. She has a companion piece, which you should also read. And, I know I've been all over this comm this week. Sorry?
If you asked, which you are, so I’ll answer, cos I’m an amenable sod like that, I’d tell you of four or five times that stick out the most. I’m over forty now but sometimes, looking back, it’s like it all happened yesterday. I remember being 19, or 25, or 27, much more clearly than I remember yesterday. That’s what coke’ll do to you, I guess. Something to do with the neurons, or something.
He said yes, I said no.
In a way, I feel like my life is divided into three: before Peter, with Peter, and after Peter. I mean, I was at uni before I met him so of course I’d done things before that, had other friends, seen gigs, travelled places, even played in other bands. But all that paled into insignificance when I met Peter, as if my entire life had just been rehearsal for that moment. I hated that, later.
He said hello, I said goodbye.
19. This weird kid, this overgrown adolescent, has wangled his way into my life in a way I didn’t expect. Somehow my bed is full of his legs, my heart is full of his poetry, and my guitar is full of his songs. Sometimes we’ll lie side by side on a battered mattress, hips touching, blowing smoke at the ceiling, and we’ll talk about the future and how we’re going to blow up the music world. How we’ll have them all eating out of our hands.
It’s so easy to believe, innit, when it’s put like that?
I say hello. Hello, hello.
24. Early 2003. On tour somewhere, it doesn’t matter where. John’s playing Let It Be on a battered acoustic that belongs to no one. Peter tells him it’s a shit Beatles song, takes the guitar and starts playing Yesterday. I tell him that’s shit and it descends into fistfights. Gary separates us, tells us to settle down, and says that everyone knows that I Am The Walrus is the best Beatles song anyway.
I say high, you say low.
Summer 2004. We can’t be in the same room together any more. Can’t look at each other without recriminations and fighting. I feel like my heart’s been ripped in two. I can’t think, can’t write, can’t sleep. I’m back on the medication. Annalisa and my mother are having furtive conversations about my Depression. With a capital D, evidently.
I barely see Peter. He’s off doing his own thing. But I do see him once, when he fetches up at my door at 8am, having clearly not been to bed in a number of days. I daren’t let him in - Anna would go mad - so I stand on the doorstep and regard him. He rails at me, he’s upset, he scratches at his arm and finally he asks what the future holds for the Libertines. It is one of the worst conversations I have ever had, even now.
I remember his eyes, accusing.
You say why, I say I don’t know.
2005. I don’t even remember 2005, although I’m assured it happened. It was only at the end of the year that things started to make sense again. I saw Peter once, twice, maybe a third time. In actual person, I mean. I saw him in every newspaper in the world, looking wasted. It tore my heart, it made me question every decision I ever made, every little thing I ever said to him.
And, oh, the songs. The amount of crap I wrote that year, scribbled on sheets of paper, stuff that I wouldn’t even play to my girlfriend never mind the world.
I didn’t listen to any of his stuff. Couldn’t trust myself. Not even I am that much of a masochist.
You say stop, and I say go, go, go.
2006. All of that year is lost to coke, guitars, Anthony, Gary, Didz, Dirty Pretty Things, touring. Getting fed up of having to mention Pete in interviews, of having to explain myself time after time. But the touring, the gigs, the camaraderie, the fun we had, the songs - I’m proud of those. That was a good year. Peter-less, for the most part. Not because I hated him, or anything. Just because our worlds didn’t collide.
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.
Do a Beatles song with me, he said, that year, or maybe early into the next. Like I said, it all gets jumbled now, like my speech. Please, he said. We were talking by then, as friends, not all the time but off and on, a text here or there, a meeting every now and then. I wasn’t sure at first, thought he’d make a mockery of it, or not show up, or something. But it went so well and even now I like to listen to our version. I feel like we echoed something that day. I’m not saying we’re up there with Lennon and McCartney in terms of song writing, would never say that at all, but I do think we achieved something with that song.
Plus, my mother liked it. You couldn’t say that about half the stuff I actually wrote.
You say yes, I say no.
His band broke up, mine drifted apart. Nothing so dramatic as last time for me, no severed ties, just long umbilical cords. Anthony went back to the States with his pretty wife, and had a baby girl. I’m still playing, still around, still meeting fans. Women with children who are teenagers tell me what the band meant to them. They ask to see my tattoo and I show it to them, faded to green now, seeped so far into the skin that I forget it’s there.
Sometimes, we’ll play a gig together, him and me. Two acoustic guitars, two stools, lots of water. No smoke - they banned that years ago, weirdly. We’ll play the old stuff, but calmer and slowed down. Because that’s what we are. Calmer and slowed down.
Sometimes, on tour, we’ll lie in one double bed at night, in a faceless, forgotten hotel, and we’ll fuck or we’ll fight, or we’ll chat all night about nothing in particular. We’re not as close as we were, not in the old days, but love doesn’t run like that in a middle-aged body, it’s not as passionate. He asks about the future but I’ve learnt that it isn’t as easy as saying things, or even believing things. Life turns on a sixpence. We’re alright, I say. Sometimes I’ll put an arm round his neck and sing nonsense at him, make him laugh. Sometimes -
Oh, but I’m rambling. See, I told you, the coke.
Hela, heba helloa. Hello, hello. I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.