âmes pétillantes ~ classic rock imagines

• Syd Barrett (II) •

Hello! I have a question: How do we feel about the second person? The 'you' did this and 'you' did that? I'm not so sure about it.

--☆--

Early 1967

Beneath your fingers, Syd was melting, as soft and languid as butter, smooth and clear as a waterfall. One touch. That was all it took, and he was yours.

That resolve he'd barged into the studio with, that brash, unfounded confidence became the lump in his throat that he swallowed when your surprised eyes turned on him.

And then you were there with him. Sat side by side in two spindly chairs, arms on each other's arm rests, fingers prodding at each other's palms. When he'd garnered the courage to grasp your hand, you took it a step further and reached out curiously to touch the fresh roundness of his cheek.

It had been months. Syd was no longer a boy, but not yet a man, and the evidence lingered in the softness of his face, now contrasted by the protruding sharpness of his cheekbones and the sternness of his brow. But his smile at your touch, the easy upturn of his lips, the mischief that sparkled in his eyes – he had not changed completely since your last meeting.

He shouldn't even have been in the studio at that hour. The rest of Pink Floyd had long since retired to the amber shadows of the nearest pub, and Syd had gotten as far as it's doorstep before turning abruptly on his heel and heading back to the studio. Back to you.

Despite your raised eyebrows, you were not surprised that he had made his way back to you so quickly. As a lover, he was attentive and knowledgeable. As a partner, he was clingy and greedy. Unrelenting in his desire for attention and love and more, more, more. You relished in it. Craved it. As soon as his steely eyes met yours under the ebbing daylight filtering in through the half-moon window, a begrudging understanding was reached between the two of you.

When you'd left him those long months ago, the clock ticking past 5 am as you untangled yourself from his arms and slipped out of the front door wordlessly with downturned eyes and trembling lips, Syd had sworn to hate you. But when you turned up with the production crew to work on the band's anticipated debut album, as a mixer no less, his anger and confusion had evaporated into the smoke he exhaled from his cigarette as he compulsively watched you work. You had always been good with your hands.

He hadn't said a word to you all day. Not even when the studio manager introduced you, not even when you stared at him with large eyes, not even when his bandmates joked and laughed with you. Not a word. He just laid down the vocals and then sat and stewed on the couch, smoking obsessively through Roger's pack of cigarettes and keeping his lidded gaze on you.

Only when he was about to lead the way into the pub, when your face flashed before him as he had seen it all those months ago, did Syd's sense finally kick in. And he was already stomping away, the complaints of the band nothing but loose gravel beneath his corduroy shoes.

As you sat beside him at the abandoned mixing desk, you told him quietly your reasons for leaving him like you did. Syd knew them, of course. He'd figured them out for himself, untangling the difficult threads of your pasts during the long hours he spent lying with his legs crossed at the ankle in the bed of his childhood room. He'd written several lyrics about it too. But hearing it from you was like a balm, the soothing hand of God patting him on the back. Everything's going to be alright now.

You and Syd spoke without abandonment, the hours and days and weeks you had lost falling into the choppy oceans, nothing but a bridge leading you to this moment. He was still the same strange, alluring boy you'd tumbled into bed with, but there was something more about him now. More grown up. Darker. It lingered in his eyes, in the twitching of his fingers, in the scrunching of his nose. You knew Syd had dabbled with drugs. You wondered how much the effects of these experiments lingered. And if they were still going on.

However, if they were, it did not change his affection and attention. He filled you in on his songwriting, on his new ambitions for the future, on his mother's garden. You explained the discombobulating coincidences that had led you to the chair right beside him, the fate of your crushed dreams, the ins and outs of the complications that had led you to leaving him.

It was you that kissed him first. You were tired out from trying to explain your previous actions, and Syd was looking at you so soulfully with his plump lips hanging onto those emerging cheekbones like fuzzy dandelion petals clinging to the stem. You couldn't help yourself.

The hand that had explored the freckled skin of his face found its place again, holding his reddening cheek and steadying his tense jaw. He had been about to speak, but the words wilted in his throat, forming a lump that he audibly gulped around.

You took the air from his very soul when you finally kissed him, crawling your hand around to tangle into his hair should he be so inclined to turn away. You didn't think you could bear it if he turned away.

However, it was not the desire to reject you that caused Syd's brief moment of stillness, but rather the disbelief that you were there. That you were back with him. That he could touch you again. He wouldn't let that opportunity slip by him. Not for a second time.

He seized it, you, with both hands, reaching over the flimsy arm rests to grope at the curve of your waist and run his warm fingertips up your spine, playing each delicate bump like piano keys. His attentiveness dissolved to neediness in the face of this unexpected moment, hands searching mindlessly for skin, groaning when the arm rest poked him in the ribs and wrecked his desperate voyage.

You were quick to tear away from him only to stand up and kick your own chair back, neither of you bothering about the ear-splitting crack that echoed around the studio as it snapped in two upon impact with the wall. It was nothing but a distant strike of thunder in your blue summer sky.

You spread yourself over him, safety, security, situating yourself across his lap, and he watched you with his mouth hanging open and eyes half closed until you were eagerly kissing him again. Unrestrained, he could touch you as he pleased, asking this okay, yeah? Y'alright, aren't you? while he could still form the words to be sure.

It took very little convincing to assure Syd that yes, you were alright. It took even less for him to tug you by the hand, kissing your knuckles fervently as you hurried to lock the studio, guide you across the street, and tumble alongside you into his shitty hotel bed like dice onto a roulette board.

--○--

Syd woke up and you were still beside him. That had not been the case all those months ago. Back then, he'd woken up to the suburban noises of chatting neighbours and trampolines, lawn mowers and beat-up car engines. And the complete quiet emptiness of his room. The black hole in the bustling street. The vast, abandoned void.

But now you were still there, because you could be. Because you had the choice. You were awake, staring at the chipped ceiling and absentmindedly stroking the planes and cavities of his belly and ribs. When he heaved in a deep breath and arched his back, you turned to look at him. He loved when you looked at him, when he was the sole focus of your attention, of your universe. He especially loved you looking at him in the morning; he felt like the sun dawning in your sky.

You tilted her head at him the way you had almost a year before when he'd told you he was in a band, and he couldn't help but smile, sleep blearing his eyes until you were nothing but a smear on an artist's canvas. He wiped it away quickly, and watched thoughtfully as you came back into focus.

"I fucking hate you," he said suddenly, pointing a long, thin finger in your face.

You smiled, chuckled. It was the most honest you felt he'd been with you. "I fucking know you do."

Still, you kissed him, gently, less feverishly than any other time your lips had touched. Domestically. Matrimonially. Your wandering fingers traced the bareness of his shoulders, but he was too drowsy and spellbound to move from where his elbows were propping him up.

"You're staying," Syd said forcefully when you gave him space to breathe, left him craving more. Then, insecurely, a scared child, "Aren't you?"

You only smiled softly, pulled the duvet up to cover your ice-cold skin and lay back down, tugging at his arm until he slotted in beside you, holding you so close your two bodies could almost be one.