the cadence of part time poets

Chapter 104: Noise

We met when we were in school,
Never took no shit from no one, we weren't fools;
The teacher says we're dumb,
We're only having fun;
You know, we piss on everyone,
In the classroom...

- "Stay Free" The Clash, 1978

Back when they were young and decidedly less queer, Remus had attended an Easter supper at Marlene's house as her boyfriend. Marlene's eldest brother John had been newly married and was just expecting his first child. Remus had only met the McKinnons the one time, but he remembered John's small wife—her stomach ballooned to the point of obvious discomfort. She'd looked positively ill that day, like the smallest breeze might topple her. Marlene had talked his ear off beforehand about how pregnant women experienced a variety of horrific symptoms, including the type of hormones that tended to cause wild mood swings. At the risk of sounding like a misogynist, Remus had simply nodded along with little fuss, but now he wished he'd asked a few more questions. Namely, what to do when your ex-best friend's girlfriend shows up on your doorstep nine months pregnant and won't stop sniffling into her tea.

It took several minutes for him to become convinced that Skylar was not, in fact, at risk of having a "stress baby" on his living room floor. Sirius and the others had already cleared out, and the two of them were able to sit down on the ratty sofa seats to talk. Remus almost felt like pinching himself. After their first disastrous meeting in Whitechapel he'd been pretty sure that he would never be seeing Skylar again. But then again, fate had always been a bit ironic like that.

"It's been five days," Skylar said, her voice more than a little raspy from crying. "How could 'e not come home? My due date's in less than two weeks, and this arsehole 'finks it's alright for 'im to go on a bloody bender." She rubbed her face with one hand, moaning in frustration. Meanwhile Remus had never felt more awkward in his life. A part of him wished Sirius had stayed behind to play mediator, but between Trish and Regulus' spat and the hangovers they'd both woken up with, he and others had peeled out of the flat so quickly Remus wouldn't be surprised if they'd left skid marks on the front rug.

"So when you saw him last, Skylar—"

"Call me Sky, right," she whined, pathetically blowing her nose into a kitchen flannel.

"Right... Sky..." Remus took a deep breath. "When you last saw Tomny, was he using?"

She shook her head no, then her face twisted in pain again. She shrugged miserably. "Oh, I dunno! We fought so much about it I 'fink he just started to hide it. But he'd been clean for two months before all 'a this."

Remus scratched awkwardly at the side of his neck. Clean or not, Tomny's entire life had been uprooted. He'd given up his work, the money, friends... Everyone needed a vice, and Remus was hardly the one to judge.

"Did he say he was leaving? Going somewhere, maybe?"

"No, 'e just left. We had a fight, sumfink about work—and he stormed out."

"Well, Tomny's got a lot of friends, you know. He could've easily gone to theirs to cool off. He used to do that a lot, back when we were younger, right? Sometimes he'd get drunk and just go home with other people. You know, crash at theirs."

"For five days?"

"Well, if it was a girl—"

"Yer saying Tomny's off in some uvv'er girl's bed?"

Remus winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No... No, he's not like that."

"I just don't get why this's so hard for 'im," Skylar went on. "I had ter give up drinking—and smoking! My entire body's been fucked over by this, and all he's got to do is be there. Why's that so hard?"