Call it Fate, Call it Karma

Lou Reed

I woke up to Albert gently shaking me awake. Julian remained asleep as I carefully pried away from his grip and glanced over at Albert with a confused look.

"You two didn't do anything, did y--"

"No!" I hissed, ushering him into the kitchen so we wouldn't wake Julian. "We just went to sleep."

Albert furrowed his brow, as if not fully believing me.

"He got drunk and was getting all self loathe-y." I explained, grabbing myself a glass of water. "He wanted to go out and get heroin, Albert! But he chose to get drunk instead. I'm kinda proud of him in a way?"

"I guess that's not too bad then." said Albert, shaking his head. "Can't expect him to get clean in a day, I guess."

"Yeah..." I sighed. "You got work today?"

"Nah." he shook his head. "You?"

"Nope."

"Sweet." he took my glass of water off me and gulped down the rest, earning a scowl from me. "What shall we do today?"

"A nice, quiet day in sounds like heaven to me right now." I said, smiling at the thought. "Everything's been so crazy these past few days."

"Sounds like a good idea." Albert agreed.

"I should probably bring Jules some aspirin for when he wakes up." I nodded, reaching into a cupboard to grab a couple of pills. I looked over at Julian, he was fast asleep with his soft looking face squashed into a pillow and one thin arm covered in dark bruises hanging off the couch.

Albert handed me my topped up glass of water and I walked over to the couch and set the pills and the water down on the table in front of where Julian slept. I decided instead of manually waking him up, I'd put on some music instead.

Soon, the soft intro of 'Sunday Morning' by The Velvet Underground started to play.

"What are the odds?!" I mumbled to myself, raising the volume on the radio.  Whenever I heard this song while Julian was gone, it would only make me more depressed, triggering memories of the day we first met, but today -- I couldn't be happier.

Albert had left the room to shower whilst I started humming along to the sound of Lou Reed's voice. Julian started to toss and turn, before finally opening his eyes as a smile spread across his lips.

"A classic!" he grinned, shortly squeezing his eyes shut, as he'd noticed he had a banging headache from drinking the night before.

I pointed to the glass of water and aspirin on the table. He nodded and quickly gulped them down.

"Thanks." Julian smiled, jumping up to stretch.

"Do you think you could teach me how to play this on guitar sometime?" I asked him as I whirled around the room. "I think I wanna take up guitar or something to keep me busy..." I was gonna need something other than work to keep me busy if I was gonna slow down on the drinking and drugs.

"Of course." He looked genuinely excited about my proposal. "You're gonna have to steal Albert's guitar later, though. I'm pretty sure I left mine at the old apartment."

"Will do!" I nodded. "And I'll just get Nick to drop it off tomorrow or something."

"Steal my what?" A quizzical Albert walked out into the living room with a towel around his waist and dripping wet hair.

"You look like a mop." I said to Albert, stifling a laugh. Seeing him after a shower with his usual crazy curly hair flattened and not poking out in different directions always somewhat amused me.

Albert jogged over to us with a mischievous grin and started to shake his head, much like a dog would after getting wet.  

"Cut it out!" I squealed as the water from his hair expelled out onto Julian and I.

Julian jumped up and tried to tackle him to the ground, but Albert had other ideas.

Albert placed one hand on the towel around his waist, while his other hand was busy trying to keep Julian off of him. "Let go of me or this towel hits the floor, Casablancas!"

"Noooo!" Julian wailed, melodramatically falling to the floor. "Anything but that!"

I sat down laughing the whole time with a warm feeling inside. It was so great to see the two guys reconnecting like that, even if there was a possibility that Albert could've dropped his towel at any given moment.

"Go get some damn clothes on!" I pointed a finger at Albert with a somewhat serious face, suppressing more laughter.

"On it, boss!" he gave a salute, before running off into his bedroom to change.

"I missed your random spurts of idiocy." I said to Julian, still with a smile on my face. "I missed a lot of things."

"I missed you." said Julian as he sat down beside me. "I probably ruined Christmas, huh?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Christmas didn't really happen. We treated the twenty-fifth just like a normal day. We gave our presents out a few days later, which still kinda sucked 'cos everyone was so pissed off and sad. Oh, fuck! That reminds me!" I jumped up, leaving Julian looking confused as I ran into my bedroom and started searching through my closet until I found a cardboard box wrapped in worn and torn Christmas themed wrapping paper, which I grabbed and ran back out with a grin on my face.

I placed the box on the table in front of Julian and sat down. "I kept this for you."

Julian scrutinised the box, tilting his head to the side.

"Open it, you big dork!" I nudged him, triggering an amused response.

"You...you kept this?" His eyebrows knitted together. "For me?"

"Well, it was quite expensive...I wasn't exactly going to throw it away." I chuckled. "Open it!"

"Okay, okay!" Julian laughed through his nose as he tore at the wrapping, revealing a brown box which he hastily opened. He pulled out a record with the familiar album art of Lou Reed's 'Transformer' and smiled, his eyes lighting up .

"Do you like it?!"

"I do! I really do!" he said. "But I think I own this one already."

I rolled my eyes. "Look at it closer, Jules."

He squinted his eyes and gasped when he saw it. There it was...in all it's glory -- Lou Reed's signature.

"How the fuck did you get this?!" yelped Julian after squeezing me in an incredibly tight hug.

I took a breath when he released me. "It wasn't easy! I went to this vintage record store and I had to plead with the owner for an hour about lowering the price a little. I was so close to flashing my tits for it. Yeah, he was a sleazy old man." I laughed. "I'm not telling you how much I spent on it because you'll probably kill me. So just enjoy it and know that I kept my dignity."

"You're the fucking best!" he smiled, running his fingers over the signature. "I can't believe I own something that Lou Reed's touched!"

"Jules, you'll meet him one day and this won't mean shit. I can see it now."

"Even if I do meet the man himself, this will always mean something to me." he said, holding the record to his chest. "Thank you, Jade."

I smiled bashfully, turning away to hide my face. "There's a few other things in there too, y'know?"