Love is a Laserquest - Alex Turner/Arctic Monkeys Fan Fiction

2001

Drinking has become my new favorite thing to do. I mean proper drinking– drinking to get pissed– and the summer before we go into our last year at Stocksbridge, at age 16, getting pissed on the weekends has become our new hobby. Every weekend– and some weeknights– Alex, Matt, and I go out in Sheffield with our friends from school, go round to someone's house, sit in the park, and drink until we're shitfaced.

Before age fourteen I hadn't touched a sip of alcohol. I was too straight-laced, too anxious, too reserved. But at Nicole Bellam's 14th birthday party, in her parents' basement, everyone was passing around a bottle of wine and I just thought "why not?" And I liked the way it made me calmer, made me laugh more, made me feel easy and light.

But the last Stocksbridge summer has become the summer of experimentation. Each weekend I try different types of alcohol if we can get them, see how the buzz differs from one drink to the other, see how silly and funny things can seem the more I drink, how much more easily the words and feelings can flow out of me– how little I can care about Alex not liking me the way I like him, or that my mum hasn't called or emailed since my birthday last year.

And it's my birthday today. August 4th.

I'm sixteen, and I'm feeling shit. Dad made me a cake for breakfast, got me lots of lovely presents– all of my friends too– but Mum never called at all. Didn't even send a meaningless, obligatory email. Even after she first left for Spain, she would call or write for my birthday and Christmas at least. But there was nothing on Christmas this year, and nothing today. And I know she's still alive, because Aunty Judith would have told us if she wasn't, so she just must not care anymore.

Though, I guess she hasn't cared for a long time now, because she's not here.

But I don't care about that– because we're all drinking beers and smoking cigarettes at Kyle Foley's, while his parents are away in Brighton, their sound system playing the Strokes' new album at top volume. The house is full of kids from Stocksbridge, and it's getting loud and stuffy and unbearable, and I'm too drunk to linger.

I wander upstairs, because this is a thing I've started to do when I get drunk enough– I wander off on my own, find solitude, quiet, sit or walk until someone comes and finds me or I make it home.

Alex finds me sitting in the guest bedroom on the bed, the room twirling around me in a pinwheel in the dark, thinking about Barcelona.

"What you doin'?" he asks, sitting on the bed across from me, and I can hear he's just as pissed as I am.

I shrug. "Thinking."

"What about?"

I shake my head, I don't want to talk about it, and for some reason– to my horror– tears are pooling in my eyes.

Alex takes my hand drunkenly, says, "'ey, what is it? It's your birthday! You can't be upset."

I meet his eyes and smile, shake the melancholia away.

"Do you want to know something that will make you proper sick instead of sad?" He doesn't wait for me to respond, just barrels on with a smirk, saying, "Matt shagged Lisa."

This unseats me momentarily, and I'm grateful for it– to be pulled out of the Mediterranean Sea, away from thinking about my mum. "What?" I squawk.

"Yeah," he says. "Last weekend. 'E just told me."

I think about Matt– Matt Helders, who I've known since age eleven– losing his virginity to his girlfriend of two months, and I'm speechless.

"Everyone's doing it," Alex shrugs, like it's a fact that can't be helped.

"We're not doing it."

I meant 'at all', but it sort of sounds like I mean we're not doing it together, and my face burns for a moment. But Alex doesn't notice, his drunken brain is cartwheeling behind his eyes, lost in thought.

"Do you want to?" he asks.

I'm suddenly deeply uncomfortable, my mother forgotten. Alex and I don't talk about things like this– at least not as it pertains to us. Despite my continuous crush on him, I've made out and hooked up with other guys from school on our nights out, and I know he's done quite a lot with at least one girl from the year below us. But I've only gathered that information from talk around school, jabs from Matt that are intended to embarrass Alex while we're all together.

I shrug and say, "Someday," and I'm sure my entire face is flushed and red, because I feel hot all over. "Do you?"

How do I say I want to have sex when it's with someone I love? That I'd rather wait and be the odd man out in Stocksbridge, than do it with some random bloke who's willing.

He nods, eyes meeting mine in a way that makes my stomach go tight and my mouth go dry. I swallow hard, wishing I had a drink with me, wishing I was older, more confident, more capable.

"We could do it," he says.

"Yeah," I joke, heart beating fast. "We just need to find a couple of willing slags."

"No, I mean," he goes on, looking alert, highly focused, but dazed with the alcohol fog in his bleary eyes. "We could just do it together."

It feels like the bed is out from underneath me from the way my stomach drops, and I stare at him, mouth agape, before asking, "Have you gone mad, Alex?"

Because I like him– have had a painful crush on my best friend for years now– but what is he talking about?

He tries to drunkenly justify himself by saying: "Why not, Lils? We could just do it to try it– We're not kids, I think we know what we're doing here."

"That's not how it works, Alex," I say, trying to pretend to laugh it off, make fun of him.

"We're friends," he goes on. "But it's not like you're not fit, Lily. Do you think it would really be so hard for us to try it?"

I don't know how to tell him that it wouldn't be difficult at all– that losing my virginity with him would be the only way I'd want to do it. My brain is too wrapped around the fact that he just called me fit.

"We don't have to worry about the awkward stuff," he continues. "And then we'll know what it's like and we don't have to be the only virgins left before sixth form."

His tone is earnest, and his brown eyes are drilling into my blue ones, and I convince myself that this is more than just a transaction– more than just a way to get losing our virginity out of the way. Maybe Alex actually wants to have sex with me.

The rush of blood is so fierce that I nod, a drunken beer punch to my writhing insides, and I say, "Okay."

I fantasized a million times about kissing Alex. A million different ways and scenarios and feelings. But when he closes the space between us on the bed, it's nothing like my daydreams. It's clumsy, and tastes like beer, and we don't know each other's bodies– we don't know our own bodies this drunk or young. But his lips are soft, his fluffy hair is scratching my face, and it's Alex, and my chest feels warm from the thought of him, touching me.

Not long after we begin kissing, there's a brief moment where I wonder about the condom in his wallet– wonder who he could have possibly been saving that for– but then he's shaking, and he's nervous, and this is our first time, so I lock my eyes on his and say his name, and he's kissing me like he means it before we're no longer virgins, before the sound of our breathing is louder than the Strokes downstairs.