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

Do I Wanna Know?

2014

I don't tell Rosie the details of what happened with Alex. I know she would spend her last cent in order to track him down in New Zealand and break his nose. Instead, I just tell her it didn't work out, but that we're still mates. She can see the sadness in my eyes though– the defeat– and offers to take me out on the town.

She insists I come to hers before we go out, so I do. And she sniffs at my jeans, my trainers, my old, black hoodie, the second I walk into her flat. Rosie is not one to change someone– to insist they pretend to be someone they're not– but she knows I'm dressed down in depression. So she plies me with with several shots of vodka, and then switches my hoodie for a fitted leather jacket of hers, and takes my hair out of its bun, letting it run wild around me.

"Don't let him make you feel like shite, babe," she says, fluffing my curls for me. "He's a twat if he doesn't see what he's missin'."

With the vodka and the leather jacket, and Rosie's words of wisdom, I feel better equipped to take on the night, and I push Alex from my mind as we split a cab to a trashy bar in Covent Garden.

Rosie insists on paying for a round, and she buys us a couple double vodka sodas. We sip on our drinks and listen to the too-loud music, with the too-bright strobe lights temporarily blinding us. Bodies crush around us, and there's no way we can talk here, but I guess that was Rosie's plan. She knows I don't need a therapy session, I need to not think at all. So, with some dancy Cheryl Cole song playing, she leads me out onto the dance floor, and I can't help it– she's twirling me around and bopping her hip against mine– I dance with her.

It's not long before I'm taking off my leather jacket, sweating in my tank top and trainers. Blokes come up to us and start to buy us a drinks, and we dance with them for a song, and then saunter away and find others. I feel light for the first time since Alex left for L.A., and I'm not thinking about him for the first time in months. I'm buoyed by Rosie's presence, by her hand holding mine as we dip to the music, by how light I feel laughing with her, how grateful I am for her friendship.

I'm thoroughly pissed by midnight– more so than I've been in months. The bar spins dangerously under my trainers, and I'm worried I might actually be sick. I feel like a teenager for the way I push through it though. I dance harder, letting some guy hold my hips behind me, until I feel too hot and I spin away. I'm losing whole moments of the night– I have a new drink in my hand and I don't know where it came from, I don't remember certain songs beginning or ending– when a song comes on, and it pierces through the fog of drunkenness with a stabbing sensation.

Have you got color in your cheeks

Rosie meets my eyes through the dark, shadowy bodies.

Do you ever get that fear that you can't shift the type

That sticks around like summat in your teeth?

My stomach cramps– my body practically doubling in physical pain– and the breath leaves my body.

Are there some aces up your sleeve?

Having Alex's voice puncture the bubble of my night, breaks my heart more than when he was actually sitting in front of me, telling me he had met someone. Rosie is beside me immediately, has an arm around me as I'm nearly sinking to my knees.

Have you no idea that you're in deep?

I'm crying before I can stop it– the vodka-tears spilling down my cheeks to my own horror.

"Oh, shite," Rosie says under her breath, sounding regretful– as if she put the song on– and she ushers me through the crowd, towards the exit.