PoE:. Lowered Expectations

Arc I: Bubblegum Bitch
~Nottingham, England~

Beep!-Beep!-Beep!-BEEP!!-BEEP!!-BEEP!!!-

With a jerk and a grunt, Clive turned and flung out his hand, smacking the corner of his bedside table. He hissed in a breath, before fumbling around until he found the back of the alarm clock and shut it off. He laid his head back and groaned, feeling the ache setting in already in the back of his head. Not to mention the dull pain in his hand. Probably be bruised, later.

It was Saturday. He just had to keep reminding himself of that. It was Saturday, tomorrow was his day off, and he could sit at home and relax.

Or more likely study up for exams.

Three days of classes at College, followed by three days of work at Iceland’s, when Sunday rolled around, he was generally pretty wiped out, but an astrophysics major couldn’t afford to take a break from his studies, if he wanted to get anywhere.

He also couldn’t afford to lay in bed thinking about his problems until he fell back to sleep and got fired for being late.

Again.

He clambered up out of bed and turned, a glance across the loft to the other side showed that the figure of Graham, childhood friend-turned-layabout moocher, was still fast asleep in spite of the alarm going off. Typical.

With a sigh, Clive got up and staggered out of the room, down the hall to the upstairs bathroom. He stepped in and shut the door and turned on the light. He hissed, his eyes squeezing shut against the blinding stab of light. He stumbled over to the stool and flipped up the lid and seat, before leaning against the wall, blinking rapidly to try and clear the spots from his eyes.

Once he was done there, he cleaned off and stepped over to the sink, looking into the mirror and gave a low huff of breath. Jesus, he looked like shit. He combed his hair out first, the short ginger locks tangling with the comb a time or two. He paused after and gave himself a look, narrowing his eyes at his hairline. He swore it was receding. He was going to be bald by the time he was thirty, at this rate.

Fuck it.

He washed his face, then brushed his teeth, scrubbing them thoroughly. Be damned to the trope that British people had bad dental hygiene! Fucking Austin Powers, reinforcing that shit. He hated those fucking movies.

When he was done with his teeth, he jumped in the shower, scrubbing himself all over, and then washing his hair. Once done with that, he dried off and stumbled back to the loft he shared with Graham. As he got dressed he looked at the sleeping form of his friend and thought that, if his life were a movie, this might be where the exposition drop explaining who they both were happened at.

But this wasn’t a movie, and he didn’t have time for that shit.

He got dressed and looked at the clock. He had ten minutes to go catch the tram to work.

He left a note for Graham, simply saying REMEMBER TO LOOK FOR A JOB TODAY!!!!, then headed downstairs.

Ms. Ferris was still in bed, thank God, or she’d have been trying to force feed him breakfast on his way out the door. Down the road he went, feeling the bite of winter’s approach in the air as he walked down to the tram stop. He got there with a few minutes to spare and stood, waiting in the cold, hunching into his jacket.

Graham had been staying with him now for the last four months and, as much as he loved the big idiot, he really needed to get a job and stop laying about all day, playing video games or collecting those damn girl’s toys he liked so fucking much. Clive was a nerd, and no mistake, although he preferred the term ‘Culturally Enlightened”, but how any self-respecting eighteen year old man could be proud of watching a show for little girls, and even go so far as to collect toys and other memorabilia of it, was beyond him.

Clive might be a nerd, but Graham took it to a whole other level of weird.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of the tram arriving, and with that he climbed on board and found his seat, and settled in to wait until he got to work.

* * * * *

Graham slowly peeled his eyes open and groaned, rolling over and blinking against the sunlight streaming in through the window in the middle of the room. After a few moments, he glanced aside at the clock. 11:43. Fuck, he was actually awake before noon! He grinned and nodded, adding it to a tally of recent personal wins that he felt would make him into a better man.

He shifted his weighty frame about on the bed and set his feet on the floor, yawning widely, and scratching his belly, before standing up and walking out to the bathroom. He used the toilet and brushed his teeth. He wasn’t certain who’s toothbrush he wound up using this time, as he hadn’t paid attention.

Ah, well. What Clive didn’t know would hurt him.

He looked at himself in the mirror, squinting his dark eyes at the visage of day old scruff, tangled bed-head and . . . was that a pimple? Reaching up, he pinched the offending lump between his fingers and hissed as he squeezed. With a little sput, mayo dripped down his cheek. He wiped it off with the washcloth, which he then laid on the side of the sink and, smiled, running his fingers through his hair and nodded.

Perfect!

He stepped out and sniffed the air, grinning as he smelled eggs, sausage and toast. Without further ado, he went back into the bedroom, throwing on a t-shirt which proudly proclaimed that it’s wearer was 20% cooler, although it failed to mention what, exactly he was cooler than, and headed downstairs.

It was, of course, quite a bit late for breakfast, but good ol’ Ms. Ferris had gotten used to the fact that Graham was a late riser by this point, and always had a fresh bit of breakfast prepped and ready for him by noon. As he walked in, Ali, her little Westie terrier, started yapping at him and he grinned, looking down at it.

“Hallo, Ali! Good morning to you, to, ya little scamp!” He said, and the little dog growled at him, sounding cute as a button.

“Oh, good morning, Graham, love! How’d you sleep?” Ms. Ferris asked as she walked into the dining nook from the kitchen, carrying a plate of food from which the delicious aroma from earlier wafted.

“Like a baby, Ms. Ferris!” He said, sitting down at the table as she set the plate in front of him.

“That’s good to hear! And, good on you, for being up so early!” She said, giving him a smile.

Ms. Ferris was a kindly, older woman, nearing fifty, who wore her graying hair long, and looked at the world from behind the lenses of a pair of old school, narrow, square framed glasses. That, as well as the bell-bottoms she constantly wore and the flower patterned shirts and blouses, always made him think of her as an ex hippie. If he was a bit better at maths, he might realize that at her age, she was a tad too young to have grown up during the hippie generation, and it would be more likely that her parents were the hippies, but, Graham had rarely excelled at maths, so this thought never crossed his mind.

Graham and Clive had been friends since their first years in Primary School, and had stuck by one another throughout there, and Secondary School. After they left there, however, they wound up splitting for a while, as they both went off to pursue an apprenticeship. Neither had been terribly lucky on that account, and Graham had found himself looking for a job soon after, on the insistence of his mother. He had found one, working at Tesco, and all been fine with the world.

Until about two months later, when he was, totally unfairly, mind you, let off for missing an entire week of work. He had tried to ask for the week off, but they wouldn’t let him, something about him not having worked there long enough.

But it was the week of GalaCon, and he and some friends had been planning the trip for three months, and he’d be damned if he was going to miss it.

His mother had not understood.

She had thrown him out, after screaming something about how he needed to grow up and be a man, and just like that, Graham was homeless. He had spent a couple weeks with his friends from the con, but their parents had started getting antsy about him staying any longer, so, after some digging, he’d found Clive’s mobile number. After praying that it still worked, the Gods had answered him, and now here he was, staying with his lifelong friend, in a nice loft that they were renting for . . . fairly cheap, from the lovely, motherly Ms. Ferris.

Well, he might think of it as “they” were renting, but a small voice in the back of his head kept telling him it was more accurate to say that Clive was renting it, and Graham was crashing with him. Ms. Ferris didn’t seem to mind. The old lady’s kids had left home a year or so before, and so she seemed to have replaced them with Clive and Graham. No, it was Clive who seemed to be growing frustrated, and Graham couldn’t blame him, really.

Celestia knew, if Graham had to work a part time job AND attend classes three days a week, AND study on his only day off, it might drive him up a wall as well.

And, Graham’s continued failing to find a job wasn’t helping, but it wasn’t easy to get a job, anymore. You couldn’t just walk in and be hired. He had been lucky as a dog to get the job at Tesco’s, and now here he was, jobless. He had tried. Really he had! But if you didn’t have a three piece suit and a college degree, it seemed nobody wanted you, anymore.

Still, he felt bad about it. He knew he wasn’t doing anything to earn his keep around here, and that it was only Clive’s loyalty and generosity that was keeping him from being homeless or, almost worse, living in a youth center.

He shook away those dark thoughts when he remembered it was Saturday. And he quickly finished eating, thanked Ms. Ferris, and ran upstairs to the loft, his bed, and his laptop. Once upon a time, he might’ve freaked when realized that he had slept this late on a Saturday, and had missed all his favorite shows. But that was back when he was a kid, before the internet, and streaming sites. Dubiously legal though they may be, they were a bloody life saver when the thought of getting up before noon terrified you.

And so, Graham booted up his laptop, opened his bookmarks and headed off to search for a good quality version of the latest episode. Sure enough, there was already one up, only a few short hours after airing. Celestia bless Russia.

As he pressed play and his head started bobbing, he sang along to the theme of the best damn cartoon show ever made, a smile on his face.

His life fucking rocked!

* * * * *

His life fucking sucked.

That was the only conclusion Clive could come to. If he believed in God, he’d say that He hated him. As he didn’t, it seemed that he had no choice but to accept that no one hated him, it was just . . . luck. He guessed.

Bad luck.

He sighed as he took another cardboard box off the cart beside him and, after locating where it went in the freezer in front of him, opened the door, resting the case on the edge and opened it up, and began to feed some lovely, processed shitty box meals into the frigid interior.

He only had about an hour left before he went home at four, but fuck it felt like it was a lifetime. Every minute was sludging past with the speed of a racing sloth, and he felt like if one more customer stopped him to ask where something was, he’d scream.

But of course, he couldn’t, as that would cost him his job. He couldn’t say or do what he wanted, of course not. Society wouldn’t accept that. He had to be presentable, decent and polite. Even if, sometimes, his thoughts were the opposite of those things.

He finished the case and broke the box down, sticking it in back of his cart and picking up another case. Rinse and repeat. That’s all this job was, the same bloody thing, day after day. It’s all school felt like, most of the time. Hell, it was all his life felt like, most of the time, each day, each week, jsut melting into one another in a sad mess of wasted life and lost dreams.

Had he had dreams, once? Yes, of course. But his life now held no time or place for them. It was just the grind, and there was nothing on the horizon to give him even a glimmer of hope that it would change.

Well. . . .

“Hey, Clive! How are you?”

At the sound of her sweet, Irish voice, he blanched, and then turned, smiling stiffly. Auburn hair that shone like fire in the right light, it’s ends touched with purple highlights. Big blue eyes and skin lightly dusted with freckles. So what if she was maybe a little chubby? Or her nose might’ve been a touch too narrow? She was gorgeous.

“Oh, er, hi, Ciara, I’m-I’m fine, how’re you?” He asked, trying to not come across as some kind of cringey nerd.

A difficult feat, at the best of times.

“I’m okay, just glad it’s almost time to go home.” She said, as she leaned against the cart she had been pulling behind her. She bit her lip for a moment, and then looked up at him. “You’re off tomorrow, right?”

“Err, yeah?” He said. Super smooth, if he said so himself.

She reached up and toyed with a lock of her hair for a moment, then looked him in the eye. “You wanna go out somewhere, tomorrow? I dunno, watch a movie or something?”

He gaped like a fish, a strangled sound leaking out of his throat as he stared at her, mind gone blank. “Errrr. . . . “

She looked at him for a moment, then glanced down. “I’m sorry, I know this is rather sudden I just . . . Like you, ya know?”

He blinked. “No.”

She leaned back a bit, a hurt look on her face and he shook his head sharply.

“Er, no, no! I mean, no, I di-didn’t know! I didn’t even think you knew I existed. . . . “

“Your kidding right? I sit with you every day at lunch!”

“Well . . . there’s, like, four other people at the table, I just assumed. . . . “

“You shouldn’t do that. It makes an Ass out of U and Me.” She said with a smirk, and he flinched a bit.

“Ouch, that’s just awful.”

“It’s a bloody classic.” She said, giggling lightly.

“Well, um . . . I mean . . . Damn.” He said, face falling, and she stepped up, putting her hand on his arm, which sent a zing through him.

“What is it, Clive?”

“Well, it’s just . . . I’ve, er . . . I mean. . . . “

“You . . . You’re seeing someone, aren’t you?”

“Whu, huh?! No! It’s just . . . Exams are coming up, and I kind of need to study. . . . “

She stared at him for a minute, quirking an eyebrow at him. “You . . . You’d rather study than go out with me?”

“N-No! It’s just, I need to pass the exams and, I mean . . . Ya know?”

She looked at him for a minute and sighed, shaking her head. “Alright, Clive. Maybe some other time, then?”

He bit his lip and nodded, and was immediately kicking himself as she nodded back and turned to take her cart back to the cooler. Fifty thoughts of how to call her back, to tell her he’d changed his mind, or that he loved her all rang through his mind. None were turned to action. He was far too insecure and introverted for that sort of thing. Instead he jsut turned back to his now even more depressing job, even more impatient for this shit to be over with so he could go home and pretend that the world didn’t exist for a while.

His life sucked.

* * * * *

Clive walked in through the front door and blew out a breath, loosening his tie as he went. He walked into the kitchen, smacking his lips as he looked at the pans on the stove. Bangers and mash, nothing fancy, but damn did it smell good. As he was loading up a plate, Ms. Ferris popped her head in from the living room, where she was sitting watching TV.

“How was your day, Clive?”

He thought about Ciara, and how stupid he was, and how his life sucked and nothing ever worked they way he wanted it to, and how much he wanted to just scream, yell, tell all the idiots to fuck off and run naked through the streets.

. . . . .

“Fine.” He said, heading to the fridge to poor himself something to drink.

Ms. Ferris hesitated in the doorway, clearly knowing that he was lying, but decided not to push it. “Enjoy your supper, love. Oh, and, er . . . “

She was interrupted by a disturbing twanging, moaning sound from upstairs, and they both flinched. “Ah, hell.” Clive groaned, rolling his eyes, while Ms. Ferris nodded, face still drawn tight in displeasure.

“Well . . . He is getting . . . better?” She said, uncertainly, and Clive just nodded, before thanking her for supper and heading, upstairs, steeling himself.

Upon entering the loft, he was greeted by the sight of Graham sitting on the edge of his bed, surrounded by a selection of plushies that looked like they belonged in a little girl’s room, an acoustic six string resting awkwardly across his lap as he tried to tune it.

“Graham.” Clive said, and his friend looked up, and grinned.

“Oh, hallo, Clive! Have a good day?” He asked, brightly, and Clive sighed.

“Yeah, sure. When are you going to stop trying to kill that thing?”

“Wha’?” Graham asked, confused, before looking down at the guitar. “Oh, no, I’m trying to tune it, silly! I’m sure I’ve got something out of tune on it, I just gotta . . . find it. . . “ He said, going back to glaring at the guitar, as though he would make it sound good through some sort of telepathy.

In reality all that was missing from Graham being an amazing guitarist was one simple thing.

Skill.

But, trying to tell him that would be like kicking a puppy, and so Clive put up with the overweight man-child’s horrific playing. With a sigh, he walked over and sat on the futon couch in the middle of the room, his back to the door, facing their television and the window outside as he ate.

“So, did you find any leads on a job?” He asked after a few minutes, and the sudden halt the question brought to Graham’s attempts at strangling a cat answered the question for him.

“God damnit, Graham, I left you a note to remind you and everything!” He said, turning to glare at his friend over the back of the sofa. Graham looked down at the guitar in his lap and didn’t say anything.

“Graham, you understand that . . . Look, you’re my friend, but this can’t go on! You can’t stay here without doing something to earn it, mate!”

Graham sighed. ‘I know, Clive! I know. I’m sorry. . . It’s just not easy!”

“I know that, but it’s like you’ve just given up! You never get anywhere if you give up.” He said, feeling a twinge as teh statement left his mouth. He often felt like he’d given up, like he wasn’t trying anymore. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the right advice. Just that it was easier said than done.

“Easy for you to say!” Graham said, echoing Clive’s thoughts in a startling fashion. “You’ve got a good job, your doin’ good in class. . . . I don’t have any of that. I don’t have nothing.” Graham said, looking back down at his guitar with a forlorn expression on his face.

Clive sighed softly, setting his food aside, and got up, walking over and putting a hand on Graham’s shoulder, drawing his gaze up to him. He sat down beside him and sighed. “Look, Graham. You do have something. You’re . . . creative! Haven’t you written stories, before?”

Graham cleared his throat, glancing at his laptop. “Y-Yeah, but nothing to actually publish. . . . “

“So? Doesn’t mean you couldn’t, if you just put yourself to it! And as for a job right now, you’ve jsut got to get out there and try a little harder. Clean yourself up, make yourself presentable.” He looked at the toys on the bed, picking one up and holding it up. Some plush of a horse-like character with a rainbow coloured mane and tail and wings.

“These things, Graham . . . They aren’t going to help you make it, in life.”

Graham’s eyes turned hard and he snatched the toy away from his friend. “What would you know about it?!”

“Graham!” Clive said, standing up. “You need to get a job! Grow up, man! It’s time to stop being a kid and take life a bit more fucking seriously, isn’t it?!”

“Fuck off, mom!” Graham said, standing up, and glaring, one hand clutching the plush to his chest, while the other was balled into a fist.

Clive stood up, teeth grinding, before blew it off with a harsh sound, turning and stalking to the door. “Tomorrow, you’re going out to look for a job!” He said, one last time, before he stormed out of the loft, slamming the door shut behind him.

As he came downstairs, he saw Ms. Ferris standing in the doorway to her bedroom, looking at him with a mix of worry and pity on her face as she clutched her nightgown at her throat. He sighed, shaking his head and grabbed his jacket, pulling it on angrily, and headed out the door. He needed to catch his breath, and a walk sounded like a good idea, in spite of the cold.

He headed off into the dark, feet stamping angrily along the road.

What was wrong with that idiot? Didn’t he understand that he needed to grow up? To get real? His bloody fantasies wouldn’t help pay rent! They wouldn’t get them out of this shithole they were both in!

As he walked his mind raced from one thing to the other like a pinball in a machine. He thought of Ciara, and what he should have said. Thought of all the things that made him sick, made him angry, made him hate the world. All the things he wanted to do, but couldn’t.

An hour or so later, it was getting quite late, and he found himself walking back down the road to the house. He sighed, feeling guilt now, mixing in with the other emotions. He knew how hard it had been on Graham, when his mother threw him out. To treat him the same way she had. . . .

He felt a sick little stab through his guts, like a knife being twisted, and instantly needed a drink.

He entered the house softly, locking the door behind him. It was all dark aside from the small light over the hob. He walked into the kitchen, spotting a piece of paper on the counter. He picked it up and read it as he walked over to teh fridge.

Clive,
Graham says he’ll go out and find a job tomorrow. You really should apologize to him! It was very cruel what you did, you know?
Love, Ms. Ferris.

He sighed, feeling the guilt even harder now. Of course Ms. Ferris would side with Graham, all things considered. She was a suck for the underdog. Problem was, Clive couldn’t really blame her. He felt like a bully, something that he and Graham both had plenty of experience with.

With a soft groan, he opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer out of the fridge and popped it open, sighing again as he walked out the back door into the frigid air.

His breath plumed in front of him as he took a drink of the cold alcohol. He ran a hand through his hair, gritting his teeth against the urge to scream. What happened to life? It used to be so easy, didn’t it? So rich and lovely. . .

And now it was just shit. . . .

He stood there, in the cold, wondering what had happened to him, to Graham, to the world. He took a drink again, tipping his head back.

A glow bathed his face and it wasn’t the moon.

A glimmering rainbow, like the Aurora Borealis had ripped a tiny patch of the night sky open.

He slowly lowered the beer bottle, eyes gone a bit wide as he tilted his head and said the only thing that his three months of study in astrophysics and lifetime of scientific interest could come up with.

“What the fuck?”

Then, something came falling through the aurora, limbs flailing, and crashed hard into the bushes alongside the shed.