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"You're in a good mood," Murdoc says.
Pausing with two mugs in each hand, 2-D cocks his head, the steam rising from the coffee, grasping at the chill morning air — he cocks his head and puzzles this out. 2-D would be a fool to take this greeting at face value, a greeting wrapped up in a shift of the eyes and an even tone kicked down a notch from the gruff of sleep.
Though it's true. 2-D is in a good mood. And the sun rose this morning. The sky is grey, he’ll come out with next. Nothing special.
2-D blinks at Murdoc, and Murdoc looks back. Hot porcelain is starting to bite at his palms.
You're in a good mood is far safer an accusation to make than I'm in a good mood, which he seems to be going for. It would be an accusation for Murdoc, who's come far enough to lie by 2-D's side but not enough to pin the idea of it on himself.
Complete bullshit this good mood, he’s surely thinking. 2-D can see it in the slight furrow of his brow.
He offers an unsure smile.
"Yeah," He says. "I am."
"Well, good mood or not, don't stand there like a lemon." Murdoc quirks a brow, the bite that would've been in his voice muffled by the pillows he's buried in.
Don't stand there like a lemon usually means don't stand there like a lemon, which is more along the lines of what 2-D had expected when he'd nudged his bedroom door open. He had held his breath as he did, sighing his relief in a quiet exhale when the sheets were still curled in the shape of another body. It's all too easy to return to a cold bed fled from like a crime scene.
Not wanting to edge him over into a foul temper, 2-D places the mugs on his nightstand and crawls beneath the duvet, rubbing his legs together like a cricket against the cotton. Murdoc watches, and 2-D pretends not to watch him back. He's not sure if he can allow himself these moments or whether he still has to steal them when Murdoc has his back turned.
"Nutter," He grumbles, casting a judgemental eye.
2-D worms his legs once more to prove a point, then falls still. The scowl could be a tease — or it could very well be a turn of the tide. With a tired sigh, he rolls over to face the wall, aching bones pressing divots into the mattress.
"What? Don't like the look of me?"
2-D throws a glance over his shoulder and catches a playful glint despite the dark circles hollowing out Murdoc's eyes; he grins in kind, relieved that they can draw out this one good moment into the next. It's easier to hope in moments — the future hangs over their heads, waiting to topple over.
"Never said that."
"Never said you did, either." He quirks his lip. "Well, it'd explain why you're so insistent on me bending you over."
"Yeah, 'cause I'd be up for a shag if I didn't like the look of you," 2-D says with a wrinkled nose.
(He has been and will be. Standards drop after a couple too many drinks, though the two of them are, by now, past the excuse of drunkenness.)
Shifting around once more to face him, now 2-D knows he can, he lets himself take in this worn-down Murdoc.
In many ways, he's not much different from the Murdoc he's grown to get used to over the years: shorn stubble that gets caught between his palms when pulling him in, coarse hair so thick his fingers get lost in it, sharp teeth that leave their mark even now.
That Murdoc is nothing different, not really. To wake up to him, though — that's something, something different, and something that'd fallen wordlessly into place.
The day they have a conversation will be the death of them. For now, 2-D's content to stay here, if it means he won't wake up to a cold pillow and cigarette butt jammed against the wood of his nightstand.
Murdoc must read his mind for he stretches, groaning something close to obscene as he pulls his arms towards the ceiling and cracks his neck for good measure. 2-D watches. There's not much else he can do.
"I need a fag." Despite his announcement, he makes no move to the window. "Or I'll keel over."
"But you got coffee." Blinking, 2-D jabs a finger in the mug's direction as if it could've slipped from his mind. Steam rises in question.
"Yeah, well, it's not really the same, is it?" With a roll of his eyes, Murdoc feels around the nightstand, sifting through wrappers and towers of cups before landing on what he was looking for. "Like sticking a plaster on a broken leg. Does fuck-all."
2-D knows that well enough. He knows if Murdoc gets up, he won't lie back down again, and this morning will be over before he's properly soaked in its rare peace.
Eyes to the ceiling, 2-D blinks the well of sleep and quiet disappointment away. With a heavy breath, he flits his gaze towards Murdoc, hunched over the edge of the bed and feet planted firmly on the carpet, ready to make his getaway.
“Can I–?” 2-D starts, a glance thrown his way at the fragment of a question. A last-ditch effort. “–Can I have a smoke? As well?”
With a snort Murdoc turns back around, scratching at the nape of his neck. “Eh? All our fame and fortune and you can’t shell out — what — a tenner for a packet?”
A stupid question, but a question that had warranted a look nonetheless. There are plenty of things about Murdoc that drive 2-D up the wall but the sight of his back (the protruding knuckles of his spine, weathered and worn skin spattered with pale scars as if he’d been picked at) is not one of them. Even in moments like these — the night before, the morning after, all of those petty arguments in-between — he can’t not take him in. It’s more he tires of it.
2-D would like Murdoc to face him. Once in a while.
“I can, yeah…” He worries his bottom lip, gaze following the curve of his back and daring Murdoc to spare him another questioning look.
“So don’t bum one off me. What do I look like, a charity?”
Charity isn’t a word 2-D would use for Murdoc, along with humble or even tolerable. So he shakes his head as if he can see.
“Nah, just—” He sniffs, scrubs at his nose, tries to string together an excuse that doesn’t sound pathetic. Not the truth that sits, thick, in his throat. Anything involving I or you — God forbid us — is out of the window. “—can’t be arsed.”
“Not my problem, is it? Sort yourself out.”
With that Murdoc stands, back firmly to him as he reaches for his lighter. 2-D watches as he heads to the window. He nudges the glass open with a protesting groan from them both and props his elbows up on the ledge, peering out at the grey morning that awaits them.
He lights the cigarette.
2-D sees the breeze pull at Murdoc’s dark hair before it reaches him. When it does, he shudders, pulling the blanket close and rubbing the goosebumps breaking out across his skin. Cold in the early hours, as it always is, in London, as he always is, even when he stays the night.
Though they sleep together they don’t sleep together — Murdoc is pressed impossibly close in the midst of it all, heavy breaths hot against his ear and shaking hands grasping so hard they could leave bruises, dents in the skin. 2-D cranes his head over his shoulder to chance a look at him like this, mouth parted in a low moan and brow furrowed in fierce concentration, and Murdoc lets him. From the comedown, something — shame, perhaps — parts them, leaving 2-D to etch out the broad shape of his back in the dark from the other edge of the mattress.
As he does so now. Perhaps he should be grateful for this familiarity. More than what it used to be, but still not enough.
How to drag him closer, though, is a question 2-D can’t quite work out the answer to.
You’re in a good mood, Murdoc had said — and while he always spits his words without much care, today there’s an ease in the way he rolls his neck against his shoulders, the deep lines of crows’ feet thanks to a constant foul temper less so. He purses his lips, not in irritation but in thought.
2-D draws the duvet closer, a shield from the wind, and lets hope quirk the corner of his lip in a smile. Dangerous though it is.
“I was thinking.” 2-D scratches his neck, careful to avoid the tender bruises he knows must still be there.
“That'll be a fucking miracle,” Murdoc says. He breathes out a gruff laugh in a cloud of smoke.
“Right. Yeah. Whatever. I was thinking about the song we were working on.”
2-D’s never sure if the invitation to work on their lyrics is a pretence or not, asking without asking. More often than not the pages end up thrown to the side, anyway.
Seeming to perk up at the mention, Murdoc shoots a look over his shoulder, rubbing at shorn stubble with one hand. “What bit?”
“The, erm…” And this is where he’s caught in his lie — lyrics do float around in his mind often enough, but he pushes them aside for these moments with Murdoc in an effort to commit as much as possible to his beaten memory. “…the words.”
Though he seems to mull on this for a moment, holding the fag to his lips, 2-D knows he’s dragging on what taunt to throw his way. “Well, aren’t you profound, hm?”
Just this once, he supposes, he’s earned it for the stupid response. Still, he furrows his brow. “It’s not even twelve. Too early for proper thinking.”
Murdoc turns to the window once more, disinterested. “Alright.”
Despite the years spent in Murdoc’s company, getting shot of any malice leaves them with very little to say to one another. No wonder they come together at night and don’t speak of it in the morning — what else do they have in common, save the band and their desire?
And their many vices.
Dipping a finger into the abandoned coffee cup to check if it’s past salvaging — stone-cold, no point in bothering — 2-D makes a grab for his crumpled packet of smokes in consolidation. He shakes the box, hears the hollow rattle that tells him he’s due a nip to the corner shop soon, and pulls one out.
The blanket still wrapped around his shoulders and collecting lint as it drags along the carpet, 2-D joins Murdoc at the open window. The breeze bites at his fingers, nails a sickly purple against his pale hands; he pulls his duvet closer as a tremor runs down his spine.
“Satan, can’t a man get five minutes to himself?” Despite his jab Murdoc hands over his lighter.
“You’re in my room.” With that he takes it.
It takes a few tries and a reddening thumb to set the flame alight, fumbling in the cold. It’s a brief reprieve from this dull day, a brilliant flickering held between two fingers. Breathing in, he lets the smoke ruminate in his lungs before letting it go in a shaky breath.
2-D hands the lighter back.
Like Murdoc, he props an elbow against the windowsill, near enough to remind him of last night’s closeness but a hair’s breadth from a real touch. He rubs at the goosebumps on his arms all the same.
Look at them. What a sight they must make to the early commuters, the pair of them in nothing but boxers, knotted hair tangled further in this wind and eyes lidded. The only defence either of them has to ward off this cold is a makeshift cape and two tiny embers, held out in the greying day like burning candles.
2-D thinks there could be a song in this — though, he often thinks that. They could fill an album with all the unspoken words between them.
“You off anywhere today?” He tries. Really, he means, are you leaving?
“Oh, y’know…” Murdoc offers a shrug. “…I’m here, there and everywhere. Might see where the day takes me.”
Really, he means no. Or not yet. Or I don’t know. 2-D has learnt to read into the intricacies of Murdoc’s many bad moods, but this — mild conversation — is taking some getting used to. Still, he’s sure it’s not yes, I’m leaving, which is what he dreads. He dreads an end to this sort of stalemate between them.
Still, Murdoc is here; he’s turned his back to him but hasn’t quite walked out of the door just yet.
Some sort of foolish tenacity has him open his mouth without thinking.
“If you’re just– seeing where the day takes you, d’you wanna, I dunno…” 2-D trails off, twisting his lips. He’s not sure what he was about to suggest. Anything to keep them here like this.
“What?” Murdoc’s shooting him a look, eyes slits. He tugs at the cross on his neck, a sharp jerk not too far off what 2-D had used to pull him in last night. He’d get a knock around the head for trying it now.
“I dunno, just—” He’s scrabbling for ideas; they don’t do anything together save music and fucking. 2-D draws on the early days of the band, when Gorillaz was Gorilla and held nothing but a bassist and a vocalist. They must have filled their time somehow “—a drink. Go to the pub down the road, not too fancy.”
“We used to do that — oh, way back when, getting to know each other.” He tilts his head back towards the sky, squinting in the gloom as if searching for those hazy memories. “‘Course, if I knew the utter headache you’d be, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
“Yeah, well, me neither, if I knew how much of a cock you are,” 2-D mutters. “So, is that a yeah?”
“Did you hear a yeah?” He barks a laugh; the very idea of it must sound ridiculous to him. “No need for it, is there? We know enough about each other.”
They exchange a glance. 2-D shakes his head; the more he tries to navigate these talks with Murdoc the less he feels he knows him. 2-D knows he groans when his hands grasp his hair; he knows he likes when he flicks his tongue against the tip but likes it more when he drags his gaze down 2-D’s bare body, taking in the marks littered across his skin.
Though he’s not sure that’s knowing someone.
“It doesn’t have to be for anything. It can just be for, like, going out.”
“Haven’t you got a ditzy Daisy you can take for a ride? A groupie who slipped you her number?” Murdoc heaves a sigh in a great cloud, ridding of the gathering ashes with quick, impatient taps. “They’d be more fun.”
“I asked you, though.”
Despite the breeze the air between them stills, suffocating. 2-D leans over the windowsill to escape it, eyes pinned to the growing hum of passersby below. He might as well vault himself over the edge and join them as a splatter on the pavement now that he’s gone and put his foot in it.
For all his delusions of hope, he doesn’t spare Murdoc a glance. This, he knows, is too much of a suggestion of something they’d turned a blind eye to. Something beyond private nights and darting glances in practice. Something as opposed to the nothing that Murdoc clings to.
“Well, don’t. I don’t know why you thought I would.” He pushes himself from the edge, grinding the butt of his cigarette against the windowsill.
The light flickers out.
2-D grinds his teeth together in an effort to clamp back the stupid words.
“‘Cause you’re here.”
Not quite.
“Obviously.” He laughs once more, though there’s no humour behind it.
“You used to fuck right off, soon as you’d cum.”
A flicker of irritation passes across Murdoc’s face. “It’s easier to stay, alright? I got sick of trekking all the way back to my room — but really, that’s less of an effort than dealing with you, pain in the arse you are.”
Easier. 2-D is nothing more than convenient, except when he opens his mouth.
He furrows his brow, jaw wound tight enough to threaten a headache. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re happy to come here but walking back’s different.”
2-D knows he’s testing that space between them but he can’t much help it. All too familiar by now, it’s second nature to turn against one another.
“Yeah. Exactly that.” With a tut Murdoc flicks the end of the fag out the window; head still bowed, 2-D watches it fall until he loses the path it’d taken. “What’d you have in mind, then? Cuddling up together?”
“No,” 2-D says; meaning to sound defiant, it comes out somewhat petulant instead. He’d only wanted to look him in the eye. It’s not too much to ask — unless he’s asking it from Murdoc Niccals. “No, but– you can’t say it’s just ‘cause you can’t be arsed. ‘Cause it’s not true.”
“It’s not, is it?” Murdoc turns to him, then. Arms crossed and shoulder pressed against the side of the window and 2-D has to fight not to turn away. With a dangerous glint in his eyes and lip curled in distaste, this isn’t the sight he wanted to see. Still, he meets him with a level gaze. “Go on, then. Why? Since you know bloody everything.”
“‘Cause–” He stops in a stilted breath — there’s no hope in it when, from sheer stubbornness, they won’t give a name to this. More than nothing and yet less than something is both feeble and a mouthful. “You know why. You know it’s not just a shag.”
Silence hangs between them; 2-D blinks but doesn’t look away though he can’t stand the scorn etched into the lines of his face. What he’d give to take back those good moments that rolled like the tide.
Murdoc scoffs, then. “Right. Well, when you find out what bit of us shagging and me clearing off in the morning isn’t just a shag let me know, hm?”
A twitch of his hand and 2-D flinches, eyes fluttering shut — he startles at the brazen grab of his arse instead. Despite the cold his sudden touch burns. Huffing a sigh of irritation, 2-D pulls himself and the blanket together, shaking off the slight tremor that hums through him; it’s a bad habit he can’t quite shake from years gone by.
Murdoc makes a show of leaving; strolling past 2-D, he whistles a tuneless song as he throws a hand over his shoulder. It’s a feeble front, a means of escape. He knows him enough to see it in the hunch of his shoulders, at least.
2-D watches as the door slams shut behind him. It trembles in its frame. His gaze lingers for a few moments too long before he sweeps the room, his bare mattress, clothes that aren’t all his strewn across the floor in a wandering path to the bed and a torn wrapper littering the nightstand.
Good moments are immortalised in this mess. He’d known it’d been too much to ask for it to last.
Turning back to the window, 2-D shakes the dripping ash from his cigarette and stubs out the end. He doesn’t drop it below, though he casts an eye for Murdoc’s like it still glows amber.
Dragging the duvet back to bed, he darts around Murdoc’s jeans, his shirt, his belt.
2-D knows he’ll be back for them soon enough.