Outrun My Gun

[Hollyquin†]

He picked a chord, but it sounded wrong. The first one always did.

"Fuckin'...song."

The room was still dark. This was kind of to be expected at 5 AM in the dead of winter, though maybe less so given the room's only occupant was wide awake. He'd gotten to bed at something resembling a reasonable hour- midnight was reasonable, yeah?- and his reward for it was his stupid sleep-hating brain was being all...well, stupid. Also, sleep-hating. Point was this was the very definition of an unreasonable hour and yet he found himself wide awake, perfectly alert and not likely to fall back asleep anytime soon, the weariness he was sure to feel in a few hours be damned.

Not that this was unusual. Not at all. Which was why he'd found himself with what amounted to a protocol of what to do during mornings like these- it generally involved him hunched over Ciúin (his acoustic guitar, him being the sort of person to give inanimate objects ridiculous names), attempting to figure out the chord progression to some song he'd heard recently and fallen in love with. Nearly seven years of guitar playing under his belt and it still wasn't easy for him- he didn't have that natural ear for these things that said oh yeah, that's some goddamn a minor shit right there. He was never gonna be as good at this shit as, say, Regan was. But that was why she played lead guitar, versus the pathetic by comparison three-chords-interrupted-by-microphone-dramatics thing he did. It was like, he was Billie Joe Armstrong, and she was Jason White, except actually in the band, and attractive, and people liked her, and it was kind of an inaccurate comparison all around, really-

Thinking about Regan was somehow really distracting.

He picked another chord, and this one sounded right. He started, as quietly as he could, to play.

"Robert's got a quick hand, he'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan..."

God this was a good song. In acoustic, anyway, he'd thought the original song was kind of...stupid, really.

"He's got a rolled cigarette, hangin' out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid, yeah..."

He yawned loudly, giving a pointed look at his window as though he was attempting to shame the sun into rising. It had been fifteen minutes at most and yet his morning rush was flagging, leaving him to seriously consider grabbing another couple of hours of sleep before he actually had to wake up. But he knew himself, and he knew that the chance his brain would let itself be shut down was slim.

"Found a six-shooter gun, in his dad's closet with a box of fun things, I don't even know what...but he's comin' for you, yeah he's comin' for you, sayin'-"

He found himself getting louder, purely out of habit.

"All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun. All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet, yeah..."

Hell yes. Hell fucking yes. He was in the zone now, he was actually playing this song and it actually sounded good, and he wasn't screwing up horribly, except then in that moment where he was quietly celebrating his musical victory he came to a complete halt, lost his place entirely, and was anyway distracted by the thing that made him stop.

"AIDAN. FLYNN."

Yep, that would be mom.

Apparently he'd underestimated his volume levels, and he heard his poor restless mother cursing in Irish from the next room over. He quietly put Ciúin down and climbed into bed, hoping silently that his mom wouldn't feel the need to burst into his room and make sure he went back to sleep. His plans didn't involve sleeping, they involved getting his laptop out and maybe squeezing in a few hours of WoW before school, but suddenly it seemed his insomnia had relented and his bed just felt so comfortable...


A bit more than two hours later, when he realized he had about fifteen minutes to actually get ready for school, Aidan kind of found himself regretting the whole ordeal.

[[Aidan Flynn continued in J'en Ai Marre]]