Work Text:
Jimmy the Lock
The afternoon after receiving their exam results was wild to say the very least.
When their families were finally done with them, insisting they ate before they went out as a group, delaying their celebrations a little, they headed for the walls, the five of them grinning impishly throughout. It was a very strange day too, because just about everyone was nice to them and they were just as pleasant in return. There seemed to be a buzz to the city that none of them had ever felt before, a buzz that they wished would remain, all too aware that it probably would not.
Michelle had managed to sneak out a bottle of vodka with them, consumed even by Clare who appeared to have de-stressed completely. She was dancing in the streets as if there was no tomorrow. There certainly was when they’d all passed their exams, future disaster averted, no thanks to Sister Michael… nor the officers from the RUC. Orla completed some sort of miracle by stealing that camera back from them, before they could take it away for processing, that was for sure.
Michelle only just passed her exams, mind, but a pass was a pass. She too was giddily celebrating throughout the afternoon, hugging her cousin, a most strange proposition when she only ever seemed to be a minute away from decking him. They’d all worked so hard at the back end of the school year, their antics somehow cooling when the genuine pressures of exam time rolled around. Reward would come for their hard work and that afternoon was already right up there with some of their best memories.
It was James’ best. That he would admit, that was…
He couldn’t remember a time in his life that he’d ever felt such a sense of belonging. Alongside the girls, his girls, he could not have been happier.
They eventually made their way back to the Quinn house, returning to the laser guided weapon that was Mary’s glare, though she’d not noticed the fact they were all a wee bit more buzzing because of the alcohol. Or if she had, the decision was made not to confront them over it fairly hastily.
When they’d all been together as a group with their mothers, it was bittersweet for James in many ways. His mother was not there to share in his delight, not loving him as Michelle so harshly put it, not that she was wrong. He separated from the four of them once they were in and settled up in Erin’s room, asking permission from Mary to use the phone, permission that was granted instantly. Saying that, he couldn’t quite work out why she was stood over him whilst he dialled the number for Kathy’s office in London, though did not find her presence off-putting all the same. Mary just wanted to be there in case of disappointment.
It was no secret, at least not to her husband, that she held a soft spot for the wee English fella. A maternal instinct when his real mother would not provide one.
“Dicko’s takin’ ages!”. Michelle moaned from upstairs. “She doesn’t even love him, and he’s been on that phone what… ten minutes!”
“But sure, it must take a long time for him to be heard when he’s here and she’s in London”. Orla piped up. “I don’t think I could shout that loud…”.
“Orla, that’s not how phones work!” Erin reprimanded her, as normal.
Returning to her dip-dab, Orla didn’t pay too much attention to Erin rolling her eyes a second later. Spread out across the room, Clare was sat on the chair next to the desk, Michelle and Orla sharing the beanbag in the corner of the room. Up on her bed where she held dominion, there was a glaringly empty spot at the bottom of it where he’d been sat a couple of minutes earlier while they chatted away. They always seemed to end up closest to each other these days, not that there was much to it of course from her point of view. Well… sort of…
“Can I ask somethin’?” Clare spoke up from her corner, their eyes flickering over to her.
“Is this about the elephant in the room again because I haven’t seen it and I’ve been lookin’ since ye said about it yesterday…”.
“No”. She furrowed her brows, irritated by the reply from Orla. “Do you’s… do you’s think James is a bit… different?”
“Jesus, Clare! I know he’s a bit of a drip, but his bits are different to our bits! I thought we’d ironed that out by now!?”
Shaking her head at Michelle’s enflamed response, she was far from surprised at the reply. It was just about the standard for her, if missing a little more of the normal innuendo.
“I meant he’s more… I don’t know, confident? He’s been answerin’ ye back more Michelle and he argued with ye about yer script, Erin!”
“That’s not a good thing, Clare”. Michelle replied, grumbling.
“Don’t you bring that up again!” Erin then added. “James must have been havin’ a… a wee moment or somethin’. That script was Oscar-worthy!”
They all knew it wasn’t, but none of them in the room was of the mind to tell her that. Erin was quite simply never wrong about anything, and when she was it was always someone else’s fault. Like it was James’ fault that he dared to try to suggest her script wasn’t good enough, that was the reason for their project not coming to fruition. There was no I in team, something he did not grasp in her most humble opinion.
Then again, maybe Clare was onto something.
“I reckon she might have a point, ye know!”. Orla spoke in a sweeping tone, holding a finger up and wagging it. “He’s not even tried to give me back me snorkel… AND… the other day, he took one of me Haribo’s without askin’. He always asks…”.
“That is a bit weird”. Erin mumbled.
“Yeah”. Apparently agreeing, Michelle was coming to realise it herself. “Yer right, Clare… he fuckin’ is! It’s a bit tragic that’s it taken him so long, so it has, but he’s been dead ballsy at home as well! The other night he told Ma she was wrong! I don’t even do that!”
“Have we… have we… broken him?!” Clare fretted. “James was so innocent when he came here and we… we’ve made him into a… into a monster!”
“Catch yourself on, Clare! He just knows we’re what’s best for him!”
“We look after Jimmy the Lock, so we do!”
A light round of laughter passed between their slightly alcoholic breaths, remembering his incredibly poor attempt to sound like some sort of Italian-American mobster. It was a very goofy remark to make, that was the fella in a nutshell. He might not have been like a lot of the other lads around his age, but what he might have lacked in not being like them, he made up for with his amusing attempts to sound like he was.
“Jimmy the Cock, more like”. Michelle snorted.
It was rather obvious that Clare was quite inebriated, when she did not chastise her friend for her profanity. Instead, she actually managed to smirk. Michelle feckin’ loved that.
The newfound confidence of the wee English fella was having a much greater effect on Erin though, out of all of them. Whilst Clare and Michelle were focused on their own little amusing routine after Orla reminded them of his terrible lockpicking attempt, Erin found herself blushing a little. No, more than a little. She didn’t want to admit to any of them how she grinned wildly at him when he pulled that Video Village card out from inside his jacket pocket or how she smirked into the glass when announced so proudly that he was going to break them into the school.
A confident James was one she was thinking about a lot more than she should.
Jimmy the Lock might have failed in breaking them into Our Lady Immaculate, but he was picking his way further up the tree of her emotions with every passing day that he radiated such confidence and charm.
At some point in the future, Erin subconsciously knew she would have to confront those emotions. Burning scarlet cheeks could not be hidden forever.
Basking in the triumph of their exam results, with the courage of a few sips of vodka in their hearts though, such battles would have to wait for another day.
How many days that would be, would remain to be seen…