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Past Tense	By : luna65 Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Pink Floyd Views: 805 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Pink Floyd. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Past Tense
- 1
David weighed eight stone and five when he was hospitalized for malnutrition and pneumonia. The doctor had shook his head and murmured tsk tsk tsk, shocked that anyone in France should starve. It was truly a tragedy, no?

Ricky and Willie came to visit every day, and David would sneak them food from his lunch, wonderful brioche and fresh fruit, as they were equally starving if not officially sick. He realized if such a thing had occurred in the homeland he would have choked down the industrialized menu. . .and what he wouldn’t give for a good pasty right now.

He sighed, unable to concentrate on the issue of Paris Match the nurse had brought him. When his bandmates showed up for their daily visit they literally ran into the ward where David resided, reserved for foreigners, though he imagined he was the best treated, given that he was young, good-looking, and able to parler le francais.

“Dave!” Willie exclaimed, his rubbery features creased in a huge grin. “You’ll never guess what we found in the record store!”

“Wot?” he asked, reaching for the glass of sugar water he had been ordered to drink daily.

When Ricky pulled the album out of the paper bag the glass hit the floor and David was struck dumb, staring at the psychedelically-rendered cover of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and more significantly, the beautiful face of Syd Barrett.

He realized he had been living in Paris for far too long when instead of an exclamatory bugger me or even cor blimey (said in sarcastic jest, because good Cambridge boys did not talk like Cockney trash) he hissed Merde! instead.

And his bandmates in Flowers (nee Bullitt) could say the same as they knew exactly what he meant.

The record was so bloody good David could feel his stomach actually cramping from jealousy. He had lost his appetite, much to the dismay of the nurses, who seemed to compete to bring him the most coveted delights of the native cuisine. He listened to the well-crafted songs repeatedly, knowing they bore the stamp of Syd’s whimsy.

Syd. How had he done this? When David had seen him, four months previous, his old friend didn’t seem to be all there, somehow. His dark eyes had looked right through the other, even as David was proclaiming how great it was that the Floyd had been signed.

Syd was…gone, somehow. And David wondered where, as he listened to these strangely wonderful songs, musing that his friend had achieved what all their peers knew he would: fame and fortune and a position in the vanguard. Clever Syd, sweet Syd, beautiful Syd.

David put his hands into his hair and pulled at it from sheer frustration.

It was time to go home. He rang for the ward nurse and demanded bifsteak et pomme frites for his evening repast, and the nurse who brought him his food said she had procured the very best filet from the butcher herself.

But sadly, there was no brown sauce to be had in the entire hospital.

Civilized my arse, David griped, even as he had to admit it was the best steak he had ever eaten.

O painful depths of humiliation, David declared, having avoided the dole with a job making deliveries for Quorum and as he drove the shop’s van around the greater environs of London it seemed Radio Caroline played “See Emily Play” and “Scarecrow” every hour and here he was, the Belle of Cambridge, driving a fucking van. Syd had loved him, he knew it, even as he couched his regard in the sadly wistful way in which he seemed to convey all his crushes – the way he strung their crowd along – and after their glorious summer they had parted and now here was Syd, doing the very thing David had declared was his destiny, going against the wishes of his parents and common sense.

Syd didn’t even want to be a bloody rock star. He had always meant to be an artist, and who taught him to play that way?

“I did,” David muttered to himself, sitting at a junction. He loved Syd, but he had to wonder, now that he had returned, and the Pink Floyd was everywhere in London, if what he loved was what he had loved, rather than what he did love.

Because this Syd - the one who stared at him in two-dimensionality from a cardboard cover, or a magazine page, or a television screen – was not the Syd he knew, was not his Syd, and was that what success meant? Becoming someone unfamiliar to the people in one’s past? David wasn’t sure if he liked that idea, but he was tired of being unknown, as he made the rounds of the clubs every night and watched a dozen bands he knew he could outperform if given the chance.

It was time to rejoin the race.

But in the end the mountain had come to him, calling at the house of Mad Morag where David and Emo shared a bedsit, and Syd was all shifty eyes and barely expressed speech. With a particular tilt of his head, David sent Emo off on a mythical errand and Syd sprawled on David’s mattress, plucking tunelessly at David’s worn Telecaster.

“Oi Fred, haven’t seen ya since you come back.”

David shrugged. This strange speech, another example of the distance between.

“Sorry dear, I’ve been trying to get back on my feet. Know anyone who wants to start a band?”

Syd grimaced, hit a particularly sour chord. “It’s all useless,” he muttered.

“What is?”

The wide-eyed stare, his hair particularly wild, Syd’s charisma was that much more unnerving to behold up close, as if he were too large for the room somehow. David felt his heart hitch and flutter.

“The game. Who is pretty and pithy and prepared to persevere?”

Now there was Syd, underneath this glittery fatalism he wore like one of those shirts from Granny Takes A Trip.

“What did you do it for, then?” David asked, trying to keep a certain pique out of his tone.

“Didn’t know that’s what it meant,” Syd replied, and his expression changed to one of childish bewilderment. He fell back upon the bed, pulling the blanket over him. David sat down next to him and carefully brought it down from Syd’s face.

“Syd, what’s wrong?” he whispered.

“Can I stay?” Syd blurted out after a long moment of silence. David nodded while wondering how he was going to explain to Emo why Syd would be sleeping in the bed with him, but then realized that the nature of their relationship meant Emo would turn a blind eye to anything as long as the other assured him he had no business knowing.

But his roommate didn’t return that night, as David retrieved a ration of candles from the armoire - stored for the times when Mag forgot to pay the light bill – and Syd insisted on placing them ‘round the mattress. He counted twelve and declared they were safe within the circle of light.

“Water,” he said, as David undressed and joined his former lover underneath the blanket. “Twelve is the number of water, and water purifies.”

“Learn that in one of your guru books?” David ran his fingers through umber curls and traced the lips he recalled as soft and sweet.

“Who cut your hair?” as thin fingers teased the artful shag.

“Girl at Quorum. Said I was frightfully out of fashion.”

“More pity that you believed it,” Syd intoned, but he kissed David as the candlelight made his eyes shine like a prized jewel. “They’ll say there’s no beauty but their beauty, and it’s all a lie.”

“Is that your opinion?” Pulling the lanky body to his own, their bones scraping beneath the raw silk of young skin.

“It’s the truth. The sad truth, my dear. But you don’t want to hear that, do you? Think I’m mad, like the rest of them.”

The rest of whom? David wondered. He had heard rumours here and there, but had considered them just that even as the unease crept across his mind like fog.

“S’pose you think I’m mad as well, trying for the brass ring. But I’m good for nothing else, dear.”

Syd laid back, his eyes towards the ceiling but looking somewhere beyond the dingy room in Fulham. “And that’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

David decided to distract his friend from his gloomy mood and while Syd went through the motions, allowing himself to be held and kissed and penetrated by the passionate imperative which David was always able to produce in any circumstance, the distance was as present as it had been months prior.

And it appeared it was permanent. Is this what it meant to be successful?

Though nothing would deter David from his own goal, the thought gave him pause for weeks afterwards...up until the night Nick Mason sidled up to him at a Floyd gig and said Keep it dark lad, but if you’d heard we wanted you, would you want to join?

Contrasting emotions of triumph and pity gave David a chill, gave him déjà vu, made him nod without a word as the two parted within the crowd, feigning mutual disinterest.
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Past Tense