Don't Stop The Music

- fifteen -

CHAPTER XV

- take this person to be your lawfully wedded wife -

[Liam]

The sound of his phone ringing jolted Liam out of a shallow, pleasant sleep. He jerked awake, scrabbling around on his bedside table for his phone, knocking over a half-full glass of milk and some papers in the process. He had just enough time to register the time – seven bloody fifteen in the morning? This better be good – before he took the call.

"...whaaaaat?" he said, which was his customary greeting when he was woken up before ten on the weekends.

Chen's voice was crisp and chirpy. "Morning, Keats."

"What did I do?" he mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes groggily.

"Nothing. I just wanted to let you know we're singing again this morning. So you'd better be there."

"What, today? Nobody told me anything about this."

"Yeah, me neither," Chen said. "Dom called me at about two in the morning last night; I've been trying to get a hold of everyone before ten."

"But it's Saturday," he whined. "Can't you let me sleep in?"

"There'll be other Saturdays," Chen told him. "Man up. And bring a suit."

"A suit?"

"I don't make the rules," Chen told him. "Eleven-thirty, at the bandstand, ok?"

The phone clicked dead in his ear. Liam flopped back onto his bed, the prospect of a nice morning lie-in, stretched out underneath the covers until his dad came up and made him do something 'productive' snuffed out. He wasn't in the mood for getting out of bed, or walking, or wearing formal attire. Maybe he could just stay in and claim he'd suddenly been struck down with scarlet fever or something. But he was on pretty thin ice with Chen already; it was probably easier to just go out. He'd probably enjoy it, once he'd woken up properly.

He ambled along the hallway to get some breakfast wearing the suit he'd only worn once, to his cousin's wedding last year. His mother was sitting at the table in the kitchen with a cup milk beside her and a half-eaten slice of toast, typing rapidly on her laptop. He couldn't see what she was doing from there until the C++ jargon she was muttering as she typed gave it away.

"You're up early, Liam," she commented. "Why are you wearing your suit? I thought you hated it."

"I, um...need it," Liam said evasively, getting a pot of yoghurt out of the fridge.

"Well, don't get it messy or anything," she said, focusing her attention back on her programming. "Have you finished all your homework?"

"Yeah, pretty much," he said. "Anyway, I've got all of tomorrow to do the rest of it. Don't worry."

"You're the one who should worry. It's your future," she said, sounding like his dad now. Absently, he wondered where he was. He was usually up early too on weekends, poring over the physics journals he got sent to proofread. He was pretty sure his parents started getting nervous whenever someone in the house was doing anything that wasn't studying. Lord knows how they'd coped with Eliot going off to uni, but he'd been doing pretty well in his exams so far, so perhaps that had lulled them into a false sense of security. Liam had been to see him enough times to know he didn't spend even half his time working.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. It's not even that hard. I'll only be a couple of hours, ok?"

"Alright. Have fun, honey."