Neon & Lux ~ The Night That Shall Not Be Named

Lux's delightful morning

Lux woke slowly, reluctantly, with all the fragile dignity of a man being exhumed against his will. His head throbbed in perfect time with the faint industrial bass still humming from the speakers in the living room. Someone, almost certainly Rook, had apparently forgotten music existed on devices other than “obnoxiously loud”. Sunlight pushed weakly through the curtains, grey Manchester drizzle filtering it into something dull and miserable enough to suit the occasion.

Lux stayed sprawled beneath the duvet for a moment, one arm flung over his eyes while consciousness stitched itself together badly inside his skull. His throat felt rough from singing karaoke. His mascara had fossilised somewhere near his cheekbones.

From the room next door came the unmistakable sound of Neon rummaging violently through drawers. “Where’s my charger?” she shouted to nobody in particular.

A pause.

Then, “WHO PUT HALF A TRAFFIC CONE IN MY BED?”

Lux smiled faintly against the pillow. Right. So everyone had survived the party. More or less.

Bits of the previous evening drifted lazily through his mind. Vespar standing on the coffee table screaming the words to some early 2000s emo track. Rook leaving with a brunette around 2 a.m. Kasper trying to fix the sound without success. Neon disappearing at one point wearing somebody else’s sunglasses and returning with a shopping trolley she refused to explain.

Standard behaviour, really.

Lux shifted slightly beneath the blankets and immediately noticed two things.

Firstly, his shirt was missing.

Secondly, there was somebody else in his bed.

He went very still for exactly one second before amusement bloomed warm and wicked in his chest.

Well.

That was interesting.

Slowly, carefully, Lux lowered the arm covering his eyes and turned his head enough to confirm the shape beside him was, in fact, an actual person and not some particularly affectionate pile of coats.

The new flatmate.

Oh, this was brilliant.

For a brief moment, Lux simply observed the situation with sleepy fascination, lashes still heavy from yesterday’s makeup. The stranger lay beside him beneath the tangled duvet, close enough that one of their arms brushed his whenever either of them breathed.

He searched his memory for answers and found absolutely fuck all useful.

Had they flirted? Almost certainly.

Lux flirted recreationally. Sometimes professionally.

Had they kissed?

Possibly.

Had anything actually happened?

No clue.

The mystery might’ve bothered somebody else. Lux, however, found himself mostly delighted by the potential for chaos.

From next door came another loud crash.

“For fuck’s sake,” Neon groaned. “Why have I got a hubcap?”

Lux called back without raising his voice, “Character building, sweetheart.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“No, the hubcap fairy visited in the night.”

A pillow immediately hit the wall from the opposite room.

He snorted softly, then glanced back toward the stranger beside him.

Up close, there were more signs of the previous night scattered around the bed in tragic little exhibits. Somebody’s jewellery tangled round the lamp. Glitter across the sheets. His mesh top hung from the ceiling light in a way that suggested neither physics nor sobriety had been heavily involved.

Deeply elegant atmosphere all round.

Lux shifted onto one elbow, blue hair spilling messily over his shoulder as he studied the situation with open curiosity. He wasn’t embarrassed. If anything, he looked dangerously entertained.

That was usually worse.

Because now there were possibilities.

The poor soul sharing his bed had unknowingly handed him material, and Lux did adore making people squirm when the opportunity presented itself. Not cruelly (well, not entirely cruelly) but with the sort of teasing precision that let him keep control of a situation before it could control him.

Besides, flustering people was fun.

Especially when they looked at him like they weren’t entirely sure whether he was joking.

The mattress shifted faintly.

Lux’s smile sharpened instantly, subtle and catlike.

“Morning, gorgeous,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep and amusement alike. “Any chance you remember how we ended up scandalising the flat together, or are we both workin’ from vibes and poor decisions?”

Neon's hangover

Neon woke up feeling like somebody had replaced her bloodstream with battery acid. Which, honestly, narrowed absolutely nothing down.

For a long moment she stayed face-down in the mattress, one arm dangling off the side of the bed while sunlight stabbed directly through the gap in the curtains like a personal attack. Her mouth tasted minging. Her eyeliner had migrated somewhere near her ears overnight. One of her boots was still on.

A strong start to the morning.

Somewhere in the flat, a shower was running.

And someone (Lux, obviously) was singing through the wall with the confidence of a man entirely unconcerned by either pitch or public shame.

“—and if I die dramatic, bury me in platform booooots—”

Neon groaned into the pillow.

“Shut uuup...”

Lux only got louder.

Right. Brilliant.

Slowly, painfully, she rolled onto her back and immediately regretted every decision she’d made since approximately 2016.

Fragments of the previous night drifted through her skull in useless little flashes.

Rook attempting to skateboard in the living room.

Mara threatening someone with a traffic cone.

Lux dancing on the kitchen counters in lace gloves while Kasper shouted about health and safety like he’d suddenly become somebody’s disappointed dad.

There’d been tequila involved. That much felt medically certain. Neon squinted blearily at the ceiling.

Why did her neck hurt?

Why was there glitter on the lampshade?

Why did she vaguely remember Vespar trying to fight a Deliveroo cyclist?

Actually, no. That one tracked.

She dragged a hand down her face with a groan and shifted sideways... ...and froze.

There was somebody else in the bed.

Neon went completely still. Not dramatic-still. Not theatrical-still. Proper still.

Her half-dead brain attempted to catch up while sheer horror began slowly loading behind her eyes like dodgy wifi. There was an unfamiliar shoulder beside her beneath the duvet. Somebody breathing softly into her pillow. One arm curled loosely near her waist.

Not Lux.

Far too broad for Lux... and he was in the bathroom.

Neon’s eyes widened.

Oh, no. No no no no no.

The new flatmate.

Her soul briefly left her body.

Very carefully, with the concentration of somebody diffusing a bomb whilst catastrophically hungover, she lifted the duvet an inch.

Clothes.

Thank Christ.

Mostly.

She was still wearing yesterday’s ripped shorts and one fishnet stocking. The stranger beside her appeared similarly dressed, though somebody - potentially her, potentially Satan - had apparently decided that shirts were optional at some point during the evening.

Neon dropped the duvet immediately and stared at the ceiling again in pure spiritual devastation. “...Oh, you absolute idiot,” she whispered to herself.

The shower shut off.

Lux immediately transitioned from singing to talking to himself in the bathroom mirror.

“Still fit,” he announced faintly through the wall. “Bit corpse-like round the eyes, but we move.”

Neon considered throwing herself out the window. Unfortunately, she lived on the third floor now.

The mattress shifted slightly beside her. She stopped breathing. Her mind raced furiously through increasingly horrifying possibilities.

Had they kissed?

Had they flirted?

Had she cried about song lyrics again?

Worse... had she attempted emotional honesty?

God. Mortifying.

Neon carefully turned her head a fraction.

The new flatmate still seemed asleep, hair a complete mess against the pillow. One of Neon’s oversized band tees had somehow ended up tangled near the foot of the bed alongside several necklaces, somebody’s belt, and what looked concerningly like half a kebab wrapped in tissue paper.

Classy.

Very slowly, Neon pressed both palms over her face. She needed information. Immediately.

Preferably before she expired from second-hand embarrassment.

Outside the bedroom, floorboards creaked lightly. A few seconds later, the door opened without warning. Lux wandered in trailing steam from the shower, cobalt hair damp around his shoulders and a towel slung low around his hips. Smudged mascara lingered beneath sleepy amber eyes.

He took one look at the bed.

Paused.

Then smiled with absolutely venomous delight.

“Oh,” he said softly. “You’re awake.”

Neon pointed at him like she was accusing him in court.

“What happened.”

Lux leaned casually against the doorframe, visibly enjoying every second already.

“That,” he replied, voice silken with impending chaos, “depends entirely how much of the truth you can emotionally survive before coffee.”

The Night That Shall Not Be Named

The flat looked like it had survived a small riot already, which, honestly, was impressive considering they’d only moved in three days ago.

Half-unpacked boxes were stacked against nicotine-yellowed walls. Somebody, almost definitely Rook, had labelled one KITCHEN SHITE in thick black marker before apparently giving up halfway through unpacking and using the box as a drinks table instead.

Empty takeaway cartons littered the counters beside tangled extension leads, guitar cables, and a single platform boot no one could identify. The air smelled faintly of dust, cheap lager, burnt pizza, and the vanilla smoke scent that followed Lux about like a haunting.

A proper classy establishment.

“Who put the toaster on the windowsill?” Mara demanded from the kitchen.

“Interior design,” Kasper answered immediately.

“That’s not even plugged in.”

“Minimalism.” He shrugged.

Neon barked a laugh from where she was sprawled upside-down over the sofa, pink-streaked hair hanging nearly to the floor. One fishnet-clad leg kicked lazily through the air while she tried (and failed) to tune her guitar over the sound of Vespar attempting to beatbox the bassline to one of their own songs.

Poorly.

“Ves,” Lux said from the armchair, not even looking up from painting another layer of black polish onto his thumbnail, “I say this with deep affection in my heart: shut the fuck up.”

Vespar looked wounded. “You lot don’t respect experimental art.”

“No,” Mara replied. “We’ve got ears.”

“Cruel. Deeply cruel.”

Lux smiled faintly into his drink.

The new flatmate had not arrived yet, though their existence had already become mythological over the past week. Between six musicians with catastrophically poor organisational skills, the details had shifted constantly.

“They’re quiet.”

“No, they work nights.”

“Thought they were a tattooist?”

“Nah, accounting.”

“How d’you go from tattooist to accountant?”

“Cost of living crisis, mate.”

At this point, Lux suspected none of them actually knew a single factual thing.

Neon finally got the guitar vaguely into tune and strummed hard enough to rattle the cheap light fixture overhead.

“There,” she announced proudly. “Perfect.”

“It sounds concussed,” Kasper said.

“Your face sounds concussed.”

“Scientifically impossible.”

“Watch me test the theory.”

Lux snorted into his cherry cola.

Across the room, Rook was crouched beside the ancient record player they’d dragged into the flat earlier that afternoon. The thing looked older than organised religion and twice as temperamental.

“Think I fixed it,” Rook muttered.

Nobody trusted that sentence.

“Last time you said that,” Mara warned, “the microwave caught fire.”

“That was one time.”

“That was Tuesday.”

Rook ignored her and jabbed a button triumphantly.

For one glorious second, music crackled through the speakers.

Then the entire flat went dark.

A collective chorus of “OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” echoed immediately through the room.

Silence followed.

Then, from somewhere in the kitchen: “...Did the fridge just die?”

“Brilliant,” Neon groaned. “We’ve killed the flat before the new roommate’s even moved in.”

Lux leaned back deeper into the armchair, long legs draped over one side, perfectly calm in the darkness.

“To be fair,” he said lightly, “this place was held together by mould and landlord negligence anyway.”

Someone knocked into something glass.

Something shattered.

“Vespar!”

“That genuinely was not me this time!”

“Why does that sentence exist at all?” Mara snapped.

Phone torches flickered on one by one, illuminating the flat in patches of harsh white light. The effect made everything look even dodgier somehow. Lux’s glitter eyeliner caught briefly in the glow as he stood, stepping carefully around abandoned cables.

Neon’s voice rang out from the sofa. “If anybody’s dead, speak now.”

“I think the lamp’s exploded,” Kasper said.

“The lamp?”

“Good news though,” Vespar added. “The toaster survived.”

“Cheers, mate,” Lux murmured dryly. “Vital information in our darkest hour.”

A laugh escaped him despite himself.

Truthfully, he hadn’t felt this relaxed in months.

The touring schedule had been brutal recently — too many interviews, too many grabby strangers, too many industry types smiling like they wanted to own pieces of him. The flat was a tip. The electrics were probably illegal. Somebody had stained the ceiling with what Lux desperately hoped was energy drink.

Still.

It felt safe.

Or as safe as six emotionally unstable musicians could make anything.

Neon appeared beside him suddenly, illuminated from below by her phone torch like some feral goblin out of a horror film.

“You look dead fit in bad lighting,” she informed him.

“You look like sleep paralysis.”

“Aw. Knew you fancied me really.”

Lux rolled his eyes fondly. “Tragic accusation.”

From the hallway came the unmistakable sound of Rook swearing violently at the fuse box.

Then: “Oh, you absolute—”

A loud bang echoed through the flat.

The lights surged back on all at once.

Everyone blinked.

The record player immediately resumed screaming static at full volume.

At the exact same moment, the cheap ceiling light in the living room detached with alarming slowness.

Lux saw it happen first.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

The fixture dropped directly onto the sofa where Neon had been sitting seconds earlier.

She stared at it.

The room stared at it.

Then Mara laughed so hard she folded in half against the kitchen counter wheezing.

Neon pointed accusingly at the ceiling.

“This flat’s got personal beef with me already.”

“You do radiate provocation,” Lux admitted.

“You’re enjoyin’ this too much.”

“I’m enjoying the fact you nearly got taken out by a £12 light fitting, yes.”

Kasper was still crying laughing.

Rook emerged from the hallway covered in dust and looking deeply offended by electricity itself.

And somewhere beyond the chaos of shouting, static, and Neon threatening structural violence against the building, came the sound of the front door unlocking.

Lux glanced toward the hallway, mascara-smudged eyes bright with immediate curiosity.

Then he smiled slowly. “Oh,” he murmured. “This should be interesting.”