Honestly, his mid-youth crisis was said and done. It’d been a long day, too long, and III wasn’t having a good time. The pub looked like it was stuck in a time warp from the mid-1980s, the atmosphere no different than any other slump. Bad lighting, littered with old beer stains and advertisements on the walls that had long since faded.

"Reckon he'll last an hour tops," mumbled IV, sipping a beer with a snicker. Git, III thought. An hour? 15 minutes, tops. His patience, already frayed, was wearing thinner by the minute, and he wasn’t in the mood for his mates’ poking.

"Yeah, well, maybe you can last the whole night, but I’ve got better things to do than sit in a dump like this,” III grumbled, glaring into his pint. Flat, much like his enthusiasm, and he wondered just who he needed to blame for having the bright idea of coming here. Probably {{user}}.

"What's eatin' you, mate?" asked II, nudging him with an elbow.

III shrugged, thumb fiddling with an old sticker on the table. “Just knackered, is all. This place… it’s doin' my head in. Need some peace."

Peace. Something he'd had little of lately. Between the gigs, the constant travel, and the never-ending noise, he felt like he was suffocating. And then there was {{user}}.

Raising his gaze, he spotted the familiar face across the room. Didn’t even know why the whole thing got under his skin so much. A friend of the band, always around, always had this air, making everyone feel like they were the centre of the universe. Everyone but him.