We’re taking a bit of a break from the insanity to spend time with what basically turned into some Hemingway fanfic for a while. There’s a brief reference to The Sun Also Rises, which is not an accident. It’s one of my favourite Hemingway novels, and if you know me and my writing it’s probably not difficult to pick out why. At the heart of it, it’s a lazy story about people and what they get up to when they think no one is looking, and every one of those people are fucking insane. I didn’t want to go fully into emulating the whole thing, but I did want to evoke something of the novel and its setting the way Baz Luhrmann fucked around with Gatsby, using creative anachronism to turn it on its head a bit. Only in this case, it’s Pamplona in 2004, so all the nostalgia of the novel has been lost, replaced by fast food and fast fashion and neon signs in shop windows. The San Fermín festival is still a thing, and still happens today as a traditional festival, but Pamplona is a modern city, and this is enough to distract Alex from everything else he should be paying attention to. Spain will keep featuring in this story, but not as the main focus the way it was in The Sun Also Rises. But there is the same theme of a group of absolute psychopaths ostensibly going for the bullfights, but really just looking for a new backdrop for their insanity.
Before we get to that, Alex is neck deep in this insanity, and he’s so close to doing the correct thing about it. He should be putting in his notice, but he’s so caught up in being professional about it that he can’t bring himself to put his notice in until they get back. So he carries out tasks he doesn’t understand, even though they make him uncomfortable. He refuses to ask questions that might seem like crossing a line, and makes up excuses for himself. He just carries out these insane demands and pretends to be okay with it.
This chapter is also the first we get to see Alex being Alex, and not the weird mess he’s become when he’s under Greg’s thumb, or acting out because he’s not getting enough attention. This is the Alex who wears camp shirts and has silly tattoos (the timeline of which I’ve altered because the timeline has been altered in this fic). The Alex who fell into this job in the first place because he has a knack for admin and memorisation. He’s taking care of all of this stuff, and he’s happy to do it not just because it’s his job, but because being in charge of it makes him feel better. If someone else were in charge, he’d lose that peace of mind. He’s already a ball of nerves from having to deal with Rhod and Roisin being on this trip, who he doesn’t much like to begin with. And now Rhod and Greg are causing trouble on the flight, and Alex can’t quite figure out what’s going on when the two of them are near one another.
It’s not much different on the ground. Alex finds himself in the way more than anything, vaguely inconveniencing the entire trip to the hotel. It’s almost like he’s not supposed to be there in the first place. At the same time, Greg’s being weird and not letting Alex out of his sight. He keeps Alex almost uncomfortably close until they get settled into the hotel, ignoring him the entire time. The hotel that they stay at is the Gran Hotel Perla, which I picked because not only is it on the bull route, but Hemingway himself stayed there and is used as a selling point. In this world I’ve created, Greg has a standing booking each year for the festival, in the same block of suites, and has probably had this arrangement for quite some time at this point.
But then, just to further solidify the idea that Alex is more in the way than not, once he’s done getting everything unpacked, Greg dismisses him outright. Alex gets the rest of the day off, and he spends it wandering around the city, getting to know the area. It’s a lovely little calm before the storm that is the other three when they’re left alone. And the other three are anything but calm, as they remind him later that evening when Roisin and Greg manage to start smashing shit up. If Alex wasn’t already bombarded with hints that he needed to put in his notice weeks earlier, this is another neon sign that he’s making bad choices. Greg defends Alex’s fashion choices, and then quietly takes him aside only to give him a private telling off for his tattoos. Tattoos which, while Alex is working, aren’t even visible anyway. This is the first Greg has seen them, and it was only by accident that he even spotted them, because he had already dismissed Alex for the day. Alex is on his own time by this point. He’s not technically working right now, and is only in Greg’s room because he heard an alarming noise and came over to make sure no one was hurt. Greg has no real right to tell him off for it, nor does Alex have any obligation to do anything about it, but he still goes out of his way to adjust his personal wardrobe to make Greg happy, when he’s still thinking he’s going to be putting in his notice in a few days anyway. Alex is already a goner at this point. He just doesn’t know it yet. He is already doing things entirely to please Greg, outside of the scope of the job he was hired to do, and he’s in so much more trouble than he realises because of it.
Another thing I wanted to do in this chapter was start to change Alex’s opinion on Rhod and Roisin. Rhod specifically and especially. Rhod was introduced as intense and too much to handle, and Alex didn’t much like that, but this is the first time he’s had the chance to properly get to know him as a person outside of Greg’s influence. I wanted Rhod to be someone who exists to antagonise Alex, but without being outright hostile toward him; someone who isn’t a threat, but who isn’t a friend either. He exists in this nebulous space where Alex knows he can trust him, but he isn’t someone he can necessarily go to for help if he needs it. Roisin, on the other hand, is someone to be constantly intimidated by based entirely on her gender. There is a bit of lore in that regard that will be popping up later, but it’s not strictly relevant here, so we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Another thing to point out, or bring up, or whatever is that this is I believe the second or third reference to who I think at this point is fairly obviously meant to be Tim and Mark. The fact that we haven’t seen them yet is not an accident. Alex has been far too busy to even think about seeing his mates in this point in the timeline, and everything he does in the present story is dictated by Greg. They both play present roles in this story, and we will be seeing them shortly, but for now they’re just allusions and foreshadowing.
Back to Greg for a bit, we learn a little bit more about him via Roisin, both directly and indirectly. Alex being given the day to himself the day before may or may not have been entirely by accident. It’s entirely likely that Greg knew what Alex is like, and that he’d spend it doing admin-based activities like getting familiar with the area under the guise of being a tourist. And sure enough, it comes in handy, because he knows where to find a chemist when they need one. When Roisin asks Alex to take her back to the hotel, it’s likely for the same reason, that Alex will be able to get her back there quickly, without having to wander about to get her bearings. And then we learn something new, in a vague, shrouded sort of way. Greg didn’t trust his previous assistant, and something about the story Alex had been told isn’t exactly true. And once again, Alex is confused because nothing is adding up around him, and there’s no one he can turn to to help him sort this mess out.
Also don’t forget, the playlist I made updates as I work on the fic. It’s got quite long, and will only get longer as we go.