The others – Fan’s story – episode 2
Dec 13, 2025
It’s Wednesday night, and Tia has dragged me to the Bedlam pub quiz—her idea of “active recovery.” My idea was lying face-down on my bed like a corpse, but she bribed me with the promise of cocktails.
I’ve earned it. My day was a dental horror show: an absolute man-mountain who decided his wisdom tooth extraction was an all-out, heavyweight battle for survival.
Moira pumped him full of enough lidocaine to paralyse a bull, but the big lad was convinced he could still feel everything. The second she went in with the forceps, all hell broke loose. It turned into a bleeding rodeo. I ended up half-straddled across his chest, pinning down his windmilling arms while he was bawling his eyes out—proper childhood-trauma weeping.
Now I’m staring into my tequila sunrise giving Tia the speed-run version.
“Sounds pure brutal,” she says, slurping her own drink with the commitment of someone judging me for not keeping up.
“Mate, he was greeting. Snot and tears. Moira was this close to sedating him with the surgical mallet. Just another day in the spit-sucking trade. We got the pesky wee thing out in the end.”
After a shift like that, you go home and scrub until your skin’s raw. Blood and tooth-rot have a way of clinging to you.
The bar is filling up—vintage leather, bovver boots, the usual Bedlam soup of metalheads and misfits. Tia’s elbow suddenly spears my ribs.
“Don’t look now,” she hisses, eyes doing a guilty slide to the left. “But Stella from Coitus just rocked up. With some pure beige guy.”
Beige. Our code for the human equivalent of plain porridge. And I know instantly it isn’t Milo with her. The guy goes straight to the bar like he’s on a mission, while Stella scans the room. She clocks us and marches over like she owns the bleeding place.
“Hiya. Good to see you again. Anybody sitting here?” She nods at the two empty chairs.
“Nah, park your arse,” Tia says. “Here for the quiz?”
“Aye. Simon and I.” She jerks a thumb at Beige Boy, who gives a dorky little wave from the bar. “Just moved through from Edinburgh. Out seeing what’s what.”
“Ach, you’ll get an education here,” Tia grins.
“Girls! What’s your poison?” Simon calls over, all try-hard chumminess.
“Whatever you’re having, pal!” we shout back. A few minutes later he comes over with four perfect pints, not a drop spilled.
“Aye, you’ve done this before,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
The quiz host materialises for a team name. Tia, mid-gulp, splutters, “Secstus.” It sticks.
“Simon, these are the girls from Seccelles—the band we played with last Thursday,” Stella says, tapping her talons on the pint glass. “Sorry, I’m useless with names. Shocking for a PhD student, eh?”
“Frances. Fan.”
“Estefania. Tia.”
“Simon,” he says. “Just… plain old Simon.”
I’m dying to ask about Milo, but I have to wedge it in stealthily.
The quiz kicks off. Simon and Stella are a pair of encyclopaedic monsters. I swear his brain has a search function.
“So, whereabouts in Glasgow you staying?” I ask Stella between rounds.
“Renting near Gilmorehill. But once we’re settled, we’re buying.” She sips her pint with an air of clanship. “Simon’s lecturing at the uni. I’m nearly done with my doctorate. Then I’ll be looking for posts here.”
Stella is the kind of woman who makes you question your life choices. Not a single split end on her long blonde hair. Lips red enough to start a riot. Icy blue eyes lined in kohl. She wears baggy camo trousers and a long black top with the names Angela & Gloria & Audre & Alice & bell slashed across the chest. A walking syllabus of feminist rage. An annoyingly perfect blend of polish and grime.
“So,” I say, aiming for casual and probably landing somewhere near ‘constipated.’ “What’d you make of Bad Faith?”
“Jealous of the name, obviously,” she smirks. “But musically? You girls ran rings around them. People love an enigmatic frontman, but I need more than a nice jawline and bravado. I need substance.”
She pauses, letting the quizmaster’s question about the capital of Bolivia hang in the air, then leans in slightly.
“Said frontman tried to chat me up after the gig. Quite insistently. I told him I had a boyfriend and he just… smirked. Said, ‘I have a girlfriend, but that’s never stopped me.’ Absolute fucking gobshite.”
Win-win, I think.
The words do a victory lap in my skull. Milo has a girlfriend—a fact that strips any last shred of romantic mystery from the wanker. And he’d been shot down, decisively, by Stella. His ego will be in ribbons. That’s perfect.
“I’m sure they’ll do grand,” Stella continues, waving a dismissive hand. “Male-fronted bands always get further. The industry’s built for them. This isn’t my first rodeo. Had a band in my late teens. We nearly got signed, but the A&R creep got handsy… so I told him to fuck off and left. Not chasing fame. Just love making music. Performing. That’s it.”
I’m not really paying attention anymore, just nodding for the sake of it. My thoughts have already detonated, scattering and reforming around one central, glowing fact: Milo is a libertine with a wounded ego.
I left too quickly last week. Left him to skulk around in the shadows with all that unrequited, prowling energy. Next time we meet, I’ll be the one on the hunt.
Needless to say, with Stella and Simon as our academic artillery, we win the quiz no bother.
As they gather their things to leave, they offer a breezy, “We should do dinner sometime!”
The second they’re out of earshot, Tia keels over laughing.
“Dinner?!” she wheezes. “That’s the beigest offer I’ve had all year. Stella’s a total hybrid, eh? Some sort of filthy, highbrow punk aristocrat. And she’s with Simon Le Bland? For real? Mental.”
“Aye,” I say. “Fair play to her, though. He seems pretty sorted.”
My mind drifts back to the gig. Milo said he’d clear his diary, and I’m already arming a mantrap in my mind.
