Leave Yesterday Behind (The Tomorrow's All Wrong remix)
Title: Leave Yesterday Behind (The Tomorrow's All Wrong remix)
Author: duckgirlie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mild descriptions of self-imposed physical torment. (Nothing that isn't in/alluded to in the original story)
Word Count: ~2,300
Summary: Desperation and taking risks often walk hand in hand.
Original story: Tomorrow's All Wrong by celli
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the fictional versions of the persons portrayed here and the actual persons is purely coincidental. No infringement intended, and no profits made.
Notes: Thanks to themistoklis for a super-fast beta, especially as this isn't even close to her fandom.
Archie hummed distractedly to himself as he scanned the website absent-mindedly. He hadn't had a specific plan in mind when he flipped on his computer, but his eyes were drawn to a picture of a secluded cabin. It was set against acres of perfect grass and looked like exactly the place to relax for a while.
Smiling softly to himself, he fired off an email to the owner.
*****
He wasn't surprised when Cook rang to complain - he'd been expecting it, just as he'd been expecting that the complaints wouldn't be real. He was pretty sure Cook was as desperate for a little nothing for a while as everyone else was for him to have it. If Cook had really been annoyed, he wouldn't have rung, just sent the package straight back.
So he laughed at Cook when he insisted he might leave early, until Cook casually said that he should visit, and for a second Archie's breath caught in his chest before he tentatively agreed.
When Cook hung up, Archie pulled his day planner across the table, trying to figure out who he could postpone or cancel without causing too much damage.
*****
Archie drove towards the cabin, singing along with Whitney Houston on the radio.
"Oh, I wanna dance with somebody, wanna feel the heat with somebody, oh, I wanna dance with somebody, with som-"
His voice died in his throat as he rounded the corner onto the bridge and saw the car in the water.
He recognised the car. He'd spent nearly an hour on the rental website picking it out, making sure it was safe enough and Cook enough to book for the short vacation. But now it was sitting in the water, half-submerged, and Archie was out of his car and wading through the water before he even really knew what was happening.
He could see Cook in the front seat, slumped against the wheel, eyes closed, and he grabbed the handle and yanked as hard as he could, cursing all the car’s safety measures as the door absolutely refused to budge, and the glass wouldn't so much as crack when he pounded his fists into it.
He didn't even realise he was screaming until his throat dried and closed up, and by then there were people around him, crowded on the bridge and the edge of the water, wading towards him.
It took three men nearly fifteen minutes to drag him away from the wreckage, his screams giving way to gasping sobs that racked his entire body.
*****
The first time someone called him 'David' he looked up suddenly, searching the room for Cook, and it felt like a punch in the gut when he reminded himself they're talking to you, because he's gone.
The second time it hurt a little less, a little less again the third and by halfway through the night it was just a dull ache he was doing his best to ignore. He couldn’t though, because it was still there, an insistent little throb that told him you're alone, you're alone, and then people talked to him, resting their hands on his shoulder sympathetically and Archie just wanted to scream that it was his fault, he's the one who'd booked the holiday and the car and forced Cook to even be in that place, on that day, at that time.
He didn't though, because he couldn’t quiet fit the words into his mouth, and instead he blinked away whatever he couldn't say and walked over to the bar.
He looked at the rows of bottles until they started to swim in his vision, but he didn’t know anything about alcohol and just grabbed the nearest bottle to his hand. There was no one nearby except for Michael who gave him this mixed-up look of understanding and sympathy and trepidation and worry and fear and that just twisted in Archie's gut a little more so he poured the amber liquid halfway up a glass and gulped it down.
It burned as he swallowed and he coughed before he finished, spilling more than a couple of drops down his neatly pressed shirt. But he just re-filled his glass and started again, and by the third time he abandoned the glass as unnecessary and just pressed the bottle to his lips.
He kind of remembered someone trying to take the bottle off him, talk him down, but he shook them off and drank until his legs gave out, and then he kept drinking, waiting for the twisting pain in his stomach to stop.
*****
"David?"
"David?"
"David?"
He didn't think he'd ever felt this bad before - or physically this bad, at least - and he was fairly certain he’d never feel this bad again. When he cracked his eyes open the light nearly blinded him, and he couldn't detect more then vague blurs around him.
The blurs slowly resolved themselves into faces and he recognised the rest of his Idol friends around the bed. Brooke had her hand clasped into his, her face streaked with dirty tears, Carly was crouched on the edge of her seat, her fingers twisted in the hem of her shirt, and Michael...
Michael was crouched against the wall, his hands clutched in his hair, and he looked wrecked.
Archie tried to open his mouth to apologise, to reassure him it wasn't his fault, but he felt like someone had tried to pull his insides out through his throat, like he'd swallowed sandpaper, and he couldn’t.
“It's okay, sweetie.” Brooke brushed his hair off his temple. “They had to pump your stomach, so it might hurt to talk for a while, you can just...”
She trailed off, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. The room was silent.
Archie tried to pull himself up to sitting, but his arms gave way beneath him. He tried to talk again, but could only manage a scrapy cough.
Carly reached up to take his other hand. “Do you want us to call your mom? There were cameras outside so she might already...”
Archie only had a chance to nod before his eyes became too heavy to hold open.
*****
His mother arrived to drive him home the next day. The second they exited the hospital he was nearly blinded by the flashing cameras and had to shove his way through crowds of papparazzi to get to her car.
Inside, he threw his coat over his head and folded himself up as small as he could. He kept his head down for the whole ride, not coming up until the car had been stopped in his driveway for nearly ten minutes.
His mother hovered around him inside the house, making him a sandwich and pouring him some juice and just contantly being there and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
And even if he could, he wouldn't. He still wasn’t that kind of guy.
So he forced himself back to his routine. Ate lunch at the right time, and checked his emails when he always did. And that's when he saw it.
Months ago, maybe years, Cook had kidnapped his laptop and set up a Google alert for his name, because he told Archie he'd never see the fun stuff if he just waited for the clippings his people would give him. He doesn't remember why he never cancelled it - maybe because Cook had been right, and seeing the random cute things people posted about him on blogs and Tumblrs really was better then just industry notices - but he clicked the email open automatically and was confronted with dozens of capslock links to gossip blogs and even real newspapers, all speculating about why he ended up in the hospital.
He knew he shouldn't, but he clicked a random link and the brightly-coloured page had pictures of him being wheeled into the emergency room, and the headline read ARCHIE PINES FOR LOST LOVE and that's when it hit him. That's when he connected the warm feeling in his stomach when Cook's picture flashed up on his phone to the tense feeling when he hadn't spoken to him in a while to the numb and then hot and twisted feeling since the crash.
The fact that he only figured this out now was just another thing to add to how very much his life had gone wrong.
*****
It took him three months to think about writing again. A month later, he had to scrap everything new he'd written when he realised he wasn't writing for himself, he was writing for Cook and even if he could sing like Cook, he couldn't sing these songs.
It's It was another two months before he came up with anything he could perform himself, anything that wasn’t too desperate to put his name to.
It was nearly a year to the day after the accident when he handed the rough cut into his management and they listened and started saying things like 'dramatic new sound' and 're-positioning' but Archie stopped listening halfway through. He was proud of this album musically, but he still wasn't sure how he was going to be able to talk to people about it, explain what it meant to people who already knew, already had their own ideas about every track on there.
*****
The first time he ordered a beer in front of other people, the table froze for a second before slowly coming back to life. His guitarist looked at him for a second, about to ask if he was sure, but Archie just rolled his eyes, forcing himself to keep it light.
“Relax, guys. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.”
A tiny bit of tension bled out of the table when he made himself end the sentence with a smile.
*****
The first time was an accident.
His assistant wanted to buy her sister some tarot cards, and he followed her into the shop so he wouldn't have to wait awkwardly outside.
He was standing by a shelf, running his fingers over random trinkets when he felt someone brush against him and gasp. He stood back slightly and turned to find the owner of the shop standing beside him and staring. She raised her hand to hover near his cheek.
“You have great pain, my child.”
He rolled his eyes, because who didn't? How much vaguer could she be.
“You wonder if he was as oblivious - or was he waiting for you to know, to come to him.”
Archie froze. She patted his cheek before moving off again.
*****
When his mother called now, he could tear the tension in her voice, the tears she wanted to shed but couldn't anymore. He wanted to tell her that this was just the phase she wanted it to be, that he was fine, but he’d never lied to her before and it didn’t matter how much he'd changed, he wasn't going to start now.
*****
The second time, he sought her out. She didn't seem to remember him, and he wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not, but he just wanted to hear more.
He sat across from her at the tiny table and she laid her hands on top of his.
“Such great pain.”
But he didn't want to hear about his pain, he knew he was in pain. He wanted to hear her tell him that Cook hadn't known, that he hadn't died waiting for Archie to realise how he felt.
She didn't though. She just smiled sadly and patted his arm and told him she couldn't help him.
Instead, she slid a business card across the table.
*****
He worked his way through everything he could find, searching for an answer, because there has to be one, somewhere. There's an answer for everything, if you're willing to look long and hard enough for it. He talked to people who knew things, and who didn’t but thought they could point him in the right directions, and he read every single page on the subject three times over.
There were days when he woke up feeling like he'd been plunged into ice, and days when he woke up feeling like he was on fire. There were days when the worlds bled out of the books he was reading and trail themselves across the floor and when he looked back at the book the words were there again, but different. Days when his skin wanted to crawl off his body and days when he wanted to escape his body himself.
There were days when he wanted to give up, because he could look in the mirror and see how he'd changed, more and more every day, and he wondered what Cook would say if he could see him now.
But Cook couldn’t say anything, not yet.
Not yet, and maybe not ever. It seemed some days like every move he made went nowhere, that the finish line was so far away and getting further, and that the start line was so far behind him he'll never make it back.
So he just turned the page.
*****
He couldn't know if it would work, not for certain. But he'd come far enough by now not to keep going that one step further.
So instead of waiting for his driver to take him into the studio, to sit down and put in another day's work, he called a cab and took the first flight to South Dakota. When he drove over the bridge his fingers wrapped so tight around the steering wheel he went past white knuckles and into his nails breaking the surface of the leather but he kept pushing forward.
Outside of the cabin, he stood on the grass and looked over the building, remembering when he'd first seen the picture, first picked it out as somewhere that looked like the perfect respite from an overly-demanding world.
He took a deep breath, whispered a tiny prayer like he hadn't prayed in years, and closed his eyes.
Author: duckgirlie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mild descriptions of self-imposed physical torment. (Nothing that isn't in/alluded to in the original story)
Word Count: ~2,300
Summary: Desperation and taking risks often walk hand in hand.
Original story: Tomorrow's All Wrong by celli
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the fictional versions of the persons portrayed here and the actual persons is purely coincidental. No infringement intended, and no profits made.
Notes: Thanks to themistoklis for a super-fast beta, especially as this isn't even close to her fandom.
Archie hummed distractedly to himself as he scanned the website absent-mindedly. He hadn't had a specific plan in mind when he flipped on his computer, but his eyes were drawn to a picture of a secluded cabin. It was set against acres of perfect grass and looked like exactly the place to relax for a while.
Smiling softly to himself, he fired off an email to the owner.
*****
He wasn't surprised when Cook rang to complain - he'd been expecting it, just as he'd been expecting that the complaints wouldn't be real. He was pretty sure Cook was as desperate for a little nothing for a while as everyone else was for him to have it. If Cook had really been annoyed, he wouldn't have rung, just sent the package straight back.
So he laughed at Cook when he insisted he might leave early, until Cook casually said that he should visit, and for a second Archie's breath caught in his chest before he tentatively agreed.
When Cook hung up, Archie pulled his day planner across the table, trying to figure out who he could postpone or cancel without causing too much damage.
*****
Archie drove towards the cabin, singing along with Whitney Houston on the radio.
"Oh, I wanna dance with somebody, wanna feel the heat with somebody, oh, I wanna dance with somebody, with som-"
His voice died in his throat as he rounded the corner onto the bridge and saw the car in the water.
He recognised the car. He'd spent nearly an hour on the rental website picking it out, making sure it was safe enough and Cook enough to book for the short vacation. But now it was sitting in the water, half-submerged, and Archie was out of his car and wading through the water before he even really knew what was happening.
He could see Cook in the front seat, slumped against the wheel, eyes closed, and he grabbed the handle and yanked as hard as he could, cursing all the car’s safety measures as the door absolutely refused to budge, and the glass wouldn't so much as crack when he pounded his fists into it.
He didn't even realise he was screaming until his throat dried and closed up, and by then there were people around him, crowded on the bridge and the edge of the water, wading towards him.
It took three men nearly fifteen minutes to drag him away from the wreckage, his screams giving way to gasping sobs that racked his entire body.
*****
The first time someone called him 'David' he looked up suddenly, searching the room for Cook, and it felt like a punch in the gut when he reminded himself they're talking to you, because he's gone.
The second time it hurt a little less, a little less again the third and by halfway through the night it was just a dull ache he was doing his best to ignore. He couldn’t though, because it was still there, an insistent little throb that told him you're alone, you're alone, and then people talked to him, resting their hands on his shoulder sympathetically and Archie just wanted to scream that it was his fault, he's the one who'd booked the holiday and the car and forced Cook to even be in that place, on that day, at that time.
He didn't though, because he couldn’t quiet fit the words into his mouth, and instead he blinked away whatever he couldn't say and walked over to the bar.
He looked at the rows of bottles until they started to swim in his vision, but he didn’t know anything about alcohol and just grabbed the nearest bottle to his hand. There was no one nearby except for Michael who gave him this mixed-up look of understanding and sympathy and trepidation and worry and fear and that just twisted in Archie's gut a little more so he poured the amber liquid halfway up a glass and gulped it down.
It burned as he swallowed and he coughed before he finished, spilling more than a couple of drops down his neatly pressed shirt. But he just re-filled his glass and started again, and by the third time he abandoned the glass as unnecessary and just pressed the bottle to his lips.
He kind of remembered someone trying to take the bottle off him, talk him down, but he shook them off and drank until his legs gave out, and then he kept drinking, waiting for the twisting pain in his stomach to stop.
*****
"David?"
"David?"
"David?"
He didn't think he'd ever felt this bad before - or physically this bad, at least - and he was fairly certain he’d never feel this bad again. When he cracked his eyes open the light nearly blinded him, and he couldn't detect more then vague blurs around him.
The blurs slowly resolved themselves into faces and he recognised the rest of his Idol friends around the bed. Brooke had her hand clasped into his, her face streaked with dirty tears, Carly was crouched on the edge of her seat, her fingers twisted in the hem of her shirt, and Michael...
Michael was crouched against the wall, his hands clutched in his hair, and he looked wrecked.
Archie tried to open his mouth to apologise, to reassure him it wasn't his fault, but he felt like someone had tried to pull his insides out through his throat, like he'd swallowed sandpaper, and he couldn’t.
“It's okay, sweetie.” Brooke brushed his hair off his temple. “They had to pump your stomach, so it might hurt to talk for a while, you can just...”
She trailed off, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. The room was silent.
Archie tried to pull himself up to sitting, but his arms gave way beneath him. He tried to talk again, but could only manage a scrapy cough.
Carly reached up to take his other hand. “Do you want us to call your mom? There were cameras outside so she might already...”
Archie only had a chance to nod before his eyes became too heavy to hold open.
*****
His mother arrived to drive him home the next day. The second they exited the hospital he was nearly blinded by the flashing cameras and had to shove his way through crowds of papparazzi to get to her car.
Inside, he threw his coat over his head and folded himself up as small as he could. He kept his head down for the whole ride, not coming up until the car had been stopped in his driveway for nearly ten minutes.
His mother hovered around him inside the house, making him a sandwich and pouring him some juice and just contantly being there and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
And even if he could, he wouldn't. He still wasn’t that kind of guy.
So he forced himself back to his routine. Ate lunch at the right time, and checked his emails when he always did. And that's when he saw it.
Months ago, maybe years, Cook had kidnapped his laptop and set up a Google alert for his name, because he told Archie he'd never see the fun stuff if he just waited for the clippings his people would give him. He doesn't remember why he never cancelled it - maybe because Cook had been right, and seeing the random cute things people posted about him on blogs and Tumblrs really was better then just industry notices - but he clicked the email open automatically and was confronted with dozens of capslock links to gossip blogs and even real newspapers, all speculating about why he ended up in the hospital.
He knew he shouldn't, but he clicked a random link and the brightly-coloured page had pictures of him being wheeled into the emergency room, and the headline read ARCHIE PINES FOR LOST LOVE and that's when it hit him. That's when he connected the warm feeling in his stomach when Cook's picture flashed up on his phone to the tense feeling when he hadn't spoken to him in a while to the numb and then hot and twisted feeling since the crash.
The fact that he only figured this out now was just another thing to add to how very much his life had gone wrong.
*****
It took him three months to think about writing again. A month later, he had to scrap everything new he'd written when he realised he wasn't writing for himself, he was writing for Cook and even if he could sing like Cook, he couldn't sing these songs.
It's It was another two months before he came up with anything he could perform himself, anything that wasn’t too desperate to put his name to.
It was nearly a year to the day after the accident when he handed the rough cut into his management and they listened and started saying things like 'dramatic new sound' and 're-positioning' but Archie stopped listening halfway through. He was proud of this album musically, but he still wasn't sure how he was going to be able to talk to people about it, explain what it meant to people who already knew, already had their own ideas about every track on there.
*****
The first time he ordered a beer in front of other people, the table froze for a second before slowly coming back to life. His guitarist looked at him for a second, about to ask if he was sure, but Archie just rolled his eyes, forcing himself to keep it light.
“Relax, guys. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice.”
A tiny bit of tension bled out of the table when he made himself end the sentence with a smile.
*****
The first time was an accident.
His assistant wanted to buy her sister some tarot cards, and he followed her into the shop so he wouldn't have to wait awkwardly outside.
He was standing by a shelf, running his fingers over random trinkets when he felt someone brush against him and gasp. He stood back slightly and turned to find the owner of the shop standing beside him and staring. She raised her hand to hover near his cheek.
“You have great pain, my child.”
He rolled his eyes, because who didn't? How much vaguer could she be.
“You wonder if he was as oblivious - or was he waiting for you to know, to come to him.”
Archie froze. She patted his cheek before moving off again.
*****
When his mother called now, he could tear the tension in her voice, the tears she wanted to shed but couldn't anymore. He wanted to tell her that this was just the phase she wanted it to be, that he was fine, but he’d never lied to her before and it didn’t matter how much he'd changed, he wasn't going to start now.
*****
The second time, he sought her out. She didn't seem to remember him, and he wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not, but he just wanted to hear more.
He sat across from her at the tiny table and she laid her hands on top of his.
“Such great pain.”
But he didn't want to hear about his pain, he knew he was in pain. He wanted to hear her tell him that Cook hadn't known, that he hadn't died waiting for Archie to realise how he felt.
She didn't though. She just smiled sadly and patted his arm and told him she couldn't help him.
Instead, she slid a business card across the table.
*****
He worked his way through everything he could find, searching for an answer, because there has to be one, somewhere. There's an answer for everything, if you're willing to look long and hard enough for it. He talked to people who knew things, and who didn’t but thought they could point him in the right directions, and he read every single page on the subject three times over.
There were days when he woke up feeling like he'd been plunged into ice, and days when he woke up feeling like he was on fire. There were days when the worlds bled out of the books he was reading and trail themselves across the floor and when he looked back at the book the words were there again, but different. Days when his skin wanted to crawl off his body and days when he wanted to escape his body himself.
There were days when he wanted to give up, because he could look in the mirror and see how he'd changed, more and more every day, and he wondered what Cook would say if he could see him now.
But Cook couldn’t say anything, not yet.
Not yet, and maybe not ever. It seemed some days like every move he made went nowhere, that the finish line was so far away and getting further, and that the start line was so far behind him he'll never make it back.
So he just turned the page.
*****
He couldn't know if it would work, not for certain. But he'd come far enough by now not to keep going that one step further.
So instead of waiting for his driver to take him into the studio, to sit down and put in another day's work, he called a cab and took the first flight to South Dakota. When he drove over the bridge his fingers wrapped so tight around the steering wheel he went past white knuckles and into his nails breaking the surface of the leather but he kept pushing forward.
Outside of the cabin, he stood on the grass and looked over the building, remembering when he'd first seen the picture, first picked it out as somewhere that looked like the perfect respite from an overly-demanding world.
He took a deep breath, whispered a tiny prayer like he hadn't prayed in years, and closed his eyes.