original fic: don't worry about the future
don't worry about the future
Their friends start dying.
R. 1513. death!fic.
{A/N: my first completed anything since January. I'm trying to write more. I don't like the ending, but it's something.}
Sophie stumbles in the dark, her hands fumbling across the walls for the switch, tripping over her heels in the process. Adam is the smooth one, who flicks the switch without searching, the room bright once more and she squints hazily into light, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.
Right away, it’s too quiet. Adam shakes his head to the silence and knows what’s missing. It’s Frank; with his scratchy records and heavy footsteps and talk back radio.
Sophie is drunk - hell, Sophie is always drunk. But no one ever worries about Sophie because she is pretty and pretty girls don’t have drinking problems. Pretty girls giggle and sway and slur pretty little words to the night sky.
“That was a nice funeral.” She kicks off her shoes and collapses on the kitchen floor.
Adam shrugs. They all are.
Their friends start dying and he starts researching conspiracies like his life depended on it. And for a while, locked in his room, surrounded by stacks of yellowing paper, he thought perhaps it did.
It was Frank who told him he was fucking crazy.
What if I’m next, man? What if we’re next?
He’s one step away from the tin foil hat. He’s one step away from straight jackets and men in white coats.
Frank is unwaveringly adamant that they will live forever.
Adam chooses sanity. Adam chooses him.
It’s the third funeral, Abigail’s, where they meet Sophie. Frank is charming, in his mismatched suit and uncombed hair. Sophie is delightful, in her peter pan collared dresses and long strings of pearls.
Adam is awkward.
“How do you know Abigail?” Adam asks his usual question, the one he never likes to hear the answer to. He prefers his own version; Abigail who gave him a bad hair cut the summer they were twenty-three. Abigail who made him sorbet when he had his tonsils removed because he’s lactose intolerant. Abigail who hid Keats behind Bukowski because she didn’t like people to know she was a closeted romantic.
“I don’t,” she answers simply.
Frank laughs and Adam cringes as the room stops and stares.
There was a time, when there was Adam and Frank and Frank and Adam and their friends were not dying and they were happy. They were young. Maybe therein lied the problem.
Adam never had any dreams. No secret ambition to be anything more than he was. None realised anyway; their friends would speak softly, huddled around fire pits in the backyards of rental houses. They were all dreamers; all soothed by the overwhelming belief that creative fulfillment will ease their poverty. All seeking a higher enlightenment that they all knew they would achieve.
Frank was one of them, full of dreams and ambitions. And Adam loved him for it.
And after the fact, many years after the fact, alone in his room, the stacks of paper long gone, he’ll come to the conclusion that Frank was his dream. And he had it. And he was happy.
Sophie rides her bike down the street and everywhere she goes, men fall in love with her.
But she doesn’t love them; the sad architects, the lonely stunt men, or the quiet DJs. She falls for the single dads, with the shitty middle management jobs and perpetual five o’clock shadow. Their children are jaded and precocious and she shines bright among the grey.
Frank would joke that she loves charity; his bare shoulder digging into Adam’s chest. Adam would sigh and say she’s doing more harm than good.
He will laugh and Adam will mourn for those children who will fall in love to be abandoned once more. And Frank will not care because Sophie is pretty and pretty people never mean to break hearts. It just happens all the same.
At the first funeral, Adam openly weeps. Jean-Luke is twenty-five and in his suicide note, he laments that he will never be anyone of notability and he will spend his whole life failing. Adam wonders how his hands must have shook as he wrote these notes; his pen fading towards the end a literal sign. The smudge of the ink as he apologizes and absolves them of any blame.
Jean-Luke chooses pills and sets the tone for the others.
Adam weeps and Frank, for the first one, is shaken, and grasps his hand in the church. Jean-Luke’s mother sobs in front of them; his father is stoic, and his sister recites Robert Frost. He is buried on a Thursday; the sun is hot and they sweat beneath their black mourners clothes, bought new for the occasion.
Bought new; they all hated those clothes. They all never though they would again wear those clothes.
But Jean-Luke was the first. Jean-Luke led the way.
“You ever think about it?”
Sophie flops on their couch. It is the seventh funeral, Sadie, cancer, not suicide, and Adam is thankful for the obvious cause of death.
He’s sick of pills. He’s sick of ropes. He’s sick of guns.
“Think about what?” Frank asks, shrugging off his funeral jacket and loosening his funeral tie.
“Death,” Sophie stretches her arms above her head, flipping her hair behind her, “death and its aftermath.”
Frank snorts. He’s bitter today, a change from his usual solemn optimism. He blames genetics, he blames science. He blames the drugs not working like they should.
He blames everything he can possibly think of.
“Why think about it when we’re constantly living it?”
Sophie nods and stares at the cracks in the ceiling.
Adam gets angry.
He is 33 and this is funeral number nine, Rupert, pills (again). He leaves an 89’ Impala, a set of encyclopaedias and a four-year-old son.
“I’m not going.”
Frank sighs. Adam is still in his pajamas.
“Sophie’s waiting in the car. Let’s not be late for a change.”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yeah, Adam,” Frank runs a hand through his neatly combed hair, ruffling it askew.
“I heard you. It’s just not an option.”
“Why?”
“Because this is how it is, Adam. Sophie is the voyeur and I’m the good-time guy and we don’t fit in at these things. You’re the sober one. You’re the one who goes and mourns and says the right things and is actually paying fucking respect.”
“He had a son.”
Frank sits down beside him.
“I know.”
“Are they all that fucking unhappy that this is their only way out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Promise me we’ll never end up like them?”
Frank kisses him instead.
Remember:
Frank never promised him shit.
Sophie ends up in the hospital and Adam is the one they call.
Alcohol poisoning, they bark down the line and Frank laughs while Adam grabs his keys.
“Dumb slut,” he chuckles and Adam frowns because he predicted this long ago.
In the hospital, she doesn’t look so pretty, her hair limp and skin pale and an IV drip attached to her wrist. Frank signs the paperwork and Adam sits with her.
“Sometimes, I feel like I’m missing out on something,” she says softly, “and I get it in my head that I should find out.”
“Do you want to die?”
Sophie shrugs.
“I just don’t want to be left out.”
Frank’s will is a joke.
It was after the third funeral, when they all started to take it seriously. One was tragedy. Two was an anomaly. Three was a pattern that made them take notice.
They were 27. So they made wills.
Frank dictates that there is a to be a fire pit at the reading. A piñata too. If not, a bag of lollies tied to a string would suffice.
Frank dolls out his crap like it was his most prized possessions. He leaves Sophie his records. He leaves Adam his radio collection.
He lets them fight over what’s left.
Over my dead body, his only note reads. Adam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Sophie cries.
She is an ugly crier.
It is the funeral after Christopher’s, which was after Frank. Mackenzie - car accident. Though there’s rumour she crashed into that tree on purpose.
Adam’s not surprised.
Sophie waits awkwardly in the living room. She’s lost her usual air of excited anticipation. Her skirt is creased and her shoes have scuffmarks.
Adam shrugs on his suit jacket.
“I think I need to live my life.”
This is funeral twelve. Adam is an old pro.
“Sophie?”
“I’m 26. When you’re 19, it’s macabre and cool. I’m 26, Adam. These people are not my friends. They’re just dead.”
Adam glances at her solemnly.
“You don’t have to go.”
“What about you?”
“I have to go. It’s just how it is.”
Adam goes to the funeral. Goes to the wake. Shares anecdotes with the friends that aren’t dead; drinks to the ones that are. Arrives home as the sun is setting and every trace of Sophie is gone.
Somewhere Frank is laughing at him.
Maybe. maybe not. Adam doesn’t know.
He wishes Frank, he wishes them all well.
Their friends start dying.
R. 1513. death!fic.
{A/N: my first completed anything since January. I'm trying to write more. I don't like the ending, but it's something.}
Sophie stumbles in the dark, her hands fumbling across the walls for the switch, tripping over her heels in the process. Adam is the smooth one, who flicks the switch without searching, the room bright once more and she squints hazily into light, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.
Right away, it’s too quiet. Adam shakes his head to the silence and knows what’s missing. It’s Frank; with his scratchy records and heavy footsteps and talk back radio.
Sophie is drunk - hell, Sophie is always drunk. But no one ever worries about Sophie because she is pretty and pretty girls don’t have drinking problems. Pretty girls giggle and sway and slur pretty little words to the night sky.
“That was a nice funeral.” She kicks off her shoes and collapses on the kitchen floor.
Adam shrugs. They all are.
Their friends start dying and he starts researching conspiracies like his life depended on it. And for a while, locked in his room, surrounded by stacks of yellowing paper, he thought perhaps it did.
It was Frank who told him he was fucking crazy.
What if I’m next, man? What if we’re next?
He’s one step away from the tin foil hat. He’s one step away from straight jackets and men in white coats.
Frank is unwaveringly adamant that they will live forever.
Adam chooses sanity. Adam chooses him.
It’s the third funeral, Abigail’s, where they meet Sophie. Frank is charming, in his mismatched suit and uncombed hair. Sophie is delightful, in her peter pan collared dresses and long strings of pearls.
Adam is awkward.
“How do you know Abigail?” Adam asks his usual question, the one he never likes to hear the answer to. He prefers his own version; Abigail who gave him a bad hair cut the summer they were twenty-three. Abigail who made him sorbet when he had his tonsils removed because he’s lactose intolerant. Abigail who hid Keats behind Bukowski because she didn’t like people to know she was a closeted romantic.
“I don’t,” she answers simply.
Frank laughs and Adam cringes as the room stops and stares.
There was a time, when there was Adam and Frank and Frank and Adam and their friends were not dying and they were happy. They were young. Maybe therein lied the problem.
Adam never had any dreams. No secret ambition to be anything more than he was. None realised anyway; their friends would speak softly, huddled around fire pits in the backyards of rental houses. They were all dreamers; all soothed by the overwhelming belief that creative fulfillment will ease their poverty. All seeking a higher enlightenment that they all knew they would achieve.
Frank was one of them, full of dreams and ambitions. And Adam loved him for it.
And after the fact, many years after the fact, alone in his room, the stacks of paper long gone, he’ll come to the conclusion that Frank was his dream. And he had it. And he was happy.
Sophie rides her bike down the street and everywhere she goes, men fall in love with her.
But she doesn’t love them; the sad architects, the lonely stunt men, or the quiet DJs. She falls for the single dads, with the shitty middle management jobs and perpetual five o’clock shadow. Their children are jaded and precocious and she shines bright among the grey.
Frank would joke that she loves charity; his bare shoulder digging into Adam’s chest. Adam would sigh and say she’s doing more harm than good.
He will laugh and Adam will mourn for those children who will fall in love to be abandoned once more. And Frank will not care because Sophie is pretty and pretty people never mean to break hearts. It just happens all the same.
At the first funeral, Adam openly weeps. Jean-Luke is twenty-five and in his suicide note, he laments that he will never be anyone of notability and he will spend his whole life failing. Adam wonders how his hands must have shook as he wrote these notes; his pen fading towards the end a literal sign. The smudge of the ink as he apologizes and absolves them of any blame.
Jean-Luke chooses pills and sets the tone for the others.
Adam weeps and Frank, for the first one, is shaken, and grasps his hand in the church. Jean-Luke’s mother sobs in front of them; his father is stoic, and his sister recites Robert Frost. He is buried on a Thursday; the sun is hot and they sweat beneath their black mourners clothes, bought new for the occasion.
Bought new; they all hated those clothes. They all never though they would again wear those clothes.
But Jean-Luke was the first. Jean-Luke led the way.
“You ever think about it?”
Sophie flops on their couch. It is the seventh funeral, Sadie, cancer, not suicide, and Adam is thankful for the obvious cause of death.
He’s sick of pills. He’s sick of ropes. He’s sick of guns.
“Think about what?” Frank asks, shrugging off his funeral jacket and loosening his funeral tie.
“Death,” Sophie stretches her arms above her head, flipping her hair behind her, “death and its aftermath.”
Frank snorts. He’s bitter today, a change from his usual solemn optimism. He blames genetics, he blames science. He blames the drugs not working like they should.
He blames everything he can possibly think of.
“Why think about it when we’re constantly living it?”
Sophie nods and stares at the cracks in the ceiling.
Adam gets angry.
He is 33 and this is funeral number nine, Rupert, pills (again). He leaves an 89’ Impala, a set of encyclopaedias and a four-year-old son.
“I’m not going.”
Frank sighs. Adam is still in his pajamas.
“Sophie’s waiting in the car. Let’s not be late for a change.”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yeah, Adam,” Frank runs a hand through his neatly combed hair, ruffling it askew.
“I heard you. It’s just not an option.”
“Why?”
“Because this is how it is, Adam. Sophie is the voyeur and I’m the good-time guy and we don’t fit in at these things. You’re the sober one. You’re the one who goes and mourns and says the right things and is actually paying fucking respect.”
“He had a son.”
Frank sits down beside him.
“I know.”
“Are they all that fucking unhappy that this is their only way out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Promise me we’ll never end up like them?”
Frank kisses him instead.
Remember:
Frank never promised him shit.
Sophie ends up in the hospital and Adam is the one they call.
Alcohol poisoning, they bark down the line and Frank laughs while Adam grabs his keys.
“Dumb slut,” he chuckles and Adam frowns because he predicted this long ago.
In the hospital, she doesn’t look so pretty, her hair limp and skin pale and an IV drip attached to her wrist. Frank signs the paperwork and Adam sits with her.
“Sometimes, I feel like I’m missing out on something,” she says softly, “and I get it in my head that I should find out.”
“Do you want to die?”
Sophie shrugs.
“I just don’t want to be left out.”
Frank’s will is a joke.
It was after the third funeral, when they all started to take it seriously. One was tragedy. Two was an anomaly. Three was a pattern that made them take notice.
They were 27. So they made wills.
Frank dictates that there is a to be a fire pit at the reading. A piñata too. If not, a bag of lollies tied to a string would suffice.
Frank dolls out his crap like it was his most prized possessions. He leaves Sophie his records. He leaves Adam his radio collection.
He lets them fight over what’s left.
Over my dead body, his only note reads. Adam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Sophie cries.
She is an ugly crier.
It is the funeral after Christopher’s, which was after Frank. Mackenzie - car accident. Though there’s rumour she crashed into that tree on purpose.
Adam’s not surprised.
Sophie waits awkwardly in the living room. She’s lost her usual air of excited anticipation. Her skirt is creased and her shoes have scuffmarks.
Adam shrugs on his suit jacket.
“I think I need to live my life.”
This is funeral twelve. Adam is an old pro.
“Sophie?”
“I’m 26. When you’re 19, it’s macabre and cool. I’m 26, Adam. These people are not my friends. They’re just dead.”
Adam glances at her solemnly.
“You don’t have to go.”
“What about you?”
“I have to go. It’s just how it is.”
Adam goes to the funeral. Goes to the wake. Shares anecdotes with the friends that aren’t dead; drinks to the ones that are. Arrives home as the sun is setting and every trace of Sophie is gone.
Somewhere Frank is laughing at him.
Maybe. maybe not. Adam doesn’t know.
He wishes Frank, he wishes them all well.