Dancing In A Downpour [Cookleta] [PG]
[title] Dancing In A Downpour
[author] Lire Casander
[beta] pixie_queen24. Any mistakes are my own fault.
[pairing] David Cook/David Archuleta
[rating] PG
[word count] 3377
[summary] I wanna return but all you will do is turn to leave / If I can find my way home, will you take hold of me? / I've been gone so long / I can barely say / All I know is now I want to stay / Has it been too long since I went away? / ‘Cause I'm trying to find the words but I can barely say
[disclaimer] I don't own nor have ever met David Cook nor David Archuleta. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence. Title taken from Rainy Zurich, summary taken from I Can Barely Say and lyrics taken from Happiness, which I have tweaked a little bit by the end, all by The Fray, which I don’t own either.
[warnings] Angst. A little bit of fluff. Weirdest writing style in the history of weird writing styles.
[author's notes] And finally, I’m able to post my Christmas fic! I hope you all like it, despite the angstiness and general darkness of the fic, even though there's a little tiny bit of fluff somewhere, but you wouldn’t have it any other way coming from me. Thank you very much to pixie_queen24 for the fast beta even though she was the busiest woman on Earth these days. Merry Christmas to you all!
The flag swooshes and shivers as a gentle breeze blows lazily on a late summer day in the middle of nowhere.
He has a lost air of indifference as he glances around himself, seated by the base of the flag mast. Children enjoying the last rays of sun on a Saturday run past him, filling the air with a laughter that doesn't quite manage to reach his heart. The halfhearted smile that dances on his lips isn't reflected in his eyes, dull and hard with the weight of everything he has had to leave behind.
He is a shell of what he used to be, of who he wanted to become - a lost soul broken at the peak of hope.
The newspaper lies by his side, crumpled in a heap of ink and monochromatic pictures, the headline screaming at him with all the viciousness a language is able to convey in such few, aseptic words.
THE WAR IS OVER
Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80-miles an hour?
All his unsent letters wait for him on top of a desk full of music sheets and coffee stains. He picks one up and smoothes it over the only clean part of the crammed surface he is able to find.
They all start with the same words, each one a stab of pain he even welcomes for it means he is still able to feel, even though it is just blind-rendering ache.
Dear David.
The sigh leaves his mouth unabashed as tears roll down in quiet rivers. A salty drop reaches his chin, rebel without a cause in the mistiness of his foggy memories.
Dear David. Dear David. Dear David.
The words sound foreign in his voice, as if they belong to someone else. It's like he's speaking another language, for he can barely recognize the soft tingle of unwanted hope that rises in his chest.
Maybe. Perhaps. If only.
And he chuckles out of despair and another feeling he doesn't want to acknowledge because letting it in will mean his own undoing, and although he's too tired to fight back - so tired he doesn't even have the strength to yell - he knows better than to give up.
Dear David.
All his unsent letters are left, once again, with just another huff of air, barely a sigh, as he rubs his face as though he wants to get rid of the weariness and the fear.
He fails miserably.
Or is happiness a little more like knocking
On your door, and you just let it in?
The flag came one day. He remembers it perfectly - the sun setting behind the buildings downtown, the air battling with his already too long hair - as if it was yesterday. For all he knows - for all the days he has failed to track down - it might as well be.
The vehicle had came to a stop just in front of the house. It was a delivery truck, he can't remember the name or even the colors. The driver sauntered out of it as if he owned the street - the fucking world - and took a large package out of the back. The driver asked for his name, and when told that no delivery had been queried from that address, the driver had just shrugged and handed it, saying that it had been already paid when ordered. Afterwards, the driver had returned to his truck and happily drove away from the misery that surely showed up in the house owner's eyes.
Oh, he remembers it now, while the night engulfs with its dark fingers the whole of his soul, the flag wildly fighting in its mast. He remembers the note, the heartfelt words, the pain of a young brother giving away his last hope. He has that letter stored somewhere in the depths of his memory; shaky fingers look for the written paper, worn and torn, as his mind repeats the words over and over again.
Every family with someone deployed should have one. I know you don't, so I'm sending you this. It's his, and I know he would want you to have it. Put it somewhere it can be seen, and just like the ships look for the lighthouse in the middle of the storm, he will look for it to find his way back home.
The simple D as signature was the final answer to all his questions.
Ever since, the flag quivers in his front yard, visible. Just in case. But it's been weeks, months, and no one has used the fray as an anchor, as a way back home.
Only him, and his tired hands, are the ones to look up at the flag as if it holds all the troubles and all the solutions in this world.
Happiness feels a lot like sorrow
The words sting in the back of his mind, in the corner where he pushed them when his world stumbled and fell out of its own orbit. The words that hurt them both with harshness and despair; the words that are still a burden in his mind.
He has long since stopped thinking of himself as a man with needs. He has no right to need, not when he has everything - and yet nothing - but he craves. He craves touch, and smiles, and Spanish songs in the middle of the night.
He has no right, but he still feels.
The words haunt him at night, little stabs in the back of his mind, bites of reality hitting him square on the chest, right onto his heart. Frozen as he is in this moment in time, in the in-pass between being alive and waiting to die, all he can do is feel.
Not for the first time since he read the newspapers, back in the summer - and honestly, has it been so many weeks? - he drags himself out of bed and down to the basement. His guitars wait for him in a perfect line against the farthest wall, longing to be touched.
They are not the only ones.
He picks up the only one that can help him right now, the guitar that knows of pain and loss and grief, the six strings his heart chose so many years ago, the melody that faded away on a chilly May afternoon. But not even the notes can soothe him as he grits out the lyrics, as though it is hurting him just to sing.
It's been months, and all he manages is a thread of rough, unused voice, and the lyrics he didn't write scrambled all upon his soul.
gone for now sounds a lot like gone for good
Let it be, you can’t make it come or go
Days bleed into weeks that bleed into months, and before he knows it Thanksgiving is up on him, catching him by surprise.
It's not that he actually wants to celebrate. This year he doesn't have anything to be thankful for. Sure, he still has his friends - true, loyal friends who keep him sane by taking away the beers and the whiskey and the gallons of other alcohol he has stashed over time - and he has his family - a mother, a father, a stepfather, a whole lot of siblings to make up for the only one he's lost - but he doesn't feel like celebrating.
Therefore, he sits down besides his flag, under the warm Los Angeles sky, and eats a piece of cake he's found somewhere in the fridge. Probably from the last time his mother came to check up on him, worried that he might be neglecting himself and generally failing to be a proper adult.
The flag waves into the air as he can't help but think about what he had, what he lost.
They keep coming back home, images of pure joy - fathers hugging sons and daughters, wives crying from mirth at being back home - but the one he wants, the one he needs, the one no one should know about - he isn't back.
Not for the first time, his lunch ends up in tears.
But you are gone - not for good but for now
His brother saunters into the studio one day, two weeks before Christmas. He looks up at Drew, all grown up and adult and sane - everything he isn't right now, what he hasn't been in a long while.
Drew insists and insists, pushing all the right buttons - and a few of the wrong ones as well - and in the end he flies back with his brother, back home, far away from California and the sun, from Murray and the snow.
Right into his memories.
The flight is as silent as it could be, what with Drew being his obnoxious self all the time. He has only packed his guitar - Drew pestered him for hours until he picked it up - but he can't find solace in playing, so he tunes Drew out for the most part of the trip and sinks back into his memories.
The fight is the first one to surface from the well he had thrown it into. The last words he had thrown his way were yells and complaints, tearful and strained. He remembers it as if it had happened yesterday.
The green grass under his feet, the warm breeze grazing his tears, and the sight of a young man barely over twenty standing in front of him, small and afraid - or has it been himself, projecting his own fears? He remembers the argument, the reasons, the words.
He remembers everything and yet he feels as though it happened to another person - to another David in another universe. The pain is the only thing that keeps him going on.
The pain and the promise that someday it will all be better.
And now that the promise has been broken, all he has is the memory - or was it a dream? - of faint hands caressing his cheek while he is half asleep, and the words uttered right into his ear, a sweet goodbye and a hitched sigh.
He sleeps through most of his flight back home, for he fears the reality his life has become.
Gone for now feels a lot like gone for good
The deployment was intended to last only one year. Then it was postponed another one. His mind has barely registered the four years between that last caress and this Christmas Eve.
The stockings on the chimney remind him of happier times. He's spent every waking hour since he arrived in front of the fireplace, looking absently at the space between the flames. His mother has given up on him - no one able to ease his pain - and now she just lets him be. He has grown used to this half life and he doesn't miss the other - lies, all lies, how could he - so he just exists.
Lately the news only speak of the heroes coming back home. Of the celebrity turned soldier who gathered the courage to fight for his country, so many miles away from home.
That's how he knows he is still alive. How he resents himself for having earned the silent treatment, for the months and months of no letters, for the news coming patched up from Daniel.
He doesn't deserve the love he was given, but how he craves it.
At night he doesn't sleep. Has never been much of a heavy sleeper, but now the faintest notion of slumber avoids him. He replays in his mind that last bit of his existence where he truly felt alive - the history that began with a whisper and ended with a bang.
He can see, just as if it were a film screening privately in his childhood room, that last moment. The letter that frayed them, the feelings that cut through them, the fight that destroyed them, the love that they buried with anger and despair and why on Earth do you have to go and you think you'll become the new Elvis, going to war and coming back unscathed and you'll die and then what'll happen, have you thought about that but never I'll miss you, never please don't go, it'll be me who'll die without you, never please stay.
Never again I love you to bits and pieces, to the Moon and back, until all that's left is my bare soul.
He cries at night and hopes for a miracle.
Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard
Happiness was never mine to hold
He falls into a strange pattern. He wakes up, has breakfast - just black coffee to get him through the day -, sits down in front of the television, plays with Adam's children who are spending Christmas with them, goes to bed. Rinse and repeat.
He gives up eating. His mother tries to force food down his throat with little to none success, so he is a shell of who he used to be. It was easier back at home, to just eat when he's hungry - which these days is scarcely, how have you survived on canned soup and coffee - but here he has to pretend that he doesn't dry-heave whenever he pushes a spoonful of anything through his teeth. In the end, he takes refuge in his old room so he doesn't have his mother pestering him - so he doesn't have to see her brokenhearted expression.
As Christmas Eve approaches, he begins to find it difficult to breathe. The news keep talking about a big black tie ball to celebrate the end of the war, the fiery braveness of the fallen; a party to forget the ache in all their hearts. A party in his honor, held at the White House. The images show another shell, another life, dark chocolate eyes dull and lost. It pains him to no end, but the hurt is nothing compared to what strives through his soul when he hears the following words, the news host proud at her ability to fetch an exclusive for her station.
David Archuleta to announce engagement at Christmas Remembrance Ball
He faints.
Careful child, light the fuse and get away
‘Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks
Life has become unbearable these days. Not only because Christmas reminds him of the people he's lost - of Adam and promise me you'll live for both of us, you'll be happy, you'll fight for your dreams and how he has generally failed at it all - but also because the date when he will announce his desire to wed someone else is coming as well.
He always knew that they were forbidden. They weren't allowed, by God's laws, to love and be loved because they were both men. Never mind the age gap, which was considerably bigger than he had dreamt of, the main problem was that they were both biologically the same. He accepted the secrecy in the beginning, but when he started to feel like they were, indeed, a sin at his eyes - then, just then, all the problems became unbearable.
Just a few months after he had expressed his desire to get married - even if it was only in New York, whatever - the recruitment letter arrived. It wasn't recruiting per se, it was mostly a letter voicing the need of the States to overcome together one kind of violence or other. He didn't care, he wasn't going to get enlisted for a war that would only elicit more deaths, but Archie - and it's the first time he's even thought of him by saying his name as though it was to be reverenced in his mind, the first time he's dared to use it in the intimacy of his own mind in months - Archie just had to go to God knew where. After his mission in South America, Archie changed; always wanting more and more from a world that didn't seem too giving, he just became a witness of Archie's increasing unease at home. It was his fault, solely his, nobody else's.
Now that he has thought of the name, he can't get rid of its lyrical sound. Not David nor Dave.
Archie is his last thought every night before he falls asleep, until Christmas.
Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
Since no one knew about them - just his family and Archie's mother and siblings - it was preposterous to even think about being given information of Archie's destination once he enlisted. So Lupe kept him updated, even after their horrible row, but it didn't last. Four months before Christmas, ten days before the headline that changed his life forever, Archie disappeared in a fight outside some dirty city in the middle of nowhere. That's all Lupe told him, tears affecting her voice over the phone.
Then he started to fade away.
And now he is back, alive, and ready to marry someone else, maybe some other soldier he met at war. Difficult times call for extreme decisions, or so they say. It must have been too hard, for he's still waiting on that call to tell him Archie is alive.
That night he doesn't sleep at all.
So you tell yourself, that’s enough for now
Happiness has a violent roar
Christmas Eve has been a tough date at his household since Adam left them. They try to cope for the children's sake, dull ache in their hearts. He even dresses up as Santa one more year, even though the kids have long since lost their blind faith in miracles.
The call startles them all a couple of hours before twilight. He rushes to the phone, hope rising against all odds, avoiding his mother's pitying gaze. And this time - please just let it be - this time he may be right.
Lupe's voice soothes all his aches and his worries - sorry we didn't call earlier and please don't be mad at us for not- and high pitched sounds and tears and see you tomorrow, I hope.
It takes some minutes until he processes those last words.
See you tomorrow, I hope
He mulls over them for the most part of the evening, until the witch hour. Dinner on Christmas Eve this year will be a bit late since Drew has had to go to the radio to cover for someone who's fallen ill - most likely who's bailed out for the holidays - so he is chilling on the back yard, glancing up at the stars that brighten the sky, when the ruckus on the front porch alerts him that something is up.
Intrigued, he walks around the building, head and shoulders a little bit forward. His whole family is outside, the women squealing in what he thinks is delight, the few men - his father, his stepfather, some old friends - manly and stoically standing tall but whispering. Jess is pointing at somewhere in the yard, so his gaze follows her finger.
And then, then, he sees the silhouette.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Glowing under the porch light. Although there's no uniform he can see the military stance in those shoulders, in those arms. One knee bent on the ground. A sparkling something in a hand.
Wait.
One knee bent on the ground
Sparkling
Oh. Oh.
Oh
Everything becomes a blur in that moment - the people, the carols in the background, the Christmas lights - as he focuses on Archie kneeling on his front yard, a sparkling ring in his hand. There are words, he knows them, but they don't actually reach his brain when they should - he's still processing the situation.
He's been forgiven. His pain and his grief have been overcome, substituted by a gleeful feeling that warms him up from the inside when he hasn't realized he's been cold all this time. But the words keep coming, and he can't ignore them anymore.
The I'm sorry - no, it's him who's sorry, it's him who did wrong, who should apologize - I've missed you - in a missing contest, he wins by a long advantage - I shouldn't have gone, I should have listened to you - fuck right, he's agreeing to some sense now - I didn't know where we were going nor how long I'd be gone, they didn't let me call you, or mom, I'm sorrysorrysorry - and seriously, he can't say he's mad at those puppy eyes looking at him from that position.
I know I have no right to ask now but you've been the sole reason I've survived, will you marry me, Cook?
There's just one possible answer to that question. Four months ago, he wouldn't have hesitated. Now, even with his mind set on this new scenario, his voice doesn't quiver at all, even though his body is shivering.
Yes.
Happiness is like the old man told me
Look for it, but you’ll never find it all
Let it go, live your life and leave it
In the end, there is an engagement announce that shatters the States from West to East, starting in the Middle of Nowhere.
And it's his, and his alone, now that he has become they and Cook and Archie don't exist anymore.
They're forever and ever one under the same sky.
Then one day, wake up and he’ll be home
Home, home, home
[author] Lire Casander
[beta] pixie_queen24. Any mistakes are my own fault.
[pairing] David Cook/David Archuleta
[rating] PG
[word count] 3377
[summary] I wanna return but all you will do is turn to leave / If I can find my way home, will you take hold of me? / I've been gone so long / I can barely say / All I know is now I want to stay / Has it been too long since I went away? / ‘Cause I'm trying to find the words but I can barely say
[disclaimer] I don't own nor have ever met David Cook nor David Archuleta. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence. Title taken from Rainy Zurich, summary taken from I Can Barely Say and lyrics taken from Happiness, which I have tweaked a little bit by the end, all by The Fray, which I don’t own either.
[warnings] Angst. A little bit of fluff. Weirdest writing style in the history of weird writing styles.
[author's notes] And finally, I’m able to post my Christmas fic! I hope you all like it, despite the angstiness and general darkness of the fic, even though there's a little tiny bit of fluff somewhere, but you wouldn’t have it any other way coming from me. Thank you very much to pixie_queen24 for the fast beta even though she was the busiest woman on Earth these days. Merry Christmas to you all!
The flag swooshes and shivers as a gentle breeze blows lazily on a late summer day in the middle of nowhere.
He has a lost air of indifference as he glances around himself, seated by the base of the flag mast. Children enjoying the last rays of sun on a Saturday run past him, filling the air with a laughter that doesn't quite manage to reach his heart. The halfhearted smile that dances on his lips isn't reflected in his eyes, dull and hard with the weight of everything he has had to leave behind.
He is a shell of what he used to be, of who he wanted to become - a lost soul broken at the peak of hope.
The newspaper lies by his side, crumpled in a heap of ink and monochromatic pictures, the headline screaming at him with all the viciousness a language is able to convey in such few, aseptic words.
THE WAR IS OVER
Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80-miles an hour?
All his unsent letters wait for him on top of a desk full of music sheets and coffee stains. He picks one up and smoothes it over the only clean part of the crammed surface he is able to find.
They all start with the same words, each one a stab of pain he even welcomes for it means he is still able to feel, even though it is just blind-rendering ache.
Dear David.
The sigh leaves his mouth unabashed as tears roll down in quiet rivers. A salty drop reaches his chin, rebel without a cause in the mistiness of his foggy memories.
Dear David. Dear David. Dear David.
The words sound foreign in his voice, as if they belong to someone else. It's like he's speaking another language, for he can barely recognize the soft tingle of unwanted hope that rises in his chest.
Maybe. Perhaps. If only.
And he chuckles out of despair and another feeling he doesn't want to acknowledge because letting it in will mean his own undoing, and although he's too tired to fight back - so tired he doesn't even have the strength to yell - he knows better than to give up.
Dear David.
All his unsent letters are left, once again, with just another huff of air, barely a sigh, as he rubs his face as though he wants to get rid of the weariness and the fear.
He fails miserably.
Or is happiness a little more like knocking
On your door, and you just let it in?
The flag came one day. He remembers it perfectly - the sun setting behind the buildings downtown, the air battling with his already too long hair - as if it was yesterday. For all he knows - for all the days he has failed to track down - it might as well be.
The vehicle had came to a stop just in front of the house. It was a delivery truck, he can't remember the name or even the colors. The driver sauntered out of it as if he owned the street - the fucking world - and took a large package out of the back. The driver asked for his name, and when told that no delivery had been queried from that address, the driver had just shrugged and handed it, saying that it had been already paid when ordered. Afterwards, the driver had returned to his truck and happily drove away from the misery that surely showed up in the house owner's eyes.
Oh, he remembers it now, while the night engulfs with its dark fingers the whole of his soul, the flag wildly fighting in its mast. He remembers the note, the heartfelt words, the pain of a young brother giving away his last hope. He has that letter stored somewhere in the depths of his memory; shaky fingers look for the written paper, worn and torn, as his mind repeats the words over and over again.
Every family with someone deployed should have one. I know you don't, so I'm sending you this. It's his, and I know he would want you to have it. Put it somewhere it can be seen, and just like the ships look for the lighthouse in the middle of the storm, he will look for it to find his way back home.
The simple D as signature was the final answer to all his questions.
Ever since, the flag quivers in his front yard, visible. Just in case. But it's been weeks, months, and no one has used the fray as an anchor, as a way back home.
Only him, and his tired hands, are the ones to look up at the flag as if it holds all the troubles and all the solutions in this world.
Happiness feels a lot like sorrow
The words sting in the back of his mind, in the corner where he pushed them when his world stumbled and fell out of its own orbit. The words that hurt them both with harshness and despair; the words that are still a burden in his mind.
He has long since stopped thinking of himself as a man with needs. He has no right to need, not when he has everything - and yet nothing - but he craves. He craves touch, and smiles, and Spanish songs in the middle of the night.
He has no right, but he still feels.
The words haunt him at night, little stabs in the back of his mind, bites of reality hitting him square on the chest, right onto his heart. Frozen as he is in this moment in time, in the in-pass between being alive and waiting to die, all he can do is feel.
Not for the first time since he read the newspapers, back in the summer - and honestly, has it been so many weeks? - he drags himself out of bed and down to the basement. His guitars wait for him in a perfect line against the farthest wall, longing to be touched.
They are not the only ones.
He picks up the only one that can help him right now, the guitar that knows of pain and loss and grief, the six strings his heart chose so many years ago, the melody that faded away on a chilly May afternoon. But not even the notes can soothe him as he grits out the lyrics, as though it is hurting him just to sing.
It's been months, and all he manages is a thread of rough, unused voice, and the lyrics he didn't write scrambled all upon his soul.
gone for now sounds a lot like gone for good
Let it be, you can’t make it come or go
Days bleed into weeks that bleed into months, and before he knows it Thanksgiving is up on him, catching him by surprise.
It's not that he actually wants to celebrate. This year he doesn't have anything to be thankful for. Sure, he still has his friends - true, loyal friends who keep him sane by taking away the beers and the whiskey and the gallons of other alcohol he has stashed over time - and he has his family - a mother, a father, a stepfather, a whole lot of siblings to make up for the only one he's lost - but he doesn't feel like celebrating.
Therefore, he sits down besides his flag, under the warm Los Angeles sky, and eats a piece of cake he's found somewhere in the fridge. Probably from the last time his mother came to check up on him, worried that he might be neglecting himself and generally failing to be a proper adult.
The flag waves into the air as he can't help but think about what he had, what he lost.
They keep coming back home, images of pure joy - fathers hugging sons and daughters, wives crying from mirth at being back home - but the one he wants, the one he needs, the one no one should know about - he isn't back.
Not for the first time, his lunch ends up in tears.
But you are gone - not for good but for now
His brother saunters into the studio one day, two weeks before Christmas. He looks up at Drew, all grown up and adult and sane - everything he isn't right now, what he hasn't been in a long while.
Drew insists and insists, pushing all the right buttons - and a few of the wrong ones as well - and in the end he flies back with his brother, back home, far away from California and the sun, from Murray and the snow.
Right into his memories.
The flight is as silent as it could be, what with Drew being his obnoxious self all the time. He has only packed his guitar - Drew pestered him for hours until he picked it up - but he can't find solace in playing, so he tunes Drew out for the most part of the trip and sinks back into his memories.
The fight is the first one to surface from the well he had thrown it into. The last words he had thrown his way were yells and complaints, tearful and strained. He remembers it as if it had happened yesterday.
The green grass under his feet, the warm breeze grazing his tears, and the sight of a young man barely over twenty standing in front of him, small and afraid - or has it been himself, projecting his own fears? He remembers the argument, the reasons, the words.
He remembers everything and yet he feels as though it happened to another person - to another David in another universe. The pain is the only thing that keeps him going on.
The pain and the promise that someday it will all be better.
And now that the promise has been broken, all he has is the memory - or was it a dream? - of faint hands caressing his cheek while he is half asleep, and the words uttered right into his ear, a sweet goodbye and a hitched sigh.
He sleeps through most of his flight back home, for he fears the reality his life has become.
Gone for now feels a lot like gone for good
The deployment was intended to last only one year. Then it was postponed another one. His mind has barely registered the four years between that last caress and this Christmas Eve.
The stockings on the chimney remind him of happier times. He's spent every waking hour since he arrived in front of the fireplace, looking absently at the space between the flames. His mother has given up on him - no one able to ease his pain - and now she just lets him be. He has grown used to this half life and he doesn't miss the other - lies, all lies, how could he - so he just exists.
Lately the news only speak of the heroes coming back home. Of the celebrity turned soldier who gathered the courage to fight for his country, so many miles away from home.
That's how he knows he is still alive. How he resents himself for having earned the silent treatment, for the months and months of no letters, for the news coming patched up from Daniel.
He doesn't deserve the love he was given, but how he craves it.
At night he doesn't sleep. Has never been much of a heavy sleeper, but now the faintest notion of slumber avoids him. He replays in his mind that last bit of his existence where he truly felt alive - the history that began with a whisper and ended with a bang.
He can see, just as if it were a film screening privately in his childhood room, that last moment. The letter that frayed them, the feelings that cut through them, the fight that destroyed them, the love that they buried with anger and despair and why on Earth do you have to go and you think you'll become the new Elvis, going to war and coming back unscathed and you'll die and then what'll happen, have you thought about that but never I'll miss you, never please don't go, it'll be me who'll die without you, never please stay.
Never again I love you to bits and pieces, to the Moon and back, until all that's left is my bare soul.
He cries at night and hopes for a miracle.
Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard
Happiness was never mine to hold
He falls into a strange pattern. He wakes up, has breakfast - just black coffee to get him through the day -, sits down in front of the television, plays with Adam's children who are spending Christmas with them, goes to bed. Rinse and repeat.
He gives up eating. His mother tries to force food down his throat with little to none success, so he is a shell of who he used to be. It was easier back at home, to just eat when he's hungry - which these days is scarcely, how have you survived on canned soup and coffee - but here he has to pretend that he doesn't dry-heave whenever he pushes a spoonful of anything through his teeth. In the end, he takes refuge in his old room so he doesn't have his mother pestering him - so he doesn't have to see her brokenhearted expression.
As Christmas Eve approaches, he begins to find it difficult to breathe. The news keep talking about a big black tie ball to celebrate the end of the war, the fiery braveness of the fallen; a party to forget the ache in all their hearts. A party in his honor, held at the White House. The images show another shell, another life, dark chocolate eyes dull and lost. It pains him to no end, but the hurt is nothing compared to what strives through his soul when he hears the following words, the news host proud at her ability to fetch an exclusive for her station.
David Archuleta to announce engagement at Christmas Remembrance Ball
He faints.
Careful child, light the fuse and get away
‘Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks
Life has become unbearable these days. Not only because Christmas reminds him of the people he's lost - of Adam and promise me you'll live for both of us, you'll be happy, you'll fight for your dreams and how he has generally failed at it all - but also because the date when he will announce his desire to wed someone else is coming as well.
He always knew that they were forbidden. They weren't allowed, by God's laws, to love and be loved because they were both men. Never mind the age gap, which was considerably bigger than he had dreamt of, the main problem was that they were both biologically the same. He accepted the secrecy in the beginning, but when he started to feel like they were, indeed, a sin at his eyes - then, just then, all the problems became unbearable.
Just a few months after he had expressed his desire to get married - even if it was only in New York, whatever - the recruitment letter arrived. It wasn't recruiting per se, it was mostly a letter voicing the need of the States to overcome together one kind of violence or other. He didn't care, he wasn't going to get enlisted for a war that would only elicit more deaths, but Archie - and it's the first time he's even thought of him by saying his name as though it was to be reverenced in his mind, the first time he's dared to use it in the intimacy of his own mind in months - Archie just had to go to God knew where. After his mission in South America, Archie changed; always wanting more and more from a world that didn't seem too giving, he just became a witness of Archie's increasing unease at home. It was his fault, solely his, nobody else's.
Now that he has thought of the name, he can't get rid of its lyrical sound. Not David nor Dave.
Archie is his last thought every night before he falls asleep, until Christmas.
Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
Since no one knew about them - just his family and Archie's mother and siblings - it was preposterous to even think about being given information of Archie's destination once he enlisted. So Lupe kept him updated, even after their horrible row, but it didn't last. Four months before Christmas, ten days before the headline that changed his life forever, Archie disappeared in a fight outside some dirty city in the middle of nowhere. That's all Lupe told him, tears affecting her voice over the phone.
Then he started to fade away.
And now he is back, alive, and ready to marry someone else, maybe some other soldier he met at war. Difficult times call for extreme decisions, or so they say. It must have been too hard, for he's still waiting on that call to tell him Archie is alive.
That night he doesn't sleep at all.
So you tell yourself, that’s enough for now
Happiness has a violent roar
Christmas Eve has been a tough date at his household since Adam left them. They try to cope for the children's sake, dull ache in their hearts. He even dresses up as Santa one more year, even though the kids have long since lost their blind faith in miracles.
The call startles them all a couple of hours before twilight. He rushes to the phone, hope rising against all odds, avoiding his mother's pitying gaze. And this time - please just let it be - this time he may be right.
Lupe's voice soothes all his aches and his worries - sorry we didn't call earlier and please don't be mad at us for not- and high pitched sounds and tears and see you tomorrow, I hope.
It takes some minutes until he processes those last words.
See you tomorrow, I hope
He mulls over them for the most part of the evening, until the witch hour. Dinner on Christmas Eve this year will be a bit late since Drew has had to go to the radio to cover for someone who's fallen ill - most likely who's bailed out for the holidays - so he is chilling on the back yard, glancing up at the stars that brighten the sky, when the ruckus on the front porch alerts him that something is up.
Intrigued, he walks around the building, head and shoulders a little bit forward. His whole family is outside, the women squealing in what he thinks is delight, the few men - his father, his stepfather, some old friends - manly and stoically standing tall but whispering. Jess is pointing at somewhere in the yard, so his gaze follows her finger.
And then, then, he sees the silhouette.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Glowing under the porch light. Although there's no uniform he can see the military stance in those shoulders, in those arms. One knee bent on the ground. A sparkling something in a hand.
Wait.
One knee bent on the ground
Sparkling
Oh. Oh.
Oh
Everything becomes a blur in that moment - the people, the carols in the background, the Christmas lights - as he focuses on Archie kneeling on his front yard, a sparkling ring in his hand. There are words, he knows them, but they don't actually reach his brain when they should - he's still processing the situation.
He's been forgiven. His pain and his grief have been overcome, substituted by a gleeful feeling that warms him up from the inside when he hasn't realized he's been cold all this time. But the words keep coming, and he can't ignore them anymore.
The I'm sorry - no, it's him who's sorry, it's him who did wrong, who should apologize - I've missed you - in a missing contest, he wins by a long advantage - I shouldn't have gone, I should have listened to you - fuck right, he's agreeing to some sense now - I didn't know where we were going nor how long I'd be gone, they didn't let me call you, or mom, I'm sorrysorrysorry - and seriously, he can't say he's mad at those puppy eyes looking at him from that position.
I know I have no right to ask now but you've been the sole reason I've survived, will you marry me, Cook?
There's just one possible answer to that question. Four months ago, he wouldn't have hesitated. Now, even with his mind set on this new scenario, his voice doesn't quiver at all, even though his body is shivering.
Yes.
Happiness is like the old man told me
Look for it, but you’ll never find it all
Let it go, live your life and leave it
In the end, there is an engagement announce that shatters the States from West to East, starting in the Middle of Nowhere.
And it's his, and his alone, now that he has become they and Cook and Archie don't exist anymore.
They're forever and ever one under the same sky.
Then one day, wake up and he’ll be home
Home, home, home