8 - upwards to infinity
Welcome to our eighth prompt post.
As ususal, here are a few things to keep in mind:
1) All fills for prompts of the earlier prompt posts go in the post the prompt was posted in. No re-posting or splitting up prompts and fills.
2) Self-prompt when you post unprompted fic. (This means posting what the fill is about in a first comment, like a real ( Read more... )
As ususal, here are a few things to keep in mind:
1) All fills for prompts of the earlier prompt posts go in the post the prompt was posted in. No re-posting or splitting up prompts and fills.
2) Self-prompt when you post unprompted fic. (This means posting what the fill is about in a first comment, like a real ( Read more... )
“Yes, I think Ed Miliband’s team will be very worried about him going AWOL in such a... brusque manner.” Nick says, carefully, shooting a look to Yvette.
“Brusque? It’s rude,”
“Yes. But I think we can all assume he’s suffering some.. personal problems.”
“Personal problems or not, I hardly think ‘go to hell’, if you’ll pardon the phrasing, viewers, is a particularly statesman like attitude.”
“What I think is amazing,” Yvette interrupts. This is the reason she’s been put on the sofa this week by the Labour Party - get the story right. Defend them to the hilt, attack any wanker that thinks this is a political story. It’s personal. Tell them to fuck off. “Is that you’re all focusing on his last line, and seem to have forgotten the first three. Andy’s in hospital, and Ed’s feeling a lot of pressure. He’s worried about him. Of course he comes across as preoccupied.”
“He’s not just worried, he’s giving up his job. Word was they were friendly, but it’s a little extreme? Politicians lose family members and don’t give up politics. Look at Gordon Brown, Cameron.” Andrew Neil goes through the motions, awkward at this line of questioning, but aware it has to be done.
“Well it won’t surprise anyone to know that people deal with problems in different ways. If Ed doesn’t feel he can best serve the government at the current moment, that’s his choice to make, and I think he’s made the right choice, both for him and Andy and the party.”
“You’re talking like he’s already dead. The email itself says ‘if he dies’ - so it’s serious? Much more so than Ed Miliband told us.”
“It’s not my place - it’s not anyone’s place - to reveal Andy’s personal situation.”
“People would say it is when they’re our shadow cabinet, elected representatives.”
“No, it isn’t.” Yvette says, firmly. “It’s personal, and you have no more right to ask these things than the aide did of leaking them.”
“If he’s not up to the job-”
“Then he should take a leave of absence, which is exactly what he is doing.”
“Andy Burnham is. Ed Balls hasn’t even been given leave. He’s just told his party leader what he’s decided.”
“I don’t think Ed Miliband or any of his colleagues are really surprised at Ed’s decision.”
“So you’ve all been aware of Ed Balls’... friendship with Burnham.”
“It’s hit us all hard, but Ed especially.”
“Yes, but why? We were all under the impression Ed Balls was a hard-nut. His media image is of a bully, Gordon’s hatchet man..”
“That’s a media image, cultivated by hacks because it suits a narrative. Anyone who has spent time with Ed knows he is a kind, generous, man. He’s a softie. And he gets on well with all his close associates - in Cabinet, ministers, constituents.”
“Are you a great friend of his? Or Burnham’s?”
“Yes. Labour is a united party, we all get on well.”
“That sounds like a party line. Ed Balls has just told Ed Miliband to stuff his job and shadow cabinet.”
“No, he’s said he doesn’t feel he is able to serve at the moment,” Yvette doesn’t give an inch. “He’s not said ‘stuff your job’. Ed wouldn’t do that. He cares passionately about Labour politics and the country.”
“Sounds like he’s more passionate about Andy Burnham. Yvette Cooper, thank you very much.”
Yvette jumps up off the sofa as quickly as she can, pulling the microphone off her lapel, and passing it to the nearest BBC worker.
Investigation, character assassination, call it what you like, but Yvette knows better. She doesn’t believe for a moment that Ed could ever give up politics forever - or that Andy would let him - but knows that politics can’t matter now.
Politicians never have time even at the best of times, but running between houses, constituencies, hospitals, in time for visiting hours, family visiting, looking after Andy’s family (who are on their way down from Leigh at this very moment) is work enough without having to keep an eye on Theresa May and her bunch of goons.
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“You shouldn’t’ve sent that email. You should be there, backing up Miliband. Not here.” Andy gestures around the room from his seat on the high hospital bed, and it’s so anachronistic and plain wrong.
“I’m doing the right thing,” Ed snaps, clearly unsure of what he can do to make amends to the party while still keeping Andy as top priority. “Miliband’ll have a reshuffle soon. He can put Alan back at Home Office, Yvette can go to the Treasury, and he’ll have to promote some others to Cabinet.”
They still talk about ‘Cabinet’ as though they’re still in power. Cameron’s lot are still ‘shadows’ because they’re the fuckers who are all show, no substance and have no spines.
“What?”
“Well, he can’t keep me in the Cabinet now, can he? I’m a liability now - I look like I don’t care, and I’m AWOL too. He’s going to have to boot me out.”
“You’re not fucking leaving cabinet,”
“It’s the right choice,” Ed says, trying not to remember how many times Tony fucking Blair had said that and how few times anyone had believed it.
“No it fucking isn’t. You definitely don’t believe that. You can’t leave now, not when he’s about to shuffle everyone because of me. You to Chancellor, Alan to Home. They’re not going to have you hanging around forever, they either make you chancellor now or you’ve missed your chance to be the ‘new generation’. Go and bang some heads together!”
“It doesn’t matter,”
“Ed, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Would have thought that was obvious. You’re ill. You’re more important than a fucking job. Deal with it.”
“You’ve given up your dream job because of me?” Andy puts his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. “Fuck.”
“What? What’ve I done fucking wrong this time?”
“Ed, this is stupid. Why are you doing this?”
“I’m not pissing our time away in the fucking shadow chancellor job while I could be here with you. Don’t know if you are as thick as two short comprehensively educated planks, but I fucking love you.”
“Ed, please. Library loan, remember?”
“No. Fuck you. If you’re dying, I’m spending every last fucking minute I can with you, and I don’t care what the fuck you say - just try and get fucking rid of me, and I’ll finish you off myself,”
Andy scowls at his knees. Even now, sitting in a fucking hospital bed, Ed finds new and more imaginative ways to put his foot in it, thoroughly piss Andy off and generally act like a prick (and no, Andy doesn’t think this ironic. Andy’s not being a prick, Andy’s being very reasonable. The sun shines out of Andy’s arse, remember?). It’s not the death threat that guts Andy like a fish, but the way Ed brushes aside the library-loan reminder. Ed’s always fixated on time and goodbyes, Andy’s much more spontaneous, and doesn’t like being forced into Ed’s behavioural patterns any more than he likes being forced into a hospital gown.
“Fuck off, Ed. Go home.” Andy says dully, and it hurts more than if he’d shouted it and thrown a catheter bag at Ed. He doesn’t need this, he doesn’t need this prick lecturing him, patronising him, clinging on to him. It’s fucking tiring, and Andy’s been stuck with it for months now. He wants a fucking break. “Fuck off.” He repeats, when Ed doesn’t move. “Fuck off.”
“I didn’t mean that, Andy. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.” Ed says, shortly, and barrels of. Andy can feel the anger and resentment radiating off him even as he disappears through the double doors. He thinks he hears a few ‘cunt’s and ‘ungrateful arsehole’s too, which get Ed escorted from the stair well even faster.
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It takes a lot to provoke that sort of response from Ed these days. Working with Gordon flushed out that disappearing act, harnessed the humiliation, frustration and anger and turned it into a political force. After a shouting match with civil servants or Gordon or any of Tony’s lot, Ed could achieve more in an afternoon than in three days of calm and concession.
It’s not until now, when he’s faced with something big - an ominous something, the train coming slowly across the desert with him tied to the tracks - that he retreats onto the back doorstep. He gets home from the hospital, and sits on that frigging doorstep, chin in his hands. He listens to engines backfiring, and cars and a barking dog, and hates everything in sight and earshot. Andy has a similar tactic, although it usually involves firecrackers, cigarettes, dope or neat vodka (they’ve spent so much time on this back doorstep Ed’s amazed they haven’t eroded arse-imprints into the concrete).
This house, this bloody back garden, this contemplation and sense of impending hell.
He tries to keep calm, not to think too hard, not give up yet, to not get carried away, but his thoughts are like paint on wax, going every which way he doesn’t want them to. He holds his head as if somehow keeping his head still will stop his thoughts going at right angles.
It’s all been so quick. So fucking quick, and Ed blames politics for that. If it weren’t for politics, if Andy hadn’t been working so hard, if he’d had a routine, if he’d looked after himself more, he would never have got so bad. If he hadn’t been stressed out by politics in the first place (here Ed takes the blame, because he’s worked out the night Andy had his ‘encounter’, Ed was spending his third night running in his office, going over OECD and IMF predictions), Andy wouldn’t have let That Cunt put his cock in him.
If Andy had just taken a bit more time to look after himself - if Ed had made him take more time - then right now he’d still be healthy, he’d have years not months.. He hasn’t even got months. He’s 100 and something, and Ed just knows he’s not going to get out of hospital.
If it hadn’t been for fucking socialism and communitarianism and the goodness of Andy’s bleeding little heart, Andy might have been more bloody selfish and remembered to have the fucking pneumonia jab (he had the flu one, but pneumonia was less regular. Fucking doctors, why didn’t they hunt Andy down, tie him to the chair and just force him to have it? Twat and his needle phobia...)
And now Andy expects Ed to carry on in politics without him? To slide up the fucking greasy pole, as if nothing’s happening. How can Andy tell Ed to carry on? What does it matter now? Ed’s glad that email leaked. Now at least he’s got an excuse to bury his head in the sand and never see daylight again.
All because Andy concentrated on fighting Tories instead of fighting infections, fighting like it’s a civil war, like everyone’s lives depended on it. Stupid, brave bastard. Ed has never thought of Andy as brave before (it sounds like his mother, calling him a brave boy for not crying when he fell out of that tree when he was 6), but it all reminds him why he loves Andy: because Andy (a bit like Ed, which Ed would notice if he had any capacity for self-reflection) is all or nothing, and always has been.
He’s on the phone to Andy’s room before he even realises what he’s doing. Andy’s been there 1 night and Ed already knows the extension number.
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They’re lying together on Andy’s hospital bed, the laptop on Andy’s knees, watching illegal internet streams of South Park, holding cups of tea (Ed brings a thermos of tea from home every day, knowing Andy is particular about his brew). He hates that Andy’s lived in hospital for a week, and does everything he can to make it feel more like home: Andy’s Everton scarf is hanging at the foot of his bed, postcards on the wall, his lucky mug on the side.
“What?” Ed tilts his head to look at Andy, careful not to dislodge the IV. Ed hates that IV more than he hates anything right now. It’s like Andy’s tethered, on a fucking leash, and it only serves to remind Ed of how trapped they feel by the rapidly decreasing timescale, the intrusion into their personal lives, and the things it’s asked them to change (routine, eating habits, drinking).
“When I’m gone.” Andy clarifies, “What d’you think you’ll miss most?” Andy repeats his question, quietly, eyes fixed on the currently-streaming disclaimer at the beginning of the episode.
“What a fucking stupid question,” Ed says, harshly. He feels guilty as Andy’s expression falters a little, but, thankfully, Andy stands his ground. He’s still got some fight left in him.
“Match of the Day, going to the pub, film marathons, holidays, showers, morning fucks? What d’you think you’ll miss most?” Andy repeats, firmly. He wants an answer and there’s no way he’s letting Ed dictate anything like this. He wants to know and he’ll be buggered if he goes without knowing what Ed will remember him for (mawkish, mawkish, jesus, Burnham, you really are a Smiths fan, aren’t you?).
“Andy, please don’t make me do this.” Ed’s voice quivers.
Andy clicks ‘play’ and they watch for a few minutes.
“Are you going? Definately?”
Andy shuts the laptop lid, lifting it off his legs onto the table. With it gone, Ed puts his hand on the duvet over Andy’s chest.
“It feels like it.”
It feels strange to admit it finally. It’s coming now, not in some abstract ‘future’ where there's pill food and jetpacks.
“You’re breathing.” Ed tells him, finally.
“Course I’m breathing. I’ve got a few days left in me yet.”
“No, I mean, that’s what I’ll miss most. Your breathing. And snoring. A pulse. You being alive.”
“Oh.” Andy shifts around. Ed’s head is ducked to hide the fact that he’s got tears in his eyes. Andy kisses his forehead, affectionately. He wishes he could make this easier - for both of them.
“I want to be flung about at Goodison. Promise?” He says it now while he’s on a roll. If he leaves it any longer, he might just start crying too. The little things make him feel better, and he knows Ed likes having things to do, things to distract himself. Andy’ll have to leave him a schedule. “And I’ll need ‘Abide with Me’, and I’m going out to Danny Boy because me Mam used to sing it at me when I was a kid.”
“Stereotype.”
“You’ll have to cringe your way through it, and be grateful I’m not asking for ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’.”
“What if Goodison don’t want you? Isn’t it illegal now?”
“Fuck ‘em. If you can’t get me on the pitch, just chuck me over the stands.”
“So you want me to commemorate you and honour your memory by getting beaten up, arrested and ejected for throwing ashes over the Everton faithful?”
“Yeah. You better do it, otherwise I’ll come and haunt you.”
“You fucking better haunt me, mate.” Ed cradles Andy’s head, and the idle speculation ratchets up in intensity. Andy feels Ed’s terror like electricity. His whole body is taut, as it always is when they’re talking about Andy’s coming mortality: frozen, like a rabbit in headlights, jumping between denial and defeatism.
“I’ll try.” Andy puts his hand on Ed’s. “But we haven’t got any unfinished business. We’ve sorted everything. I’ve even told you that I love you.”
“You say it all the time.”
Every day for the last year. They’re both so scared of missing the last opportunity, that they say it when one of them even leaves the room for a piss, let alone goes back to Leigh or Outwood. He meets Andy’s eye and the laugh tails away.
“Don’t die,” Ed croaks.
Andy really doesn’t want to.
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“Excuse me,” The nurse shakes Ed’s shoulder gently, trying not to wake Andy. “You really can’t stay here all night,”
“Shit, no.. sorry,” Ed tries to disentangle himself from Andy without waking him, but Andy feels Ed being taken away and automatically recoils, clutching Ed’s wrist.
“Andy, I’ve got to go,” Ed whispers, and hates that he has to speak at Andy like he’s an invalid or a child.
Sleepy and drugged up, Andy clings on. His eyes are screwed tight shut, and he holds Ed’s hand up to his lips. Ed wants to just bundle him up and take him home, but at home there’s sleep paralysis and silences and sounds that a drug-infused brain takes and runs with like fucking improvisational theatre. The sleep paralysis had been awful towards the end, with Andy waking him at least one morning out of three, with sweat on his top lip and tears in his eyes at some new sight or sound that had pinned him to the mattress. At least here they can deal with that better than Ed.
“Don’t go,” he begs in a whisper, biting the skin on Ed’s knuckle.
Ed struggles out of Andy’s grip, squeezing his hand, and kissing his hair. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise. Cross my heart.”
It’s odd the way it’s changed them. They’ve always been tactile and Ed’s always been sentimental, but Ed hasn’t promised to ‘cross his heart’ since his first real girlfriend when he was 11. In any other situation, Andy would have never let him live that down, but in his current state, Ed knows Andy won’t even remember him having said it in an hour.
He fucking hates sedatives. It’s not right, it isn’t. Andy shouldn’t be... like that. Tired, pale, sick, exhausted. He’s always matched Ed for workaholism, argumentativeness and cutting humour, but now he’s lucky if he can form a coherent sentence. Ed doesn’t mind Andy talking bollocks when he’s drunk, but every time Andy closes his eyes nowadays, Ed is scared he’ll never open them again. He’s picking fights with Andy’s body clock, his natural requirement for sleep. Biology. Ed hates biology.
Ed tramps out of the hospital, hauling his heavy coat on and heading for the bus stop. He kicks at the station plastic, absently. Andy looked so small. He’s scrawny at best, but now he looks like ... well, like a terminal late-stage HIV patient. A dying man.
It’s like it’s not Andy lying there anymore, and Ed doesn’t know whether he just caught Andy on a rough day or whether that change might be permanent. And how long is permanent anyway?
“Andy, you’d better fucking get back to normal,” Ed mutters, kicking a newspaper into a puddle, ignoring his own face on page 17.
He knows it won’t happen and he hates that he knows that.
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Ed’s allowed to lie there all day because it’s only a matter of time. The doctors nod sadly at him as they pass, reverent and respectful of the institution of death. Andy’s not even gone and everyone knows he’s lost. Andy dozes most of the day, slipping in and out of consciousness.
The only words Ed hears him say are ‘sorry’ and ‘god’. Ed isn’t sure if Andy’s apologising to God or not, but it makes him even angrier, because that means Andy is going through the motions. Repenting his sins and preparing for purgatory, damnation or salvation.
By 6:00, Andy wakes up properly, freeing Ed’s trapped arm. He looks better than yesterday, less drawn and lipless. Thank hell, because Ed couldn’t sleep last night for feeling guilty at Andy’s pleading eyes and ferocious sweat and panic and medicine-induced delirium.
“Aren’t I dead yet? Didn’t think I’d wake up again..”
“Nor did I.. you were whispering to God.. D’you want a priest or something?”
Andy laughs, and it sounds something like his normal laugh - proper, energetic, genuinely amused.
“No. You’re better than any priest,” Andy curls his fist - weakly, god, so weakly - around Ed’s jumper. “Love you,”
“So much. You have no idea,” Ed replies, but Andy’s eyes are closed again.
Ed closes his own eyes, forehead resting against Andy’s, his hand on Andy’s.
When he wakes up, Andy is silent. The IVs and oscillator and systems have been cleared aside while Ed’s been asleep. Ed looks into Andy’s still face, and hates how warm and peaceful he looks.
There’s time of death, phone calls to Andy’s parents, the obit, the crematorium, and so much fucking more to come, but for the moment it can all go hang, because nothing - not one single fucking thing - is going to ruin this moment for him, a moment which Andy seems to have orchestrated perfectly (Ed truly believes that’s within Andy’s powers).
He looks like Sunday mornings: sleepy, content, unhurried, relaxed, slightly hungover, exactly where he wants to be - in a warm bed, in a great job, in a fucking incredible relationship. It’s like World Cup Hangovers when they woke up on the sofa, surrounded by crisps and bottles, post-May binges when ‘at least I’ve got you’ was the only consolation they had (although they never uttered that sentence out loud), or like 2008, when they started this, and every morning was odd because they woke up beside their best friend and it honestly didn’t matter when they were going to die because they were rom-com happy, so much so Ed sometimes wondered if they were both on drugs.
Andy looks like that now, although shadowy in the badly lit bed, and so, so still, and cold. His lips are purplish, and his eyelashes are so long they look false, and Ed smiles just a fraction because he knows Andy would have hated that. Ed wants to tell him he’s beautiful, because that’s something he’s never been allowed to do - not even when drunk, it’s only allowed as ‘you beauty!’ after scoring a goal, when Ed’s also allowed to grab him and plant a kiss on his forehead because that’s what men do at football - but his throat seizes up and he can’t get any noise out.
Andy looks almost happy, though, and it’s small consolation that, even though he’s had a miserable bloody time the last few weeks (months), he wasn’t scared.
It means more than Ed can say to have that as a last image. So much more. He mutters a perfunctory ‘thanks’ to God, kisses Andy’s still lips, tells him, again, how much he loves him, and that he misses him already.
He really, really does.
thank you so much for comments, means a lot. Sorry about sporadic updates, too - computer problems. Not perfect, but I can't stare at this anymore without going mad...
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Fuck it, I'm crying like a little girl. My fifteen-year-old sister is staring at me from across the room like I've gone mental. I don't even -
Don't ever, ever do this to me again. I don't think my poor heart could take it. But seriously, this is gorgeous and sad and you are a wonderful, wonderful writer. You've just broken my heart, is all.
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Absolutely beautiful and heart-breaking, anon.
Thank you so much for writing this.
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I can't tell you how much I wanted to scrap the last 30 pages and replace it with a miracle cure and happy ending...
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There are some fics which I obsess over, trying to work out how exactly someone's created such a fantastically moving and enthralling universe, and I can already tell I'll be back reading this one again and again.
The punctuating brutality of your writing packs a punch. I'm really, really glad you didn't miracle cure the ending because it really is absolutely perfect as it is. You didn't shy away from the clinical nastiness of the illness (and also, by the way, I'm fucking impressed how well you've researched this) and you left almost everything unsaid. I love that. It makes everything so much more certain.
I'm babbling because I'm sure to fangirl this until I wear out all my fangirl, so just basically this = perfection and you = an incredibly talented writer.
And seriously fuck Billy Bragg and that song ;____;
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Thank you
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Amazing work! I cannot praise you enough authoranon!
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This really is one of the best fics on the entire meme. Bravo.
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