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... )
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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The thing that really gets me going is their last conversation when Andy requests to be scattered over Goodison. It just breaks my heart every time.
Whoops, total anon fail there.
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Excuse me while I cry and F5
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This was amazing, beautiful, more than words can say <3 I think the fact we are all sobbing like babies just shows what an amazing job you did. I have never EVER read anything that has effected me as much as this (the last chapter in particular.)
AMAZING JOB!!!
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