you are my center, when i spin away.
Haha, okay so, first of all, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS HAPPENED. It just, um, did. The entire time I was writing this fic (read: the entire time it was kicking my ass in every way imaginable) the one question in my head was, "HOW IS THIS MY LIFE?" and that is a question that I still have no answer for but, whatever, it's fine. David Cook is awesome, David Archuleta is awesome. There is no reason why they can't be fictionally awesome together at the end of the world, is all.
Seriously though, this fic has me feeling way more nervous and jumpy more so than any other fic I've ever posted before and I-- I don't know. It's weird and probably not very good at all but a couple of people have ~assured me that it's at least halfway decent and to be honest, I really just want to get it posted and away from me at this point. I NEED TO ~EXORCISE IT. Or something. Anyway, here it is.
You Are My Center When I Spin Away
David Cook/David Archuleta
~5,000 words, PG-13
Beta-ed by quack who I love and adore
All forms feedback and concrit are appreciated ridiculous amounts
The first thing he does is break into a car.
He chooses carefully, an old muscle car from the 70s with huge a leather back seat and shiny black paint. Whoever owned this car loved it. That much was clear by how clean and looked after everything it about it was. (He put a brick through the driver’s window, smiling as the glass shattered all over the sidewalk.)
Archie had been too tired to even argue with him about morals, he’d just stood there and watched it all happen, falling asleep almost as soon as David pulled him into the passenger seat, before they had even set off. He always looked impossibly young in his sleep, open and innocent; unmarked. It made David’s mouth ache, just a little.
The anger comes in waves; it ebbs away leaving an eerie calm feeling whispering through his bones, and then crashes violently over his head, drowning him. He grips onto the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turn white and clenches his jaw until pain shoots down his neck, and then clenches harder still, grinding his back teeth together. He thinks about running the car into a brick wall, going out in fire and flames and destruction, just like the rest of the world. He floors the accelerator and keeps on driving, his throat burning with a scream that’s trying to claw its way free.
Somewhere around the fifteen hour of driving Archie stirs and wakes up, rubbing at his eyes with closed fists, yawning. He turns his head, shooting David a sleepy smile and just like that, the anger rushes out of him. Archie had always been able disarm him without even trying, why should it be any different now that the world’s ended? (It isn’t fair really. David’s spent his entire life carefully building his walls, and just by smiling, this kid manages to bring them all crashing down.)
David breathes in deep (one, two, three), winds the window next to him all the way down, eases his foot on the gas and carries on driving, calmer now. He carries on until he can’t keep his eyes open for another second. He throws his jacket over Archie, fast asleep again, and crawls onto the back seat, and lets himself drown in the snowy static of sleep, tension still coiled tight down his spine.
He wakes up with Archie’s face pressed against his neck, his fist curled tight into David’s t-shirt. Archie’s heartbeat is sure and steady, familiar as the opening notes of song that he’s played a million times before. It feels safe. He buries his hand in Archie’s hair and closes his eyes. (He’s asleep again almost instantly.)
He doesn’t cry. It’s strange really, all those times when tears have come so easy to him, they had just been another way to show emotions that had been too big to fit inside him, bubbling over like lava, and now there are none.
(He doesn’t cry.)
“I can’t believe no one ever taught you how to drive.” He says looking over at Archie sat in the passenger seat.
“I, um, I don’t know? My Dad, he was always scared I’d crash or whatever and we kept meaning to get like, a proper instructor but, I don’t know, Idol happened and then um, there were people to drive me all the time and I was really busy and oh my gosh stop laughing at me.” He sounds so young that for a moment David thinks his heart is going to burst, it feels too big to fit inside his chest.
“Come on, I’ll teach you.” He brakes the car and opens the door next him, watching as a smile breaks out on Archie’s face. (He thinks that maybe if he can keep Archie smiling, they’ll both be okay.)
“Oh my gosh, really?”
“Well, sure, it’s not like there’s anyone for you to run over anymore.” It was supposed to be a joke, but the words fall flat, the air between them, weighing heavy. Archie stares down at his hands in his lap, and David can see the tension that’s built up in his shoulders.
“Archie I’m... I’m sorry okay? That was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry. C’mon.” David reaches over and rests his hand on the back of Archie’s shoulder blade, pressing down just enough that he can feel the muscle shifting over the bone as Archie moves. He keeps it there until he feels the all the tension that’s built up drains away, and even then he doesn’t let go; just holds still, listening to the steady, even sounds of Archie’s breathing. (It’s as if they stay together long enough, maybe their broken pieces will fit together enough to make a whole.)
Archie has nightmares sometimes. He never talks about them.
One night, after falling asleep on another dusty floor of another building, David wakes up to Archie hunched in on himself in the corner of the room, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes and biting down hard on his bottom lip.
He flinches when David puts a hand on his shoulder and it hurts him more than he should. He pulls his hand away, his fingers aching just a little.
“You okay, Archie?” He digs his nails into the palm of his hand, pressing down hard and concentrates on not reaching out again.
“I was just...” David thinks his heart might be about to break when Archie takes a deep, shuddering breath in, “I was just dreaming about home. You know... before.”
David just nods slowly, watching Archie wring his hands in his lap. He reaches out carefully to touch them and Archie pulls away, carefully. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and tries not to think about how much that hurt. When he reaches for his hands again, Archie doesn’t pull away, not even a little. David catches his wrist, his thumb and forefinger circling the fragile skin there in an unbroken circle.
“It’s okay to be upset, you know, Arch.” David hears the choked, desperate sound Archie makes at the back of his throat, and pulls him in. He doesn’t let go, keeps holding him even when Archie’s breathing goes slow and deep.
“Hey, Cook? What’s um, seven letters, and an inevitable or necessary fate?” He’s reading out each word carefully, like he doesn’t want to get anything wrong. It makes David smile.
“I don’t get it Arch, you’ve never liked doing crosswords before, in fact, I seem to recall a lot of teasing from everyone on the tour about them,” He throws half a twinkie at Archie’s head and watches the blush creep up his neck from under the collar of his t-shirt.
“Um, well, I don’t know, it was just... you always like them so much and if this is, you know, it then figured I should give them a try?” He isn’t looking at David when he’s talking, just staring down at the puzzle book on the table in front of him, a look of deep concentration of his face; his tongue poking out just slightly in the corner of his mouth. It makes David’s chest clench.
“Destiny.” Archie cocks his head to one side, confused, “The word, Arch. It’s destiny.”
The sun is streaming through the window behind Archie, lighting him up, and for a second, David feels his breath catch in his throat. There are so many words in the English language, but he doesn’t think that there’s one for this, this feeling, this moment.
With his eyes closed and the sound of Archie’s laughter in his ears, he can pretend that nothing ever happened. He can pretend that everything isn’t broken. (He struggles to hold onto the moment.)
Archie keeps a diary.
He carries it everywhere with him. Wherever they end up, it’s always in the the beaten-up messenger bag that’s always over his shoulder; one of the many things about Archie that David can count on no matter what. It’s nothing special to look at, just a normal spiral-bound notebook, but Archie always holds it so delicately, as if it would break if he held it too hard. David’s only seen him write in it a handful of times; bent over the pages, his brow furrowed and a look of determination in his eyes that he’s never seen on him before. It’s a little unnerving.
He only asks him about it once, when they’re exhausted from lack of sleep, sat in the middle of what used to be Central Park, looking upwards at the night sky stretching out forever above them.
“Um, I don’t really know? I guess... I always did before and I just-- I needed something to make it seem real and not like nightmare, because, um, sometimes I’m not that sure.” His voice breaks wide open before it trails off completely and David can feel the hurt pouring out of it. He can see Archie’s hand gripping onto the notebook so hard his fist is shaking, he wants to touch it; he wants to make it better for him.
He nods and swallows around the lump forming in this throat before reaching out and looping his arm around Archie’s neck, pulling him close and him keeping him there, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
He doesn’t ever ask to read it. (Maybe it’s easier when he can still pretend that this is all just a messed up part of his subconscious. It’s easier when he can pretend that he could still wake up.)
They only argue once.
Caught in between a rock and a hard place, in a constant cycle of exhaustion and frustration, he lashes out. He doesn’t even remember how it started, only recalling the way his head had clouded, the way he gripped the steering wheel so hard it was hurting, the way he gripped on harder anyway. The way he’d looked over and said "Jesus fucking Christ David, grow up."
Archie just nods and falls silent, looking down at his hands carefully folded in his lap. He doesn’t even try to argue back. It knocks the fight right of David, leaves him with nothing but a cold, sinking feeling settling into the bottom of his stomach. He makes it through three and a half minutes before he can’t take it anymore; he misses the sound of Archie’s voice. He stops the car.
“Hey man, look, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t be taking things out on you.” When Archie doesn’t answer, he stops the car and turns his body around to face him fully, “I need you and me to be okay, Archie. I don’t think... I really don’t think that I can do this whole thing without you.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the side of his face, waiting until he answers, “Okay?”
When Archie look up, David can see the too-bright edge in his eyes, his face looking more drawn and tired than he’s ever seen him look before; more broken. It makes him feel sick. When Archie makes a vaguely helpless noise in the back of his throat, David doesn’t even need to think before he’s reaching for him.
“We’re going swimming.” David says suddenly and brakes the car, hard.
“Um, what?” Archie looks confused until he looks out of the car window at the lake. David pulled him back, “Oh! But um, I always got told that lakes were dangerous... and stuff... and we could, um, drown or something and oh my gosh-Cook!” David just laughs and gets out of the car, walking around to the passenger side. He opens Archie’s door and crouches down so he’s at eye-level.
“We won’t drown.” He rests a hand on Archie’s cheek, hardly touching him, “I won’t let you drown. I promise. Okay?”
“Um, all right then, I guess.” David lets out a cheer and pulls Archie out of the car, grinning so hard he thinks his face might break.
They light a fire by the side of the lake afterwards, trying to get some warm back so they can stop shivering. Neither of them says a word. David just looks into the middle of the fire, watching as the flames twist and dance, licking at the air around it. It looks so soft that he wants to touch it. He doesn’t. (He keeps his hands balled into tight fists at his side, concentrates his energy there. Holds it.)
He almost jumps at the feather-light touch on his shoulder; Archie is reaching for him first and David can feel his fingertips trembling just a little through the material of his shirt. (Something bursts under the surface of his skin, and he doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to. His fist unclenches without him noticing.)
“Um, David?” He can barely hear him over the crackling from the fire, from the wind in the trees, “Are you okay?”
He can feel the laughter catching in his throat when he turns to face Archie. He doesn’t laugh though. Instead, he thinks words like maybe and home. The thoughts are accidental, but they don’t feel wrong. It feels like maybe they were there to all along, buried under the rubble of distractions; like they were just waiting from the right time to breathe. David doesn’t know what to do with that. (He watches the flames from the reflection in Archie’s eyes and the fire burns brighter.)
They find the guitar by accident.
It was left lying abandoned by the side of another lonely dusty road in another state he couldn’t remember the name of. He doesn’t even have to think before he’s opening the case and lifting it out; curling his left hand around the neck and pressing his fingertips down hard onto the metal strings. It feels like coming home, like having the lights turned on after sitting in the dark, and for a second he thinks he might cry. He doesn’t. He just keeps on staring down at the instrument in his hands. (For a moment, he thinks he can feel the turn of the earth under his feet.)
“Oh my gosh.” He can hardly hear Archie over the rushing of blood around his skull. When he looks back, Archie’s grinning up at him, wide and open and real. David wants to learn the shape of it, the taste of it. (He shivers at the thought, and pushes it to the back of his mind.) He smiles back.
“This is...” He searches his brain for the words but they won’t come. He didn’t realise how much he missed this. He didn’t know.
“Play something!” He never could deny Archie anything, not when there’s that clear, hopeful edge in his voice. He starts the first song that comes to mind, playing with no effort at all. (He missed this. He missed this. He missed this.) His entire body feels like its on fire, he can feel it crackling in his veins.
“C’mon Arch, sing with me.” He means for it to sound playful, but there’s too much there. It feels heavy on his tongue. “Please?”
Archie nods and opens his mouth to sing the chorus; David doesn’t join in right away, just keeps playing the guitar, listening to Archie’s voice, as smooth and warm sounding as ever. He can’t remember the last time he’s heard him sing, it feels good to listen again; feels a lot like how things used to be. (Archie’s voice soars over the lyric the life that I knew, it’s through, and I’m gonna need you more than ever and David feels it like a gunshot wound. He joins in the singing, feeling it like a physical thing, the way their voices seem to melt together; painting colours around his mind.)
The song comes to an end and he can feel something buzzing in the air between them, can feel it sparking against his skin, making his teeth itch and his stomach twist almost painfully.
“David...” He starts to say, but Archie’s looking at him with a look that he’s never seen before, and just like that, he’s done. Something shatters inside his ribcage and he’s done. He reaches out before he can make himself think and brushes the tips of his fingers across Archie’s forehead, watching as his eyes get wider.
“Cook? Um, what...” Archie never gets to finish the thought before it gets crushed under the feeling of David’s lips on his, the feeling of his hand cupping the back of his skull, pulling him even closer. He tastes like last chances and new beginnings. (Time has turned fluid, one second just running like water into the next, crashing like a tidal wave over their heads.)
He keeps their foreheads pressed together when they pull apart, passing the same breath back and forth between them (almost like a duet).
“Is this okay?” Because he has to ask. He can’t do this if Archie isn’t okay.
“Oh, um, yes?” David smiles against the skin of Archie’s cheek and breathes in deep as he tries to hold onto the weightless feeling in the bottom of his stomach, the loose and disconnected feeling at the base of his spine, the way he can feel Archie’s pulse racing. It’s a little like learning to walk again, and a lot like learning to fly. (A brand new chord sequence begins to unfold in the back of his mind.)
They stop on a beach on the thirty-fifth night.
Archie looks down at the water from the rocks they’re sitting on, burnt driftwood littering the sand. He gets a far-away look in his eyes, just shrugging and staring down at his feet when David asks him what’s wrong.
“I just... I’ll be right back.” He doesn’t say anything else, takes off his shoes and socks, walking slowly and purposefully towards the ocean.
David stays behind, watching Archie outlined by the moonlight, standing perfectly still with his toes in the surf. The only thing he can hear are the waves as the crash into each other over and over again; never staying still, never stopping. Almost like him Archie, when he thinks about it. (He tries not to.)
David doesn’t know how long he watched him for (time was a useless concept to them now, seconds and hours melted seamlessly into each other, all that made sense was the sun rising at the sun setting, living day by day) but somewhere along the way, he starts to make out a tremor in Archie’s shoulders. It doesn’t take long for the tremor to turn into something more violent; he’s shaking. David walks over on instinct, stopping only when he’s next to Archie, who just kept looking down at the waves lapping against his feet. He wasn’t making noise; even at his breaking point he was quiet.
It made David’s heart ache. He doesn’t say anything. He just buries his hand against Archie’s scalp and lets him cry until he can’t anymore.
On the fortieth day, it snows.
“Oh my gosh, we have to go out in this! Come on, Cook!” David doesn’t even have time to pretend to argue before Archie’s pulling him outside by his hand, lacing their fingers together on instinct. (A thrill runs down his spine at that and he thinks he’ll never get used to it; he hopes he never does.)
He watches as Archie looks up to the sky with an almost childlike wonder as it falls around him, catching the snowflakes on his tongue, laughing. It’s good to see him laugh again, he didn’t do it so often these days; David leans in to catch the taste on his tongue.
Archie laughs again when he pulls away, loud and open and genuine, his head thrown back and the sun reflecting off the snowflakes caught on his eyelashes. David’s chest clenches almost painfully; it’s the most heartbreakingly beautiful sight he’s ever seen.
They stay out until they can’t feel their feet or fingers anymore.
David dreams in the colours of music.
The green and yellow the drums crashing in the distance, the swirling dark reds and purples of violent guitars spilling out against a black and white background. (The lines of million different staves bleeding together until he couldn’t tell where one ended and another began.)
And through it all a single note, one single thread for him to keep hold of in all of the madness. The soothing blue of a piano note, dancing its way through the chaos, tying it all together, keeping him grounded. (Somewhere along the way, that piano note had taken shape; it became its own melody, soaring above the confusion into an endless blank sky. Somewhere along the way, that melody had become the kid lying next to him. Somewhere along the way, it had become David Archuleta, and that didn’t scare him as much as it should have done.)
He hears the scream before he even wakes up. (It seems to pierce through into his dreams, drags him headfirst into consciousness.)
Archie isn’t next to him, that’s the first thing he notices, and he can feel the sharp spike of panic in his chest even over the fog of sleep, and suddenly he’s more awake than he thinks is possible. Every nerve ending in his body on fire.
“Archie!” He sounds hysterical even to his own ears, but right now, he really doesn’t give a fuck, not when Archie could be --
“Cook?” David can hardly hear him over the white noise in his head but it’s enough, it’s enough. He doesn’t slow down as he runs out of the front door of the house they crashed in last night, seeing Archie almost as soon as he does. (The blood rushing around his skull only gets louder, his pulse doesn’t slow.)
He stares down on the broken glass all over the ground around Archie, the sun reflecting off it making his eyes sting, reflecting back at him the destruction that surrounds them both. There’s blood around the edges of some of the shards and he feels sick to his stomach. He crouches down next to Archie, his hands slowly running over every part of him, stopping when they reach the cut on his leg; finding the spot where the blood has seeped through the material of his jeans. He rests his palm there, feels the warm liquid against his skin.
“Cook...”
David’s kissing him before his brain even has time to catch up, fisting his hands into Archie’s shirt; unable to do anything but hold on. He feels just this side of too urgent, white-hot panic still rising in his chest, sticking in his throat, clawing at his ribcage from the inside. He can still taste it, sharp and unforgiving. His mind’s still racing (not him, not him, not him) and he can’t keep up. All he can do is pull Archie closer and try to block everything else out. He buries his right hand deep into his hair and twists a little; if it hurts, Archie doesn’t let on, he just stays still, kissing David back and David still feels like too much he’s drowning. He smoothes a thumb over Archie’s cheekbone, his hand still shaking more than he’d like.
“I’m- Cook, Cook, I’m okay. It’s just a scratch.” David can feel Archie’s breath dancing across his right cheek as he whispers. He’s not sure he’s ever felt anything better in his life, and all at once it’s like the colours are slowly fading back around them, the world swinging back into focus. It’s just a scratch. When he pulls back to look at him, there’s a smear of blood across David’s cheekbone.
He wipes it away.
David’s always thought that a person was defined by moments. By what they did in each moment, how they were used; because that’s all there was. Life was a series of a moments building up on each other, locking together like pieces of a mismatched jigsaw.
Archie was beginning to show him how wrong he had been. People are defined by feelings. (Looking down at the hand laced together with his... he’s never understood that more in his entire life.)
It catches him by surprise sometimes, the way memories can creep up on you out of nowhere. The way they seem to pick the worst times to resurface; times that cause maximum damage.
It’s the last night of the tour, and he feels infinite; standing on the stage with some of the most talented people he’s ever going to meet, trying to absorb every second he has here, listening to the crowd, spiky adrenaline rushing under the surface of his skin. He can feel it buzzing in the air around him, making his head spin the best kind of way, bathing everything in a soft, golden light. He’s never known a feeling like this before.
Later, when alcohol has made the world fuzzier around the edges, it’s still golden, still soft. He feels like he could let himself fall into it and it wouldn’t hurt; he could just let him himself fall forever. He feels like he’s twelve feet tall, like he can do anything.
He can hear Johns laughing from across the room, Jason messing with an acoustic guitar and Brooke’s singing along and Archie’s stood right in front of him, smiling in that lopsided way of his and breathing out a laugh, and suddenly he feels a rush of everything. He doesn’t think there’s a word for this emotion. It feels too big to fit inside his chest, too big to fit inside the room. He thinks he might start to cry again. He doesn’t. He pulls Archie into him without another thought, holds him there.
“I love you. You know that right?” He says it because it’s true, the truest thing he knows. His throat feels tighter all of a sudden and his eyes are stinging when he eventually pulls back.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Of course he knows, Archie always knows.
They had the entire world at their feet, waiting for them to take off. Now this is the world; nothing but a tangled mess of death and broken dreams and here they are, still standing alone; together (like twin shipwrecks in the middle of a desert).
David Cook sees in the milky dawn hours of the one hundredth morning since everything shattered like glass around him sat on the top of a skyscraper in New York City, slowly picking out something that could be the beginning of a new song on the guitar in his lap.
He’d left Archie sleeping a few floors down. He always felt guilty for waking him up; for dragging him from his dreams into this place. This place where there was nothing left but the echo of all that was, nothing but the two of them left to pick up the pieces of everything left behind, mangled and twisted beyond recognition. It was up to them to try and fix it, to bandage the still-bleeding wounds just enough for them to survive; just enough for them to keep breathing, to make something from the shards left behind. (He knew though, that there was no fixing this. There is no rewind button. It was up to them to keep on going, go out fighting. That’s all that was left now.)
He takes a deep breath in, feeling the cold morning air as it floods his lungs, and slowly slides the guitar off his lap, listening carefully for the hollow wooden sound as it makes contact with the cement of the roof. Empty. It’s as though every part of him aches as he stands up and starts walking towards the edge, one step at a time, going until his toes are almost balanced on air. It would only take one tiny movement, one wrong motion, and he’d be free falling. It’s an oddly comforting thought.
He just stares down at the carnage on the deserted streets, forty storeys below him; the uncensored wreckage of what life used to mean laid out in front of him. He doesn’t keep looking for long; he closes his eyes and squeezes them tight, watching the splashes of blue and green from behind his eyelids, breathing in and out slowly. Controlled. Sometimes it was still just too much, too impossible.
He can feel Archie breathing next to him and reaches blindly for his hand without a thought, without even opening his eyes. He just knots their fingers together and grinds the heels of their palms against each other, as if he’s trying to squash all the pain that was caught between them; turn it all into nothing more than dust; a whisper of a memory. Maybe he is. Archie clings back, his hand feeling like fire and ice at the same time. David squeezes harder, feels the bones of his fingers crack under the pressure. It might have hurt if it didn’t feel so good; if he didn’t need it so much.
“I knew you’d be up here.” Of course Archie knew. He always knows. David doesn’t answer.
“We’re gonna be okay, right Cook?” His voice sounds so small and fragile, like a spider’s web stretched between his fingertips. David opens his eyes and turns to face him, taking in the delicately hopeful look on his face. He can’t help smiling just a little bit, the corners of his mouth pulling upwards of their own accord. One hundred days on and they’re still breathing. They’re still here. That has to count for something.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be fine.”
And in that moment, one hundred days later, standing on the edge of skyscraper, his hand holding Archie’s like a lifeline and the sun just coming up off the horizon, he lets himself believe it.