Prompt #2: Let freedom ring.
Title: Independence Day
Author: onidoko
Rating: PG
Warnings: Boys kissing boys. Also possibly sacrilegious, though not intended necessarily to be anti-Christian.
Word Count: 1,563
Summary: Life and death aren't always mutually exclusive.
Notes: This was supposed to be finished and posted by last Monday, in (a somewhat cynical?) celebration of America's Independence Day. Obviously that didn't happen, but here it is anyway. Partly inspired in a very non-direct way by Martina McBride's song Independence Day, which you can hear here. Also, this is meant to be a response to Prompt #2. I went in a very different direction than everyone else, I think, but that's the wonderful thing about prompts: hope everyone enjoys it anyway.
Well, she lit up the sky that Fourth of July
By the time that the firemen had come.
They just put out the flames and took down some names
And sent me to the county home.
Now, I ain’t saying it’s right, or it’s wrong;
But maybe it’s the only way
Talk about your revolution - it’s Independence Day.
Martina McBride - Independence Day
There was something ineffably wrong about a graveyard in the middle of a summer afternoon.
True enough, everything was dead. Patchy clumps of snarled grass clung stubbornly to the dust, a sickly blight baked into hard angles he could feel even through the soles of his sneakers. A copper with no metallic sheen; the color of dried blood. So that was alright. The stagnant air, thick and stifling and shaded ever-so-slightly with the murky haze of distant city pollution, hadn’t offered a single breeze in weeks. It smelled of heat, a thick, acrid odor which clung to the back of his throat every time he inhaled; the peculiar rot of summer. Not a single wisp of cloud haunted the dull, gunmetal sky. Even the birds in the surrounding woods lacked the energy for song.
And of course, there was no one else here. That was the entire point.
Still. Graveyards were at their best during autumn nights, shadow-cloaked and full of moonlit whispers; or maybe in winter, frigid and austere beneath a blanket of bone-white snow. There was nothing romantic about sun-bleached tombstones or wilting vegetation.
Tilting his head until it hung over the edge of the sarcophagus, Sam gazed absently past the tree he thought of as theirs to the yellow mustang parked just behind it, where it always was. He could hear the engine creaking faintly even at this distance, struggling to cool in the uncompromising heat. The windows of the old car were streaked with the same dust clinging uncomfortably to his skin, caught in the rivulets of sweat which slicked his pale hair and glistened against his exposed throat. Shirtless, the grey stone beneath him burned along his spine. The inscription on the slab had long since faded into obscurity, but he could feel the illegible indentations stamped into his flesh: memory which now existed through touch alone. And he might have been more impressed with the thought, had the plastic decal on his lover’s t-shirt not been currently pasting itself in a similar manner against his chest.
Caught between an epitaph and a college logo.
Grunting wearily, he worked an arm in between their sticky bodies and crowbarred them apart, dragging his heels along the stone as he hugged his knees to his damp chest. Rather than look at David, Sam let his gaze wander over the uneven rows of grave markers.
“It’s too hot,” he said dully, feeling some explanation was in order. David worked his fingers through his bedraggled hair and said nothing.
Sam picked up a chalky fragment of stone and chucked it half-heartedly toward the abandoned church, watching it disappear into the weeds. For the first time in three years, it struck him that this was a strange place for trysting. He brushed his chalky fingers against the leg of his jeans and tilted his head back to look up at the sky. “When do you leave?”
David tugged the collar of his shirt back into place, his sticky fingertips brushing the lettering on his chest as he let his hand fall back to his side. “Tomorrow.”
“Could have told me.” He swallowed hard, tasting dust and a dry bitterness that had nothing to do with the weather.
“Just did.”
Sam picked up a second stone, its aimless trajectory carrying more force this time. He rubbed the slippery grit between his fingers, mixing dirt and sweat and thinking about the pull and tug of fingertips caught against zippers. “I still have your varsity jacket,” he recalled quietly. Not that he’d ever been able to wear it to school.
Dave was silent for a long moment, scratching the bridge of his broad nose and leaving behind a smudge of dirt. “Yeah. You can keep it, though,” he said. Hesitantly.
“Suppose you’ll get a new one at college, anyway.”
“Suppose so.” Dave dug one fingernail into the sarcophagus’ engraving, tracing the shapeless letters. His nail made a dry, flat scritching noise against the stone, the back of his knuckles grazing Sam’s ankle. Colonel Jellyworth; that’s what they’d named the now-anonymous corpse moldering away beneath them. Neither boy could recall why. Both remembered that particular night, though; championship night. All the football players carousing noisily beneath the stadium lights, drunk on adrenaline, while their captain slipped away here. In a town as small as theirs, it was the one place no one else ever went.
“You can have that one, too,” he offered after a painfully long pause, awkward and unsure.
“Why? So I can stuff it with the other one in the back of the closet, praying no one ever accidently finds it?” Sam’s tone was blistering, even in the afternoon’s scorching heat, but Dave didn’t flinch; he had always been the strong one. Sam supposed that came with having the most to lose.
“It was just a thought.”
No; it was an offer. An offer that made him cold with fear; an offer he wanted badly to accept. “My father would kill me if he caught me wearing your jacket,” he muttered, scuffing his heel against the stone and resting his chin on his knee.
“Fuck him.” Dave always swore so elegantly, with the thoughtless fluency only athletes and teamsters ever seemed to obtain. It was one of the small, stupid things Sam loved about him. So many small, stupid things.
Loved.
He felt sick.
“No,” Sam announced abruptly, stretching out his long legs and hoping to the ground. “Fuck me.” He grabbed Dave’s wrist and tugged him to his feet, with enough unexpected force that the skin of the other boy’s palm scraped raw against the tombstone. Rough. Ungainly. Inelegant. Much like their hasty kiss, damp mouths sliding awkwardly against sweating skin, fingers fumbling, the ashen taste of dust caught between their colliding teeth. David was still struggling for balance when Sam reeled him in, and he accidently stumbled forward and stepped on the other boy’s foot. Pain flared, inconsequential and quickly lost to the heat rising up from the ground beneath their shoes.
“Where?” Dave managed, skimming dirty fingertips along the frayed waistband of Sam’s jeans.
“Car.” Sam took a fistful of damp t-shirt between his fingers and tugged him in that direction, but he was walking backward and tripped over a rock, and almost sent them both sprawling.
“Leather seats,” David warned, grabbing Sam’s elbow to steady them both. Simultaneously, they pulled a face.
“So fucking hot,” Sam complained, looking around unhappily. The graveyard may have been deserted and well-screened from the road by a thick copse of trees, but daylight was daylight. “The church?”
“Locked, isn’t it?”
“Abandoned.”
“And locked.”
“So we break in.”
“You want to break into a church.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A church.”
“Yes.”
“To have …” The tips of his ears went pink where they stuck out of his mussed hair.
“You leave tomorrow,” Sam pointed out, and there was so much pain in that single word, so much more pain than he’d ever meant to show, than he’d ever meant to feel, that David swallowed hard and nodded.
“Yeah. Okay.”
===========================
He’d never forget the weird colors the dusty, half-broken stained glass window made against their bare skin. Or how what they were doing should have felt wrong, but didn’t. How the single unbroken pew smelled like molding Bible pages but didn’t feel any different from the backseat of David’s mustang.
How he had screamed out for God in his ecstasy because he knew no one was listening.
There were picnics to attend, people to see; at some point, someone was going to wonder why it was taking Dave so long to run to the store for hotdog rolls. But they sat on the hood of Dave’s mustang for a long time after, picking splinters out of their hands and watching the tree shadows slowly reclaim the cemetery from the sun.
“You could come watch the fireworks with us,” Dave tried finally, unable to avoid it any longer.
“I already saw fireworks,” Sam joked, but it fell flat and neither of them smiled.
Goodbyes were cliché, and so they avoided them. David merely touched the side of Sam’s jaw with his fingertips after the smaller boy declined a ride home, and then the mustang was humming its way into the darkness.
Sam stared after him until he couldn’t see the car’s tail lights any longer. It was the first time he’d ever been here alone, and the first time it had ever felt like a cemetery. Even in high summer.
“Independence Day,” he murmured out loud, rolling the words around his dry mouth as he stretched out once more on top of Colonel Jellyworth’s tomb and felt the remnants of a fading epitaph stamp themselves against his bones. Folding his hands behind his head, he closed his eyes.
This, then, was death; to be alone.
He inhaled deeply, letting the breath out in a slow hiss of defeated air; listening to the far-off thunder of fireworks and wondering just what America thought worth fighting for.
Author: onidoko
Rating: PG
Warnings: Boys kissing boys. Also possibly sacrilegious, though not intended necessarily to be anti-Christian.
Word Count: 1,563
Summary: Life and death aren't always mutually exclusive.
Notes: This was supposed to be finished and posted by last Monday, in (a somewhat cynical?) celebration of America's Independence Day. Obviously that didn't happen, but here it is anyway. Partly inspired in a very non-direct way by Martina McBride's song Independence Day, which you can hear here. Also, this is meant to be a response to Prompt #2. I went in a very different direction than everyone else, I think, but that's the wonderful thing about prompts: hope everyone enjoys it anyway.
Well, she lit up the sky that Fourth of July
By the time that the firemen had come.
They just put out the flames and took down some names
And sent me to the county home.
Now, I ain’t saying it’s right, or it’s wrong;
But maybe it’s the only way
Talk about your revolution - it’s Independence Day.
Martina McBride - Independence Day
There was something ineffably wrong about a graveyard in the middle of a summer afternoon.
True enough, everything was dead. Patchy clumps of snarled grass clung stubbornly to the dust, a sickly blight baked into hard angles he could feel even through the soles of his sneakers. A copper with no metallic sheen; the color of dried blood. So that was alright. The stagnant air, thick and stifling and shaded ever-so-slightly with the murky haze of distant city pollution, hadn’t offered a single breeze in weeks. It smelled of heat, a thick, acrid odor which clung to the back of his throat every time he inhaled; the peculiar rot of summer. Not a single wisp of cloud haunted the dull, gunmetal sky. Even the birds in the surrounding woods lacked the energy for song.
And of course, there was no one else here. That was the entire point.
Still. Graveyards were at their best during autumn nights, shadow-cloaked and full of moonlit whispers; or maybe in winter, frigid and austere beneath a blanket of bone-white snow. There was nothing romantic about sun-bleached tombstones or wilting vegetation.
Tilting his head until it hung over the edge of the sarcophagus, Sam gazed absently past the tree he thought of as theirs to the yellow mustang parked just behind it, where it always was. He could hear the engine creaking faintly even at this distance, struggling to cool in the uncompromising heat. The windows of the old car were streaked with the same dust clinging uncomfortably to his skin, caught in the rivulets of sweat which slicked his pale hair and glistened against his exposed throat. Shirtless, the grey stone beneath him burned along his spine. The inscription on the slab had long since faded into obscurity, but he could feel the illegible indentations stamped into his flesh: memory which now existed through touch alone. And he might have been more impressed with the thought, had the plastic decal on his lover’s t-shirt not been currently pasting itself in a similar manner against his chest.
Caught between an epitaph and a college logo.
Grunting wearily, he worked an arm in between their sticky bodies and crowbarred them apart, dragging his heels along the stone as he hugged his knees to his damp chest. Rather than look at David, Sam let his gaze wander over the uneven rows of grave markers.
“It’s too hot,” he said dully, feeling some explanation was in order. David worked his fingers through his bedraggled hair and said nothing.
Sam picked up a chalky fragment of stone and chucked it half-heartedly toward the abandoned church, watching it disappear into the weeds. For the first time in three years, it struck him that this was a strange place for trysting. He brushed his chalky fingers against the leg of his jeans and tilted his head back to look up at the sky. “When do you leave?”
David tugged the collar of his shirt back into place, his sticky fingertips brushing the lettering on his chest as he let his hand fall back to his side. “Tomorrow.”
“Could have told me.” He swallowed hard, tasting dust and a dry bitterness that had nothing to do with the weather.
“Just did.”
Sam picked up a second stone, its aimless trajectory carrying more force this time. He rubbed the slippery grit between his fingers, mixing dirt and sweat and thinking about the pull and tug of fingertips caught against zippers. “I still have your varsity jacket,” he recalled quietly. Not that he’d ever been able to wear it to school.
Dave was silent for a long moment, scratching the bridge of his broad nose and leaving behind a smudge of dirt. “Yeah. You can keep it, though,” he said. Hesitantly.
“Suppose you’ll get a new one at college, anyway.”
“Suppose so.” Dave dug one fingernail into the sarcophagus’ engraving, tracing the shapeless letters. His nail made a dry, flat scritching noise against the stone, the back of his knuckles grazing Sam’s ankle. Colonel Jellyworth; that’s what they’d named the now-anonymous corpse moldering away beneath them. Neither boy could recall why. Both remembered that particular night, though; championship night. All the football players carousing noisily beneath the stadium lights, drunk on adrenaline, while their captain slipped away here. In a town as small as theirs, it was the one place no one else ever went.
“You can have that one, too,” he offered after a painfully long pause, awkward and unsure.
“Why? So I can stuff it with the other one in the back of the closet, praying no one ever accidently finds it?” Sam’s tone was blistering, even in the afternoon’s scorching heat, but Dave didn’t flinch; he had always been the strong one. Sam supposed that came with having the most to lose.
“It was just a thought.”
No; it was an offer. An offer that made him cold with fear; an offer he wanted badly to accept. “My father would kill me if he caught me wearing your jacket,” he muttered, scuffing his heel against the stone and resting his chin on his knee.
“Fuck him.” Dave always swore so elegantly, with the thoughtless fluency only athletes and teamsters ever seemed to obtain. It was one of the small, stupid things Sam loved about him. So many small, stupid things.
Loved.
He felt sick.
“No,” Sam announced abruptly, stretching out his long legs and hoping to the ground. “Fuck me.” He grabbed Dave’s wrist and tugged him to his feet, with enough unexpected force that the skin of the other boy’s palm scraped raw against the tombstone. Rough. Ungainly. Inelegant. Much like their hasty kiss, damp mouths sliding awkwardly against sweating skin, fingers fumbling, the ashen taste of dust caught between their colliding teeth. David was still struggling for balance when Sam reeled him in, and he accidently stumbled forward and stepped on the other boy’s foot. Pain flared, inconsequential and quickly lost to the heat rising up from the ground beneath their shoes.
“Where?” Dave managed, skimming dirty fingertips along the frayed waistband of Sam’s jeans.
“Car.” Sam took a fistful of damp t-shirt between his fingers and tugged him in that direction, but he was walking backward and tripped over a rock, and almost sent them both sprawling.
“Leather seats,” David warned, grabbing Sam’s elbow to steady them both. Simultaneously, they pulled a face.
“So fucking hot,” Sam complained, looking around unhappily. The graveyard may have been deserted and well-screened from the road by a thick copse of trees, but daylight was daylight. “The church?”
“Locked, isn’t it?”
“Abandoned.”
“And locked.”
“So we break in.”
“You want to break into a church.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A church.”
“Yes.”
“To have …” The tips of his ears went pink where they stuck out of his mussed hair.
“You leave tomorrow,” Sam pointed out, and there was so much pain in that single word, so much more pain than he’d ever meant to show, than he’d ever meant to feel, that David swallowed hard and nodded.
“Yeah. Okay.”
===========================
He’d never forget the weird colors the dusty, half-broken stained glass window made against their bare skin. Or how what they were doing should have felt wrong, but didn’t. How the single unbroken pew smelled like molding Bible pages but didn’t feel any different from the backseat of David’s mustang.
How he had screamed out for God in his ecstasy because he knew no one was listening.
There were picnics to attend, people to see; at some point, someone was going to wonder why it was taking Dave so long to run to the store for hotdog rolls. But they sat on the hood of Dave’s mustang for a long time after, picking splinters out of their hands and watching the tree shadows slowly reclaim the cemetery from the sun.
“You could come watch the fireworks with us,” Dave tried finally, unable to avoid it any longer.
“I already saw fireworks,” Sam joked, but it fell flat and neither of them smiled.
Goodbyes were cliché, and so they avoided them. David merely touched the side of Sam’s jaw with his fingertips after the smaller boy declined a ride home, and then the mustang was humming its way into the darkness.
Sam stared after him until he couldn’t see the car’s tail lights any longer. It was the first time he’d ever been here alone, and the first time it had ever felt like a cemetery. Even in high summer.
“Independence Day,” he murmured out loud, rolling the words around his dry mouth as he stretched out once more on top of Colonel Jellyworth’s tomb and felt the remnants of a fading epitaph stamp themselves against his bones. Folding his hands behind his head, he closed his eyes.
This, then, was death; to be alone.
He inhaled deeply, letting the breath out in a slow hiss of defeated air; listening to the far-off thunder of fireworks and wondering just what America thought worth fighting for.