a/n: this has literally been in the works for like two years, and i just got around to finishing it. enjoy!
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something always brings me back to you,
it never takes too long
five years to the day of victoria vega's death, andre harris gives one more interview before shutting himself down completely.
in years to come, he won't remember what he wore, what was said, or even what show he appeared on and what the interviewer's name was. in years to come, there will only be one moment, one memory, the quote that will haunt him until the day he dies, because it was a lie.
the interviewer asks, "do you have any regrets?"
andre smiles a smile that says of course I don't. "well, i'm still young, and i've got a lot of life to live. every time i mess something up, i learn from it, and i try not to make that mistake again. so, i guess not - i don't really have any regrets."
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andre harris lies a lot.
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andre harris is fifteen years old when he meets victoria vega. she's pretty, he thinks, and she has a nice voice. there's nothing really special about her, but she's funny and she makes him laugh and they have a good time making fun of trina. he doesn't know when he started to fall for her, and he regrets that a little bit.
if you asked him, he might tell you that it was some crazy, love-at-first-sight type of thing. but it wasn't. he didn't love her. not yet.
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one night, while he's alone in his room, he writes her a song and names it "tori vega, what my dreams are made of."
it's cheesy, and he rips up the paper he wrote it on later, but at that moment all he can think about is the way her hair falls over her shoulders, the way her eyes crinkle up when she laughs, and the way she looks at him (and the way she looks at beck.)
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beck and tori start dating when andre is seventeen. everyone, including andre, sees it coming. jade, of course, throws a fit and doesn't talk to anyone for days. her parents find her, weeks later, lying on the floor with a bottle of pills in her hand. beck says she did it on purpose - "she was always dramatic."
tori, for her part, doesn't seem too bothered by it, ignores the gossip, and makes out with beck right in front of andre.
he kind of wants to kill himself.
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the night after their graduation from hollywood arts, andre harris gets in his car and drives to the hollywood sign. nothing is impossible for him, he thinks. he's on top of the world.
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after high school, he moves to europe and spends a few years playing piano for the prime minister of some country and having a little too much fun with french girls. he hears that tori and beck are engaged, and tries to not to give a fuck. he receives phone calls from trina, robbie, and cat, in that order, asking him to come back for the wedding. i can't leave my job, he says, lying through his teeth, i'm sorry.
he's not.
french girls are wild in bed, but he has a hard time remembering their names and so somehow always ends up moaning tori, tori, tori.
he appreciates it when they pretend not to notice.
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finally, with a week to go before the wedding, beck calls.
"dude, you have to come back. it's not gonna be the same without you. and besides, who's gonna be my best man?"
"look, beck, i'm really sorry -"
"don't be sorry. just come. please. tori's been asking about you. she wants you there."
he goes.
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tori and beck get married and it's beautiful and everybody cries, including andre, but his tears are for a different reason. he hears that people magazine is paying 1.5 mil for the wedding photos, but gets mad when the photographer wants a picture of the groom and best man together. at the wedding reception he makes a wonderful best man speech and everybody claps and tori gets tears in her eyes and jumps up to hug him. his eyes shut involuntarily and he holds her tight and mumbles into her shoulder, why couldn't you have loved me?
she looks up, a smile on her face, and says "what was that?"
"nothing, baby girl, i'm just so happy for you."
lie.
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that night, he takes trina back to his grandmother's apartment and fucks her against his grand piano.
if he squints, she looks just like tori.
he leaves with a one-way ticket back to paris the next morning, leaving trina sleeping on his bed and a note that says, so sorry.
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the years pass without anybody counting them. eventually andre gets tired of france and goes to spain, and boy, are spanish girls wild. he writes letters to tori but never sends them, and they all begin and end with i love you i love you i love you.
tori gives birth to a daughter named rebecca katrina, to be called (what else?) Becks, and from the pictures cat emails, she's a beautiful little girl with beck's hair and tori's smile (and probably trina's ego). they sell the first photos of their daughter to people magazine and get even richer and more famous than they already were, because beck and tori and lovely and beautiful and the perfect couple and rebecca katrina is just simply fucking gorgeous.
he misses life in california more than he cares to admit, even to himself, but whenever he feels too nostalgic he inevitably finds some hot girl named adriana or something like that and loses himself in her curves, trying to forget everything.
one night, as the sun sets behind his casa, he sits down at his piano and plays the only song he remembers now.
tori vega, what my dreams are made of...
then he gets mad at himself, because, god, isn't she what he's supposed to be forgetting?
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she calls him one day, and asks him to come home.
"please," she says quickly, "it's just not the same without you here. come home, please, we've got our high school reunion coming up, and everybody will be so excited to see you, and actually, trina's been asking about you a lot too, which is weird, but -"
he cuts her off. "okay," he says quietly, the sound of her voice slowly breaking his heart. god, he misses her. "okay, i'll come."
"and it will be just like old times! you can meet becks, and see beck, i mean, you haven't seen him since the wedding! and cat, and robbie -"
"tori."
"sorry."
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he goes.
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he touches down at lax and tori's there, and she runs up and throws herself up at him, and he just puts his hands in her hair and whispers, yeah, i missed you too, baby girl.
so much.
and the paparazzi just lap it up and he goes slightly blind from all the flashes, and he doesn't care to admit it but he's forgotten, he's forgotten what life in hollywood is like and to be honest, he couldn't have missed it more.
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he goes to the hollywood arts high school reunion, and has a mediocre time. the old gang (minus jade) holds court at their own table just like old times, and halfway through sikowitz shows up, and of course he hasn't changed at all, except he's starting to go a little gray at the temples.
everyone else is laughing and reminiscing, but andre just feels uncomfortable, and realizes this is what he went to europe to escape from. he can't really take it, all the togetherness, all the memories resurfacing, all the things he worked so hard to bury are quickly rising to the surface.
so he excuses himself and runs to the bathroom, locks himself in a stall, and sobs quietly about everything he's lost and everything he's never had a chance at holding.
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after the reunion, he wants to go back to europe as quickly as possible, but tori begs him to stay, so he does.
that night trina comes and "visits" him, and asks him why he left that morning after the wedding, all those years ago.
i just couldn't take it, he tells her quite honestly, and she nods to herself. "that's what i thought."
he chuckles quietly, and smiles at her, because after all these years, someone's finally figured out his secret.
she stays the night, and the next one too.
she pretends not to notice when he moans out, tori tori tori.
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tori tells him that she wants to take rebecca to see the hollywood sign, and will you come with us, please?
he wants to, he wants to spend more time with her now that he's back in california, but he legitimatly needs to work on trina's upcoming album that he got roped into producing. so he says no, maybe next time, sorry.
on the way there, tori and rebecca get hit by a drunk driver, and die instantly.
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nobody knows what to do. nobody. beck is somehow suddenly a single man and no longer a father. trina is an only child. cat and robbie are left without their best friend.
andre thinks he wants to kill himself.
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tori vega, 29, actress, dead.
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everyone's in mourning. the radio plays all her old hits on loop. lifetime shows a marathon of her movies. e! releases their true hollywood story.
andre sits holed up in his apartment with trina.
they don't know what to do with themselves.
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five years to the day of victoria vega's death, andre harris gives one more interview before shutting himself down completely.
in years to come, he won't remember what he wore, what was said, or even what show he appeared on and what the interviewer's name was. in years to come, there will only be one moment, one memory, the quote that will haunt him until the day he dies, because it was a lie.
the interviewer asks, "do you have any regrets?"
andre smiles a smile that says of course I don't. "well, i'm still young, and i've got a lot of life to live. every time i mess something up, i learn from it, and i try not to make that mistake again. so, i guess not - i don't really have any regrets."
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andre harris lies a lot.
i don't want to fall another moment into your gravity
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