Title: "Little Boy, Blue."
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "Gilmore Girls"
Rating/Classification: PG-13, language, Tristan POV, angst.
Disclaimer: I could never do Amy Sherman Palladino's characters justice. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: A filler scene for "Run Away, Little Boy". Tristan walks the halls of Chilton Academy for the last time.
You'd always hated Chilton. You hated the pretentious name. The pretentious uniforms. The pedigree. The emphasis on heritage and lineage and the Ivy League. You hated enrolling. You hated your classes. Everyone knows you don't need a Chilton Academy to get into a stellar college. Just get your daddy to sign the check and off you go. America's current president is proof. But yeah, you always hated Chilton.
Tonight, you don't want to leave. You don't want to cross the threshold, to hear the doors slam shut behind you. Tonight, this place is as close to home as you've ever felt...and your father's Italian leather loafers click-click on the floor, a sharp notice for you to hurry it up. To say 'good-bye.'
How can you?
This is where you first heard laughter.
This is where you first saw people actually sharing things and speaking to each other like humans.
This is where you met Rory Gilmore.
And she reminded you that there's something like *life* in the world. Places where people don't care about what yacht club you're a member of or where your stepmother got her diamond cuff. Places where boys don't lie and cheat and girls don't spread their legs for every trust fund baby that walks by.
Too bad you couldn't hold onto the memory.
Too bad you got so caught up in the prep school trap. Boys will be boys. Play pranks to get attention...and get the wrong kind.
Your father didn't even yell at you when they called him. There was something like a glimmer of pride in his eyes, actually. A brief spark over something as plebeian as his boy breaking into the Bowermans' safe. And then it was gone. And he said four words in a voice that was half-cold and half-bored. "Military. School. North. Carolina." That's where you told Rory you were going...because that's what you've been told. You don't even know the name yet. You probably won't until you're standing on the front steps, pulling at your starched collar and mourning the loss of your hair.
All you know right now is that it's not home.
You want, desperately, to smoke. You still have the pack you shoplifted at that stupid little market in Star's Hollow. Three left in it. But you can't. Not inside. And not in the DuGrey's low-prestige third car. A mere Cadillac. They'll probably beat the vice out of you in military school. Maybe they'll make you into a man. Lord knows, your father did a piss poor job of it. Like his father before him.
A long line of dysfunctional DuGrey men. That's what you came from.
You have no idea where you're going.
Except that it's farther and farther away from safe and hope and warm and a girl whose eyes reflected more than just bright blue innocence. They reflected who she thought you were inside.
You wanted to kiss her good-bye.
You wanted the memorize the taste.
The taste of the closest thing to kindness you've ever known.
But you'd probably forget it anyway.
You always do.
It's easier than remembering who you could be.
--end--
November 27, 2001.
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "Gilmore Girls"
Rating/Classification: PG-13, language, Tristan POV, angst.
Disclaimer: I could never do Amy Sherman Palladino's characters justice. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: A filler scene for "Run Away, Little Boy". Tristan walks the halls of Chilton Academy for the last time.
You'd always hated Chilton. You hated the pretentious name. The pretentious uniforms. The pedigree. The emphasis on heritage and lineage and the Ivy League. You hated enrolling. You hated your classes. Everyone knows you don't need a Chilton Academy to get into a stellar college. Just get your daddy to sign the check and off you go. America's current president is proof. But yeah, you always hated Chilton.
Tonight, you don't want to leave. You don't want to cross the threshold, to hear the doors slam shut behind you. Tonight, this place is as close to home as you've ever felt...and your father's Italian leather loafers click-click on the floor, a sharp notice for you to hurry it up. To say 'good-bye.'
How can you?
This is where you first heard laughter.
This is where you first saw people actually sharing things and speaking to each other like humans.
This is where you met Rory Gilmore.
And she reminded you that there's something like *life* in the world. Places where people don't care about what yacht club you're a member of or where your stepmother got her diamond cuff. Places where boys don't lie and cheat and girls don't spread their legs for every trust fund baby that walks by.
Too bad you couldn't hold onto the memory.
Too bad you got so caught up in the prep school trap. Boys will be boys. Play pranks to get attention...and get the wrong kind.
Your father didn't even yell at you when they called him. There was something like a glimmer of pride in his eyes, actually. A brief spark over something as plebeian as his boy breaking into the Bowermans' safe. And then it was gone. And he said four words in a voice that was half-cold and half-bored. "Military. School. North. Carolina." That's where you told Rory you were going...because that's what you've been told. You don't even know the name yet. You probably won't until you're standing on the front steps, pulling at your starched collar and mourning the loss of your hair.
All you know right now is that it's not home.
You want, desperately, to smoke. You still have the pack you shoplifted at that stupid little market in Star's Hollow. Three left in it. But you can't. Not inside. And not in the DuGrey's low-prestige third car. A mere Cadillac. They'll probably beat the vice out of you in military school. Maybe they'll make you into a man. Lord knows, your father did a piss poor job of it. Like his father before him.
A long line of dysfunctional DuGrey men. That's what you came from.
You have no idea where you're going.
Except that it's farther and farther away from safe and hope and warm and a girl whose eyes reflected more than just bright blue innocence. They reflected who she thought you were inside.
You wanted to kiss her good-bye.
You wanted the memorize the taste.
The taste of the closest thing to kindness you've ever known.
But you'd probably forget it anyway.
You always do.
It's easier than remembering who you could be.
--end--
November 27, 2001.