hearts that hum like helicopters
pairing: sam/freddie
summary: Do you understand the sadness of geography?
This has a non-linear time line. It's kind of out of order, sorry if that's confusing! :) It is also inspired a lot by the the book The English Patient. The quote at the end is from The English Patient, as is "When you leave, forget me". The quote at the end is the one on Freddie's post-it note, in case anyone gets confused.
- -
Once, a girl leaves a note on a boy's pillow.
- -
"Sometimes it feels like I've known you since the beginning of time." She tells him, her legs swinging over the edge of the fire escape ledge. Her hand dangles closely to his.
"Well, you haven't." He replies, shortly. But he knows exactly what she means- sometimes he imagines her a well-read book, pages worn and crinkled from being thumbed through, edges dog-eared, letters faded. He knows her too well, maybe, and at the same time he doesn't know her well enough.
Her mouth curves into a smirk. He wishes he could kiss her.
He doubts they'll ever change.
- -
Freddie and Sam fuck sixteen times over the course of one year (their junior year of high school). It is a story they already know by heart, have memorized and breathed it in along with the feel of each other, the scent of their skin, the bite of Sam's teeth, the grasp of Freddie's arm. They already know the ending, the middle, the beginning, because they have lived or will live each and every part of it.
Sam whispers to Freddie, after this we'll either never see each other again or see each other every day for the rest of our lives.
He believes it to be a choice, an option- she does not.
One day, he wakes up to nothing but an empty bed and a note on the pillow next to him.
- -
Freddie knows things Sam will never know.
He knows how to solve the Pythagorean Theorem, how to fix a laptop that's crashed, how to reassemble a broken heart without running away.
He knows this last one solely because of her. She leaves so many times sometimes Freddie thinks he will permanently have a shattered heart. It is in so many pieces- she takes one each time she leaves, each time he wakes up and she isn't there.
He also knows he is in love with her. She'll never know that, either.
- -
Carly shoots herself a year after they graduate.
- -
There is a gravestone with the name Carly Shay on it. That's all Sam remembers.
(She blacks out right after that, and tries to dream she is in heaven with Carly, a place Sam suspects she'll never really reach.)
- -
Sam reads the newspaper article exactly ten and a half days after Carly dies. She rewrites it for her, cuts and pastes and crosses out all the information that doesn't matter. In the end, the only thing it says is,
Carly Shay died of a broken heart.
Apparently she walked into her apartment and put a gun to her head.
- -
"Blow out your candles, Sammy!" Carly's laugh echoes in her ear. Sam grins at her, a cocky, arrogant smile, and says,
"Let's do it together." Carly rolls her eyes,
"It's your birthday, crazy."
Nameless strangers mill around them. A man knocks into Sam, she pushes him away.
"I know. Come on, you and me, Carls. It's always gonna be you and me."
Carly's smirk changes- a fraction, an inch. A corner of her mouth turns down.
"Yeah." She whispers. "No, of course it is!" She brightens again. "You and-"
Freddie pulls Sam into the crowd, yelling to Carly he has to talk to her.
Carly blows out Sam's candles, and wishes for nothing, nothing, nothing.
- -
Dear Sam,
Hi.
I know, too cheerful of a start, probably, for a suicide letter. But oh well. Maybe you'll like it.
I know you said it was always going to be us. You and me. Carly and Sam. But I never told you something:
I was having an affair with Griffin. You know. Like, having sex with him.
I think you knew, though. I know you suspected- Carly Shay, drinking? He taught me how. Told me all the right beer to get, the best kinds- remember, when you were using a fake ID, and I told you you should get a certain kind of beer, because it was better? You seemed so surprised.
In ways, he was sort of a teacher.
I'm pregnant. Or- I was. I was? I still am. I feel like I am.
I didn't know. I went out with you and got drunk because I felt like I could, smoked even though I said I never was going to, got smashed and stupid and reckless.
I would have killed my baby. I am killing her.
He ended it with one sentence:
"I can't do this anymore, she'll find out."
So? So? I wanted to scream at him. Fucking should have thought of that before!
I loved him. I love. I love him. He told me he loved me all the time, but he never meant it. I wanted him to. Oh, god, I wanted- so many things.
Tell Freddie I'm sorry and he was one of my best friends. I'm not going to write him a letter, because I don't want him to know all these things about me, the darkest and most terrible things. I did write Spencer. Tell him you know I loved him.
This feels so cowardly, Sammy. But I don't- I can't do this another way. I'm so...
I just want you to know, Sam, I always, always loved you best.
Carly
- -
Sam disappears for a year sixteen days after Carly shoots herself in the head. She rips Carly's letter into pieces and travels to every place Carly ever said she wanted to go (New York, Paris, Spain, California) and drops a torn off piece of it there.
She spreads Carly's secrets around the world. The whole time she thinks of nothing (nothing, nothing, nothing).
- -
This is a surprise. He says, opens up his door to see a blonde-headed demon waiting for him.
It shouldn't be. She speaks for the first time in a year and sixteen days. Before, she would have found it strange that her first words were to him. Now, she finds she doesn't mind. Maybe she just doesn't care.
Yeah. He says, trails off.
Sometimes, I don't even understand myself, she says.
(He assumes this is her way of saying, sorry I left and didn't tell you where I was going for a year.
And sixteen days and five hours and twenty four minutes and seven seconds-)
His eyes stay focused on her face. He traces the contours of it, pretends it is a map, a script.
I understand you, he replies.
This is a lie. No one understands her. The only person who understood her is gone.
She takes his hand.
Okay, she whispers. Okay.
- -
She reads his lips like a poem, sometimes- whispered words and frayed sentences that cut off at meaningless times saying meaningless things. She memorizes the shape of his lips, the curve of his tongue as it swipes across them. She breathes in his words, and they resonate within her, the echo of them- she hears them every night before she goes to sleep, every morning before she wakes. They play over and over, like a tape that's a mixed up mess of broken hearts and kisses and dark brown eyes.
Reads his lips like one of ee cummings poems, a breathless intake of fast paced and jumbled sentences (buckets and buckets) and allows herself a glimpse of his face, sometimes. But no, it is his lips she reads and rereads, like a book, like a play she is preparing for.
(I love you, his lips sometimes whispers and her heart hums like a plane a helicopter in the distance but she only sees the outline of his lips, because she is always running before she can hear the words.
I love you.
Her heart murmurs, and she reads his lips from miles away. Nobody loves me, but he never hears her and she's not sure she'd want him to.)
- -
Sam and Freddie have sex the day before Sam leaves for a year and sixteen days. For a month after Carly had died, they had just laid next to each other, in a type of wistful seeming dreamland. Sam rereads a letter everyday, he sees her do it. The pages are so worn now that it looks like it is years old, not months.
He already knows what will happen once Sam forces him against the wall, presses her lips onto his, her mouth on his mouth. He knows because he lived it for a year, and then a year after that, and then nothing, so he knows.
He wakes up in the morning to nothing but a note and an empty bed, and he really can't say he's surprised, but it still cuts at him. She takes another piece of his heart, and it hurts. That (only that) never changes.
- -
Dear Freddie,
I don't really want to write this, but you deserve an explanation, don't you?
Sometimes I'm not sure what you do or don't deserve, do or do not want. You wanted me, though. I thought- you did, didn't you? I think you did.
I'm not made for this. That sounds like an excuse, it's not. Or maybe it is. I don't know.
I guess I should say sorry. Carly would want me to... so, sorry. So sorry? No. So, sorry. So, I'm sorry.
Apologizing is stupid.
I don't even think I can trust you, Freddie. I hate you. I thought I did- a long time ago. The beginning of time, remember? We used to sit on the fire escape a lot.
I think I do hate you. Sometimes, you would stand, just stand, and not say anything for a long time. I wanted to know what you were thinking, but I never asked.
Here's what I wanted to say:
I hate you.
(but you know what I mean, don't you? I don't- I can't say it.)
I hate you so much it's killing me.
- -
He knows what she means.
- -
Sam comes back every time. Until one time she doesn't.
(he wonders how people live through this sort of love, this sort of torture.)
- -
Once, Sam and Freddie are lying in bed together and he presses her lips to her shoulder. (it is his shoulder, hishishis. SamandFreddie. Sam. And. Freddie. They're the same, except they're not. She was right, there are things about her he'll never understand.
It's always gonna be-
Don't say it.
Why not? It's you, and-
I said don't say it!)
She leans towards him and rests her head in his neck. He can feel her lips murmur against his skin, forgotten words to a forgotten song that he'll never really hear her sing.
His nerves light up and frazzle, split off into pieces, break and crackle and explode.
He almost says something to her but his lips slide shut- like they had never been opened at all.
- -
Are you in love with her?
Who?
You know who.
(Of course he knows. Who else? When has there ever been anyone else?)
Ah.
Well?
It doesn't matter.
Spencer stares at him for an eternity and a half.
It matters.
(Saying it doesn't matter is a lie.
Well, she's a liar, isn't she?
But you're not.)
- -
Sam comes back after she leaves for a year and sixteen days, and he thinks she's going to stay with him for good.
He asks her,
"Are you done running?"
She never answers.
A day after that she's gone. This time there's no note.
(He knows he'll never see her again, but it won't matter.
I told you, I love you! I'm going to love you forever.
No, you won't.
Why not?
I'll break your heart.
Maybe I'll break yours.
You won't. And besides, why would I want that?)
- -
She presses a hand onto his heart.
When you leave, forget me.
- -
Here's the true story:
A boy and a girl fuck and they fall in love and one runs away and the other stays.
That's all.
- -
Eventually he'll break your heart, you know. Carly tells her. It is a warning she's not so sure she wants to accept as one, it feels more like a tale (why? Why do you think that? Why does everyone think that?).
Nobody breaks my heart, Sam replies. A smirk plays across her mouth.
Carly says nothing and Sam sits there with her smirks and smiles like she's the fucking Chesire Cat. Carly just looks back at her.
Nobody. Sam repeats, ending a conversation that had never really begun.
- -
Freddie gets married. There is a ceremony and it's beautiful, with flowers that bloom and doves that fly around like angels. He has children, two perfect children and he loves them, and he loves his wife, too.
He lives happily ever after.
But he was right, before, when he thought they'd never change- they won't, and they never will.
(Freddie kisses his wife and he pictures blue eyes and brilliant smiles and eyebrow raises and a distance that could kill him and a heart that barely exists anymore, thanks to all the pieces she has stolen from it.)
- -
In their senior year, Sam asks him,
"Where's that quote from, Fredelupe?"
A cracked piece of his heart slips away, her voice sounds like a wisp of wind floating past the window.
"Which one?"
"The one on the post-it note."
Oh. That one.
- -
His arm knocks a stack of papers off the table, and Sam leans down to catch a glass that falls towards the floor, a smirk still lingering on each of their faces.
- -
Do you understand the sadness of geography?
- -
the end.