Alfred was out of the car and on the ground the minute it stopped rolling. He hit the pavement running, sneaker covered feet flying expeditiously. His father was just exiting the car as he slammed through the doorway, wasting no time in stomping up the stairs, heart thudding in his ears.
"Alfred, would you please be quiet?!" Matthew called from inside his secluded room, obviously doing homework, obviously unaware of just how deep of shit his brother was in. Alfred didn't respond and merely flung open drawers, searching desperately for something that did not smell like Doritos and moldy swimming trunks.
"Woah, woah, woah, what's the rush kiddo? You didn't tell me you had somewhere to be?" Alfred's father lumbered up the stairs, carrying his son's burdensome duffle bag and football gear. The boy teetered on one leg, brushing out his hair with a long fingered hand and attempting to remove his gym shorts with the other.
"Uh… yeah, sorry Dad I have a date. Can I borrow the keys?" His father's identical blue eyes exploded, wide in incredulity.
"A date? Now that's my son! Who's the lucky lady?" Alfred swore under his breath as he buttoned up a crumpled white shirt, the buttons not quite matching at the end, forcing him to restart the tedious task. When finished, he squished past his father, shoving a toothbrush in his mouth and maundering under his breath, hoping that sufficed as an answer for the moment. Apparently it did, as his father set the shiny keys down on the bathroom counter, surprising the foamy mouthed boy.
"Just don't come home too late, alright? You have practice early tomorrow," He winked at his son and Alfred bent forward, spitting the guilt out of his body, washing it away with Listerine.
"Alright! Bye Dad! Bye Matt!" The tall boy called as he barreled down the stairs, receiving nothing other than a grunt from behind his brother's door and a 'Go get 'em!' cheer from his father. The snow broke underneath him as he paced toward the car, just pulling on his leather jacket when his phone began to vibrate in his pocket.
Alfred flinched, knowing exactly who was on the other end, dawdling to the car before finally pulling out his phone, pressing the cold mouthpiece against his cheek.
"Where are you?" He expected the venom, but not the amount of it, and it still stung him slightly as he began to unlock the car door.
"I'm sorry; I'm on my way now! My Dad wanted to get dinner after practice and, well, you know I can't just t-"
"So you already ate?" Alfred bit his lip slightly, cursing his bad choice of words.
"No, well yes, but not a lot! I could still go for a hamburger or some lobster or whatever you want," The teen waited patiently; hand on the door handle, praying silently for forgiveness under his breath, cheering on the phone like a sports team to give him the answer he so desperately wanted.
"No, forget it, don't come." The harsh sound of a hang-up echoed in his ears, reverberating off of the barren winter all around.
"Shit!" Alfred kicked the car with his chilled icebox feet, fumbling through his phone to redial the number and press send.
Across town, Arthur gave up waiting and left. He stood up from the bench he had sat frosty on for God knows how long, abandoning the chain restaurant and taking shelter in his car. A strong wind rocked the small vehicle as he shook ice from his coat, the vicious act of nature oddly matching the tumultuous roll of emotions inside him. Arthur was aware of the phone buzzing in his pocket, so he swiftly pulled it out and chucked it across the car, hearing it crack against the window and bounce onto the passenger seat. His purple fingers shook with cold and anger as he started his frozen engine, peeling out of the parking lot and onto the busy street.
The drive home was to be filled only with the Sex Pistols and bitter lamentations, but when the missed calls on his phone climbed to two, then three, then six, he reached out and snatched it from its spot, resolve snapping at an unusually long red light.
"What?" A relieved sigh resounded on the other end.
"Arthur, you finally answered! You should probably ignore those voicemails I left you, wow how embarrassing…" Arthur rolled his eyes and gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand as another gust of wind made his car oscillate in fear.
"Stop calling and get back inside, it's horrid out," The Brit scowled at a slow moving truck in front of him, swerving around an ice covered bend to pass it.
"No, stay there, I'm coming," The sound of a car door opening on the other end attested to this fact, and Arthur inhaled sharply in annoyance.
"Alfred, I said it doesn't matter, get over it."
"No!" The blonde's fissured knuckles shone white as he struggled with the wind and the boy on the line. Alfred was so immature, he could never lose, but that's what made him so dangerous. He was addictive and aggravating, a drug that did not mix well with emotionally unstable Arthur Kirkland.
Alfred's voice drone on and on incessantly as the snow kept falling and falling, a steady assault on the overwhelmed boy stuck behind the wheel. His car was too hot now, the heat streaming from the vents mingling with the overpowering air, crushing him underneath its weight.
Arthur crushed his lip between his teeth upon realizing he didn't even know where he was now. This wasn't the street to his home; this was an empty forest road, riddled with potholes and deer entrails, each dead, deciduous giant passing by him at an ever growing speed. Somewhere between the affection dripping out of Alfred's voice and the musty heat Arthur must have taken a wrong turn, landing him in the depths of nothing, road wandering deeper and deeper into the darkness beyond.
Arthur inhaled sharply, throat letting out a pained noise as he wondered why it was so hard to not get attached to things, why it was so hard to find a boy who would show up, why it was so hard to just find his way home, not be a stupid fuck up with no idea where to go or how to breath.
"Just-just shut up! Stop calling me! I said I don't w-oh my God-"
And then the line went dead.
"…Arthur?" Alfred whispered, hearing the dial tone again, but this time for real. The hate that had seethed out of Arthur's mouth had given him the message, he'd pulled the last straw, plucked the last nerve, he wasn't wanted anymore. The blue-eyed boy tried 3 more times, just for good measure, but when he only received dial tone and the same voice mail, he stopped, shutting the car door in defeat and retreating from the cold, his tail between his legs.
"Hey sport, what happened to the date? Didn't show?" His father asked when he entered the house, much slower than earlier, body a fluffy outline of snow.
"Yeah, she couldn't come after all…" Alfred muttered under his breathing, hoping no one heard him silently drop the 'S'.
Arthur awoke to the hideous cold and with half of his body missing.
His cheek was pressed against solid black ice; eyelids crusted shut in tiny tear icicles. The snow fell down lighter now, happy, sweet and romantic as it settled onto the blood oozing around.
So much blood, oh God there was so much blood, Arthur didn't know where it was coming from, but it was a river all around, offsetting the perfect white, destroying the scenic view. He tried to move, but his legs were limp like a scarecrow's, sacks of hay sewn to his body at the waist. The blonde breathed deeply and panicked, stomach convulsing as he tried to get his legs to work, but they continued to sit crooked and dead against the ground.
Arthur thought about crying, this was death after all, didn't people cry before they died, horribly, painfully, alone? But he stopped, eye catching something dull and gray against the white, a phone, a beacon bright against his eyes.
The struggle began, a century's long battle of pained screams and clawing hands as he dragged himself to the phone, legs dead weight behind him. Arthur could feel his chest splintering into his lungs and his skull rattle inside his head, but one thing pushed him forward, and that was regret.
Regret worked better than hope it seemed, because regret propelled him like a crippled rocket into the sky. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to be so alone he could hear the snow collide with the ground and his blood soak into the earth. He wanted Alfred; he wanted to feel his sunshine presence and bumpy skin underneath his raw fingers, not the cavernous ice beneath him. Alfred, Alfred, Alfred, he was a child with one thing in mind, Alfred, he would not settle for more, nor for less, just Alfred. Alfred next to him, near him, touching him. Alfred here, with him, where he should be, where he was supposed to be.
Arthur didn't know a lot about last words, but he knew a lot of people had them, and he knew he had wasted his. If he were to die, here and now, bleeding out on an empty road, his last words would not be '-oh my God-', they would be, 'I love you, Alfred.' So he found the strength to reach the phone, and he found the will to unlock it, but by the time he caught sight of his background picture, Alfred and him in the summer, sun shining on their brilliantly alive faces, alive together, he was so tired.
Arthur was so tired, the black encircling him was so warm, Alfred warm, full of smiles and laughs and chubby cheeks, so he let it swallow him whole and devour his ragged heart.
Alfred was head deep in a bowl of ice cream and horribly composed local news reels when everything stopped.
"Coming up next, a freak accident on an abandoned stretch of road leaves one local teenager fighting for his life. We'll be back after the break,"
The bowl dropped, fragmentizing against the hard wood, sugar ice and pottery spewing everywhere.
Arthur's picture flashed across the screen, small smile, buttoned up shirt, nicely combed hair, a school shot that didn't capture the wilderness behind his green eyes or the depth of his ever-present blush.
"What the fuck boy?" Alfred's father called in surprise, screaming as his son ran, barefoot into the snow, snatching the car keys on his way out.
Alfred wasn't thinking, just driving, driving, driving. Into the white snow, into the city, unaware of direction or gas or anything, just the ruptured pounding in his ears. He didn't know what hospital he was even at, but when he left his car parked and running in a completely illegal spot, the ground burnt like Siberian hell underneath his feet, carrying him into the linoleum hospital.
"Can we help you sir?" The nurse looked worried, examining him for profuse bleeding or drug reeling eyes; this was the E.R. after all.
"Arthur Kirkland, is he here?" She furrowed her eyebrows and Alfred restrained the anger rising up inside him, wanting nothing more than to reach across and strangle the answer out of her, because she didn't understand, she didn't get it.
"I'm sorry, but he's just getting out of surgery, no visitors." Alfred searched her face for sympathy, pulling up every emotion he had to spill across his face, liquid commiseration, but received nothing other than a hard stare.
"H-How long then?"
"I'm not sure, but certainly not today." It was like an arrow slicing through his chest and he almost fell to the ground, but a strong hand held him up from behind, pulling him back to sit in a plastic chair.
"I-I…"
"Sh, he'll be okay, he'll be okay…" An accented mantra as Francis Bonnefoy, friend, enemy, and Lord knows what else to Arthur, pulled Alfred into his chest, face lined in worry.
"It's my fault, I was supposed to be there, oh God it's my fault," Francis shushed him like a mother, hand winding into his hair, because it was his fault. Francis might know what he and Arthur were, but he would never understand that it was Alfred's fault.
'He was speeding.' They would say.
'The roads were iced.' They would say.
'He couldn't see.' They would say.
Never his fault, never Alfred's fault, but it was his fault and that was the fact that made Alfred's throat clench and his body vomit up tears and muffled screams.
He could have been brave, could have told his Dad he had a date with a boy, and he did not care whether he liked it or not, and he did not expect him to understand, but this boy meant the world to him, it was the greatest thing life had given him, wrapped up in one screaming, skinny, emotional, tea-loving, British package. He could have told his teammates he had to leave practice early, to be with the boy he loved, and done just that.
But Alfred cared too much about what everyone else thought, and that's what had come back to bite him, leaving him sobbing into a strange Frenchman's shirt in the sterilized E.R. of a hospital.
"He'll be okay…he'll be okay…" Francis dug his nails into Alfred's scalp hard, mouth a straight line of unease, blonde hair fraying out of his ponytail, a sight none would find comforting. "…He'll be okay, won't he?"
"He's woken up." The news spread like wildfire around the waiting room, now stuffed full of teenagers, both friends and attention seekers, along with family, all crowding around the distressed doctor delivering the words.
"Who gets to see him?" An aunt questioned, and the man read through the names on the waiting list.
"Well, normally close family get the first visiting rights, but…" He glanced up, face a mask of questioning.
"But?" Arthur's mother, short, stout, and fiery all the same, asked from the front of the crowd, Kirkland green eyes effulgent.
"Is there perhaps an Alfred here?" Everyone turned, the nurses, the children, the family, they all knew Alfred. The kid who never left the waiting room, who slept, ate, and drank all in the hope that Arthur would awaken. He stepped forward after a push from Francis, determined face hollow under the florescent light.
"He asked to see you specifically, if it is alright with the family of course," Alfred turned to Arthur's mother, prepared to be denied, but he was selfish, so when she nodded in reluctant acceptance of the terms, he burst like a bat out of hell through the double doors and to the room marked 'Arthur Kirkland.' without a second thought for anyone else.
It was dim, the shades pulled, a gray aura lingering in the room. It smelt like wilting flowers and fresh linen as Alfred slowly walked up to the bed, eyes fixated on the figure in front of him.
Arthur's eyes were open, but he laid back as if he were asleep, completely defenseless as Alfred came to tower over him, mouth wavering and body crumbling. They were silent, only beeps and muffled footsteps, until Alfred reached out and touched his face, a scratch right under his eye, skin broiling under his fingertips.
After a few minutes, Arthur reached up and touched it too, hand falling on top of Alfred's, chest moving for the first time since the tall boy had entered the room. Alfred let out a deep breath, shaky teardrops falling onto the washed out bed sheets.
"Hey," He said gauchely, making the frail creature under him titter with bird laughter, light, open, so alive it made his insides twist until they were nothing but a jumbled mess spelling out the word 'Arthur' into his blood.
"Hello," A smile broke out across his face and Arthur said his first words, the words of a newborn, full of first experiences. First heartbeat, first tear, first kiss, first love, first words all over again. "I love you, Alfred."
Hello.
I often find people take too great of an advantage out of life and the people they love. I'm not going to give you the 'yolo' you could die at any moment spiel, but I will tell you you can never know when someone's words will be their last, so try to make the last thing you say to anyone pleasant.
It's all about perspective, and just like Alfred and Arthur, sometimes it takes a great tragedy to gain a great perspective on things. I hope you can remember this little story though, and try to keep your perspective of life and it's values slightly less skewed.
Please review, favorite, and have a wonderful day.