As promised. . . here is the "intense Justi and Vern action". Might not be
*quite* what you expected. . .
Chapter 13
"I, for one, find it incredibly fucked up that I'm letting Chris get away for me for a year."
"Not a year," Justi corrected sympathetically. "Only about six months."
Teddy's response was a little more blunt. "Gordie, shut up."
Gordie sighed and lay down on the bed. "You guys, I couldn't make it two weeks without him without going to New York to try and get him back. And after seeing that Lea thing. . . " He shivered. "I don't know if I'm going to sleep at night."
"Hey," Vern said, in a rare moment of insight and compassion, "look at it this way. Before, you didn't know why Chris left. Now you know he's gone because he loves you and that he'd never do anything to hurt you."
Gordie thought about that for a few seconds before offering his friends a weak smile.
"Yeah, man, yeah, get the happy on."
"God, Teddy, shut up!" Justi laughed. "Every one of Gordie's facial expressions do not need to be commented on!"
"I know when I've been snubbed," Teddy muttered, and threw the banana peel he'd been holding at her.
"Ow! That hit my eye!"
"Well, it was what I was aiming for. . . "
Gordie sighed again.
"What is it now, feelings-boy?"
Justi scoffed. "Teddy, be mature, please."
Gordie chose to ignore the two of them scrapping over his constant sighing. "Something just occurred to me."
"What?" Vern asked attentively, looking back only for a second to throw something at Teddy and Justi in an attempt to shut the two of them up.
"How come Chris always gets the hot girl buddies?"
"Do you feel bad because you have no hot girl buddies?" Justi asked, laughing hysterically because Teddy, while never taking his eyes from the road, had reached one arm back to tickle her into a conniption.
"Animal magnetism," Gordie said, shaking his head with a smile, but Vern was looking at the two of them as if smiling was the last thing in the world he would consider doing right now.
"Stay away from my girlfriend," he grunted in a barely intelligible voice, obviously trying to look like it didn't bother him, but failing miserably.
"God, Vern, chill," Teddy muttered, taking back his hand and planting it firmly on the steering wheel, as if daring Vern to make another comment.
Justi, too, looked at Vern with angry eyes. He responded with a gaze just as angry and very jealous.
The whole trip home, the tension between Vern and Justi mounted until, by the last day, you could almost see it. Neither of them cared about anything else (Gordie had long since taken to sitting up front by Teddy to talk about topics such as school, which started up again in Castle Rock the day after next) enough to stop glaring at each other. But the anger hadn't expressed itself yet, and Gordie was sure he didn't want to be around when it did.
Unfortunately, he was.
He wasn't quite sure how, or even why, it had started. He just remembered being at Justi's house. Vern was there, too, and they were all playing a nice, semi-friendly (well, the looks of murderous loathing were absent, anyway) game of rummy when suddenly all hell broke loose.
Before Gordie knew it, they were yelling and screaming at each other.
"I can't ever trust you!" Vern screamed. "I turn my back for a second and you're gone!"
"What the hell kind of claim is that?"
"You're like some kind of whore! First Chris and Gordie. Now they're both gay! Oh damn! Where are you going now? Oh, hey, Vern's straight! Why don't I give him a whirl!"
"You wanted this!" Justi shrieked back. "I never got on my knees and begged you to go out with me! You're the one who insisted we go out!"
"There was no insisting!"
"There was too!"
"And now that you're getting bored with me, you figure you'll leave me and go for Teddy!"
"What?!?"
"Don't think you're fooling me! I saw how you looked at each other the whole way home!"
"Excuse me? How dare you insinuate I'd cheat on you, you jealous bastard? I mean, it's true that I could certainly land a better guy than you, and it's true that I probably should, but no matter how much I hated you and your little "boyfriend and girlfriend" spiel, I stuck with you! I've always stuck with you!"
"Yeah, until someone better walked by! And how often was that? Every ten minutes?"
"Well, maybe if you weren't such an asshole that Ace Merrill was a better guy than you, it wouldn't happen!"
"Hey, hey, hey!" Gordie yelled, straining to be heard over the din. "What the hell is going on here?"
The two of them stared at Gordie.
"Are you deaf?" Vern finally asked, waving a hand in front of his friend's face. "I mean, there's really no other explanation for asking a question like that. . . "
"You ass," Justi said in disgust, shaking her head. "Gordie, I really don't know what this is about. One minute, we're all playing cards, and the next-"
"Shut up!" Vern screamed, his face turning red with anger. "Don't you dare act the innocent woman to Gordie! You leave him the hell out of this!"
"Well then why the fuck did you pick the fight in front of him?"
"I didn't! You did!"
"I did?"
"Yeah, you did!"
"I did not!"
"You did!"
"You do everything around here," Vern spat. "Or should I say everyone?"
"Vern, before you I hadn't done anything more than kissing! Ever! Anyone!"
Vern's face softened a little.
"And I let you touch me! I let you put your hands on me! You're right, Vern, I am a moron, because I can't think of any girl that I consider smart that would have let you do what you did!" Justi screamed all of this in disgust.
"You didn't. . . I mean, the two of you never. . . you know. . . ?" Gordie asked her.
"Oh, no," Justi said, a tear on her cheek. "Thank God I wasn't that stupid."
Chris would have murdered you, Gordie thought to himself before he could help it, and had to smile.
"What the hell are you laughing at over there, you asshole?" Vern yelled.
"Don't you yell at him," Justi shrieked. "You leave him out of this!" By now, her cheeks were filled with tears. It was odd, Gordie thought. She hadn't cried after breaking up with Chris- well, she might have gone home and cried, but she didn't cry in front of him- and she certainly hadn't cried after breaking up with Gordie. He guessed it had more to do with the manner of the breakup than the person, but still. . . this was surreal.
"Don't cry, Justi," Gordie said vaguely, completely unable to think of anything else to say.
"Sticking up for the whore of Babylon, are we!" Vern yelled hysterically, looking like he, too, was on the verge of tears.
"Don't call her that!" Gordie cried. "She's not. . . a whore. She's never been one. Vern, she's been completely faithful to you, and you're really lucky to have her. Well, you were," he amended. "I don't imagine she'll stay with you now. I wouldn't," he added thoughtfully.
"Oh, here we are taking relationship advice from the gay one," Vern said, throwing his hands up. "You know what, Gordie?"
Gordie just looked at him mutely.
"I don't need you! I don't need you, I don't need Justi. . . "
"Don't think that Teddy'll want to talk to you after this," Justi warned quietly.
"After I've insulted his whore? I'm sure you're right," Vern said nastily. "You can get back to fucking him now. I'm sure that that's a lot more fun for you than this. Tell me, how much do you get paid for that anyway? Because if you're doing it for free, you've got worse taste than I thought."
"Shut up!" Justi yelled, sobbing now. "I don't have anything with Teddy!"
"Emotions never were important to you, were they, Justi?"
The absurdity of that statement took a while to sink in for Gordie. Justi had, ever since he could remember, since before Gordie had dated her years ago, had always been a very emotional, caring person. She was concerned with everyone before herself, and Gordie could remember, vividly and specifically, several times when she had cried herself to sleep because of things people had said to her, or because of people she couldn't help.
"Vern, you asshole!" Gordie found himself screaming, right before he belted Vern across the jaw with an anger he didn't know he had. It felt good, shockingly good. So he did it again.
"Stop!" Justi cried, horrified, but he barely heard her.
Hitting Vern felt so unbelievably wonderful. With every smack of his flesh against Vern, with every crack of Vern's bones, with every grunt of pain from Vern, who had never before fought anyone, he knew his own tormenters. He saw his own father gasp, he heard Eyeball beg him to stop, he felt Ace's nose break, he watched Vern sink to the floor. . . and then everything went black.
"God, what the hell happened here?" Gordie heard an out-of-breath Teddy demand from somewhere around him upon waking up. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.
"I don't know," Justi said, and he opened an eye to see her crying, bent over Vern. "He broke up with me, and Gordie was here. . . " The two of them were together on the other side of the room, kneeling. Their shoulders were touching as Teddy ran his hands over Vern's body, checking for broken bones.
"He broke up with you?"
"Yeah. . . he was yelling and screaming and everything. . . "
"In front of Gordie?"
"Yeah," Justi said, sniffing. "And Gordie just. . . he kinda went insane or something. I've never seen him act like that."
"What did he do?" Teddy asked softly.
"He just came at Vern. He hit him like eight times before his eyes rolled back in his head and he kind of just. . . fell."
"Fell?"
"It was like he fainted or something. . . "
"Oh God," Teddy said, cradling Vern' head in his hands. "This is bad." He pointed at a deep gash on the back of his head. "Gordie did that?" he asked in disbelief.
"He hit his head on the way down, on the coffee table," Justi said hysterically. "I didn't know. . . I didn't know what to do. . . so I came and got you. . . Teddy, is he OK?"
"He will be," Teddy said, but it wasn't very confident. "Chris and I have both been worse than this before, and look at us now." Justi and Teddy shared a weak laugh.
"What about Gordie?" Teddy asked. "Why's he knocked out?"
"Well," Justi said, sounding very small, "he wouldn't stop hitting Vern, so I hit him on the back of the head with the candleholder." She pointed to a candelabrum, and Gordie became vaguely aware of a throbbing pain in the back of his head.
"God, Justi, are you sure you didn't kill him?" Teddy asked, his already strained voice filling with even more worry as he headed over to Gordie, both he and Justi unaware that Gordie was hearing them speak.
"No, she didn't kill me," Gordie said, sitting up weakly and touching the back of his head gingerly. "I'm not even bleeding."
"Gordie, what the hell?" Teddy asked, rushing behind him to put a hand on the small of his back. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I wasn't," Gordie admitted. "All I could think was that Vern was hurting you," he looked at Justi, "the same way Chris hurt me. . . I couldn't let him. . . he was so wrong. . . "
"I don't need you to beat someone up to know I'm not a whore," Justi said softly, but she looked interested in what he had said about Chris. Neither Chris nor Gordie had ever spoken to anyone about the night before Chris had left.
"I know," Gordie said, even more quietly. "I just. . . I couldn't stand by and watch."
"Why didn't you stop?" Justi asked. Her eyes were misted over again, and Gordie prayed that she wouldn't start crying again. He knew that if she started, he wouldn't be able to stop.
"I don't know," he said. "Every time I hit him, I saw someone else. . . I saw Eyeball. I saw Ace. I saw my dad. I saw Pressman, that time he bitched at your dad, Teddy. . . "
Teddy. Teddy's spin on all of this, Gordie realized, was quite unique. "Chris and I have both been worse than this before. . . " No wonder he was acting so scared, Gordie realized. When Gordie considered Teddy's closest friends, he realized that none of them had ever really fought anyone else. Teddy had surrounded himself with people who didn't like to hurt other people. The truth was hitting him over the head like a lead weight now: when poor Teddy looked at Gordie now, he saw his father. He saw the man that had been hurting him since he was born. And for the first time ever, Teddy was shying away from Gordie.
No one had ever before been afraid of Gordie. He had always been "that little Lachance kid." But the look Teddy was giving him frightened him down to his bones.
"I'm sorry, Ted," Gordie said weakly, and Teddy knew he understood.
"Gordie, you. . . you're not. . . "
"Teddy, I don't like hurting people," he said slowly. "I'm never going to do anything like this again."
"Teddy, he couldn't take you," Justi said immediately, and Teddy laughed.
"I'm sorry, you guys," Gordie sighed. "I'm so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone."
"I know," Justi and Teddy said at the same time.
"Sometimes people snap," Teddy said wearily. "It doesn't mean you're going to do it again, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person."
Gordie and Justi looked at each other and furrowed their eyebrows. Teddy had never been this serious in front of either of them.
Suddenly, Justi had a realization.
"Hey, you think we should wake up Vern?" End of Chapter 13
This chapter is kind of weird, in that generally, when I write Vern, he's a very passive-aggressive person. After reading this, though, and really thinking about it, it doesn't seem *that* out of character for him. You know he was just WAITING to snap after seeing Justi with all his guy friends. What a jealous freak.
It feels good to be back with a computer again. . . expect Chapter 14 up momentarily!!!
. . . On a side note. . . I REALLY like what we get to see of Teddy's character in this chapter. I never really thought of it that way. . .
Chapter 13
"I, for one, find it incredibly fucked up that I'm letting Chris get away for me for a year."
"Not a year," Justi corrected sympathetically. "Only about six months."
Teddy's response was a little more blunt. "Gordie, shut up."
Gordie sighed and lay down on the bed. "You guys, I couldn't make it two weeks without him without going to New York to try and get him back. And after seeing that Lea thing. . . " He shivered. "I don't know if I'm going to sleep at night."
"Hey," Vern said, in a rare moment of insight and compassion, "look at it this way. Before, you didn't know why Chris left. Now you know he's gone because he loves you and that he'd never do anything to hurt you."
Gordie thought about that for a few seconds before offering his friends a weak smile.
"Yeah, man, yeah, get the happy on."
"God, Teddy, shut up!" Justi laughed. "Every one of Gordie's facial expressions do not need to be commented on!"
"I know when I've been snubbed," Teddy muttered, and threw the banana peel he'd been holding at her.
"Ow! That hit my eye!"
"Well, it was what I was aiming for. . . "
Gordie sighed again.
"What is it now, feelings-boy?"
Justi scoffed. "Teddy, be mature, please."
Gordie chose to ignore the two of them scrapping over his constant sighing. "Something just occurred to me."
"What?" Vern asked attentively, looking back only for a second to throw something at Teddy and Justi in an attempt to shut the two of them up.
"How come Chris always gets the hot girl buddies?"
"Do you feel bad because you have no hot girl buddies?" Justi asked, laughing hysterically because Teddy, while never taking his eyes from the road, had reached one arm back to tickle her into a conniption.
"Animal magnetism," Gordie said, shaking his head with a smile, but Vern was looking at the two of them as if smiling was the last thing in the world he would consider doing right now.
"Stay away from my girlfriend," he grunted in a barely intelligible voice, obviously trying to look like it didn't bother him, but failing miserably.
"God, Vern, chill," Teddy muttered, taking back his hand and planting it firmly on the steering wheel, as if daring Vern to make another comment.
Justi, too, looked at Vern with angry eyes. He responded with a gaze just as angry and very jealous.
The whole trip home, the tension between Vern and Justi mounted until, by the last day, you could almost see it. Neither of them cared about anything else (Gordie had long since taken to sitting up front by Teddy to talk about topics such as school, which started up again in Castle Rock the day after next) enough to stop glaring at each other. But the anger hadn't expressed itself yet, and Gordie was sure he didn't want to be around when it did.
Unfortunately, he was.
He wasn't quite sure how, or even why, it had started. He just remembered being at Justi's house. Vern was there, too, and they were all playing a nice, semi-friendly (well, the looks of murderous loathing were absent, anyway) game of rummy when suddenly all hell broke loose.
Before Gordie knew it, they were yelling and screaming at each other.
"I can't ever trust you!" Vern screamed. "I turn my back for a second and you're gone!"
"What the hell kind of claim is that?"
"You're like some kind of whore! First Chris and Gordie. Now they're both gay! Oh damn! Where are you going now? Oh, hey, Vern's straight! Why don't I give him a whirl!"
"You wanted this!" Justi shrieked back. "I never got on my knees and begged you to go out with me! You're the one who insisted we go out!"
"There was no insisting!"
"There was too!"
"And now that you're getting bored with me, you figure you'll leave me and go for Teddy!"
"What?!?"
"Don't think you're fooling me! I saw how you looked at each other the whole way home!"
"Excuse me? How dare you insinuate I'd cheat on you, you jealous bastard? I mean, it's true that I could certainly land a better guy than you, and it's true that I probably should, but no matter how much I hated you and your little "boyfriend and girlfriend" spiel, I stuck with you! I've always stuck with you!"
"Yeah, until someone better walked by! And how often was that? Every ten minutes?"
"Well, maybe if you weren't such an asshole that Ace Merrill was a better guy than you, it wouldn't happen!"
"Hey, hey, hey!" Gordie yelled, straining to be heard over the din. "What the hell is going on here?"
The two of them stared at Gordie.
"Are you deaf?" Vern finally asked, waving a hand in front of his friend's face. "I mean, there's really no other explanation for asking a question like that. . . "
"You ass," Justi said in disgust, shaking her head. "Gordie, I really don't know what this is about. One minute, we're all playing cards, and the next-"
"Shut up!" Vern screamed, his face turning red with anger. "Don't you dare act the innocent woman to Gordie! You leave him the hell out of this!"
"Well then why the fuck did you pick the fight in front of him?"
"I didn't! You did!"
"I did?"
"Yeah, you did!"
"I did not!"
"You did!"
"You do everything around here," Vern spat. "Or should I say everyone?"
"Vern, before you I hadn't done anything more than kissing! Ever! Anyone!"
Vern's face softened a little.
"And I let you touch me! I let you put your hands on me! You're right, Vern, I am a moron, because I can't think of any girl that I consider smart that would have let you do what you did!" Justi screamed all of this in disgust.
"You didn't. . . I mean, the two of you never. . . you know. . . ?" Gordie asked her.
"Oh, no," Justi said, a tear on her cheek. "Thank God I wasn't that stupid."
Chris would have murdered you, Gordie thought to himself before he could help it, and had to smile.
"What the hell are you laughing at over there, you asshole?" Vern yelled.
"Don't you yell at him," Justi shrieked. "You leave him out of this!" By now, her cheeks were filled with tears. It was odd, Gordie thought. She hadn't cried after breaking up with Chris- well, she might have gone home and cried, but she didn't cry in front of him- and she certainly hadn't cried after breaking up with Gordie. He guessed it had more to do with the manner of the breakup than the person, but still. . . this was surreal.
"Don't cry, Justi," Gordie said vaguely, completely unable to think of anything else to say.
"Sticking up for the whore of Babylon, are we!" Vern yelled hysterically, looking like he, too, was on the verge of tears.
"Don't call her that!" Gordie cried. "She's not. . . a whore. She's never been one. Vern, she's been completely faithful to you, and you're really lucky to have her. Well, you were," he amended. "I don't imagine she'll stay with you now. I wouldn't," he added thoughtfully.
"Oh, here we are taking relationship advice from the gay one," Vern said, throwing his hands up. "You know what, Gordie?"
Gordie just looked at him mutely.
"I don't need you! I don't need you, I don't need Justi. . . "
"Don't think that Teddy'll want to talk to you after this," Justi warned quietly.
"After I've insulted his whore? I'm sure you're right," Vern said nastily. "You can get back to fucking him now. I'm sure that that's a lot more fun for you than this. Tell me, how much do you get paid for that anyway? Because if you're doing it for free, you've got worse taste than I thought."
"Shut up!" Justi yelled, sobbing now. "I don't have anything with Teddy!"
"Emotions never were important to you, were they, Justi?"
The absurdity of that statement took a while to sink in for Gordie. Justi had, ever since he could remember, since before Gordie had dated her years ago, had always been a very emotional, caring person. She was concerned with everyone before herself, and Gordie could remember, vividly and specifically, several times when she had cried herself to sleep because of things people had said to her, or because of people she couldn't help.
"Vern, you asshole!" Gordie found himself screaming, right before he belted Vern across the jaw with an anger he didn't know he had. It felt good, shockingly good. So he did it again.
"Stop!" Justi cried, horrified, but he barely heard her.
Hitting Vern felt so unbelievably wonderful. With every smack of his flesh against Vern, with every crack of Vern's bones, with every grunt of pain from Vern, who had never before fought anyone, he knew his own tormenters. He saw his own father gasp, he heard Eyeball beg him to stop, he felt Ace's nose break, he watched Vern sink to the floor. . . and then everything went black.
"God, what the hell happened here?" Gordie heard an out-of-breath Teddy demand from somewhere around him upon waking up. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.
"I don't know," Justi said, and he opened an eye to see her crying, bent over Vern. "He broke up with me, and Gordie was here. . . " The two of them were together on the other side of the room, kneeling. Their shoulders were touching as Teddy ran his hands over Vern's body, checking for broken bones.
"He broke up with you?"
"Yeah. . . he was yelling and screaming and everything. . . "
"In front of Gordie?"
"Yeah," Justi said, sniffing. "And Gordie just. . . he kinda went insane or something. I've never seen him act like that."
"What did he do?" Teddy asked softly.
"He just came at Vern. He hit him like eight times before his eyes rolled back in his head and he kind of just. . . fell."
"Fell?"
"It was like he fainted or something. . . "
"Oh God," Teddy said, cradling Vern' head in his hands. "This is bad." He pointed at a deep gash on the back of his head. "Gordie did that?" he asked in disbelief.
"He hit his head on the way down, on the coffee table," Justi said hysterically. "I didn't know. . . I didn't know what to do. . . so I came and got you. . . Teddy, is he OK?"
"He will be," Teddy said, but it wasn't very confident. "Chris and I have both been worse than this before, and look at us now." Justi and Teddy shared a weak laugh.
"What about Gordie?" Teddy asked. "Why's he knocked out?"
"Well," Justi said, sounding very small, "he wouldn't stop hitting Vern, so I hit him on the back of the head with the candleholder." She pointed to a candelabrum, and Gordie became vaguely aware of a throbbing pain in the back of his head.
"God, Justi, are you sure you didn't kill him?" Teddy asked, his already strained voice filling with even more worry as he headed over to Gordie, both he and Justi unaware that Gordie was hearing them speak.
"No, she didn't kill me," Gordie said, sitting up weakly and touching the back of his head gingerly. "I'm not even bleeding."
"Gordie, what the hell?" Teddy asked, rushing behind him to put a hand on the small of his back. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I wasn't," Gordie admitted. "All I could think was that Vern was hurting you," he looked at Justi, "the same way Chris hurt me. . . I couldn't let him. . . he was so wrong. . . "
"I don't need you to beat someone up to know I'm not a whore," Justi said softly, but she looked interested in what he had said about Chris. Neither Chris nor Gordie had ever spoken to anyone about the night before Chris had left.
"I know," Gordie said, even more quietly. "I just. . . I couldn't stand by and watch."
"Why didn't you stop?" Justi asked. Her eyes were misted over again, and Gordie prayed that she wouldn't start crying again. He knew that if she started, he wouldn't be able to stop.
"I don't know," he said. "Every time I hit him, I saw someone else. . . I saw Eyeball. I saw Ace. I saw my dad. I saw Pressman, that time he bitched at your dad, Teddy. . . "
Teddy. Teddy's spin on all of this, Gordie realized, was quite unique. "Chris and I have both been worse than this before. . . " No wonder he was acting so scared, Gordie realized. When Gordie considered Teddy's closest friends, he realized that none of them had ever really fought anyone else. Teddy had surrounded himself with people who didn't like to hurt other people. The truth was hitting him over the head like a lead weight now: when poor Teddy looked at Gordie now, he saw his father. He saw the man that had been hurting him since he was born. And for the first time ever, Teddy was shying away from Gordie.
No one had ever before been afraid of Gordie. He had always been "that little Lachance kid." But the look Teddy was giving him frightened him down to his bones.
"I'm sorry, Ted," Gordie said weakly, and Teddy knew he understood.
"Gordie, you. . . you're not. . . "
"Teddy, I don't like hurting people," he said slowly. "I'm never going to do anything like this again."
"Teddy, he couldn't take you," Justi said immediately, and Teddy laughed.
"I'm sorry, you guys," Gordie sighed. "I'm so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone."
"I know," Justi and Teddy said at the same time.
"Sometimes people snap," Teddy said wearily. "It doesn't mean you're going to do it again, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person."
Gordie and Justi looked at each other and furrowed their eyebrows. Teddy had never been this serious in front of either of them.
Suddenly, Justi had a realization.
"Hey, you think we should wake up Vern?" End of Chapter 13
This chapter is kind of weird, in that generally, when I write Vern, he's a very passive-aggressive person. After reading this, though, and really thinking about it, it doesn't seem *that* out of character for him. You know he was just WAITING to snap after seeing Justi with all his guy friends. What a jealous freak.
It feels good to be back with a computer again. . . expect Chapter 14 up momentarily!!!
. . . On a side note. . . I REALLY like what we get to see of Teddy's character in this chapter. I never really thought of it that way. . .