This chapter was inspired by the song 'This River is Wild' by The Killers. It was requested by canin3 on my tumblr account.
This River is Wild
Gilbert opened his window and looked down. Damn. It was a long, long way down if he fell…
But that had never stopped him before.
He grinned and tossed his leg over the side, straddling the windowsill. The garden was dark and silent beneath him but that did not mean his parents were asleep. His mother would tear him apart if she caught him sneaking out, but that was half of the fun; walking the line, tempting fate. He was a rebel without a cause and that made him reckless.
His smile widened as he climbed down the rotting latticework and ivy planted beneath his window like some sort of open invitation. His bare feet hit the ground with a soft 'whumpf' and he crouched for a moment, listening, before darting across the lawn.
The streets were quiet as he wound from one lamppost to the next, laughing. There was a sense of freedom in the air and he liked the taste of it.
Leaves and broken glass crunched beneath his feet and he relished the bite of it; he enjoyed the scrape of the pavement against his skin. The ache meant that he was alive, truly alive, as he could never be at home or at his local high school. 'Conformity', 'tradition', 'institution'… The words sat heavy on his tongue.
He was a river, rushing wild through the mountains, and if someone built a dam in his way, well, he would just carve a path around it. No matter how long it took.
Gilbert jumped onto a low stone wall and walked with his arms out. He swayed back and forth.
This town was strangling him. It was smothering his creativity and cramping his style. He loved his parents, and he liked his friends well enough, but he could not wait to leave them behind. He wanted to put this town in his rearview mirror and never look back; he wanted to drive to the nearest city and find himself. He wanted to find his place.
There were over three thousand people in this forgotten town but he had never felt more alone. He wanted to find one person, just one person, on the same wave length as him. Was that so much to ask?
Gilbert swung around the corner and up the steps to the local playground.
And then he stopped.
Someone was standing on top of the playstructure with their eyes closed and their arms held wide open. They teetered on the precipice, at least four metres in the air, and rocked in the wind.
Gilbert recognised him, of course. There was only one school system in the town and everyone went through it. His name was… Matthew? Yes, that sounded right.
He was a year or two younger than Gilbert and he never said more than a couple of words at a time. Gilbert had always thought that he was introverted, maybe, or perhaps just a little eccentric. Odd, in any case.
But he looked just as lost and lonely as Gilbert at the moment.
"That's going to hurt like a bitch if you fall, you know," Gilbert called, cupping his hands over his mouth to augment his voice. Matthew flinched at the sudden intrusion but refused to move. He cracked open an eye and studied him.
"I'm not going to fall; I'm going to jump." He supplied. It was the most Gilbert had ever heard him say at once.
He judged the distance again.
"That's not going to kill you. You might want to try the bridge."
Matthew smiled, and it was sweet and soft.
"I'm not trying to kill myself either. 'Sides, the bridge is under construction."
"Oh yeah…" Gilbert blinked. He was not sure if he had ever seen Matthew smile before either. It was nice smile, with an inside joke tucked in the corner of his mouth, like he knew a secret.
His blonde curls highlighted his cheekbones and the damp ends licked his ears. His pupils were blown wide in the moonlight. He was wearing an oversized sweater and stitched cotton pants and his feet were as bare as his own. Gilbert grinned.
"You're barefoot," Gilbert pointed out. He liked that neither of them had bothered with shoes; he liked that they matched. Matthew looked down at him and cocked an eyebrow in bemusement.
"You're one to talk."
They stared at each other.
"So what are you doing here?" Gilbert scrunched up his nose and barrelled on. "I mean 'here' here, not in the grand cosmic sense."
Matthew shrugged.
"I couldn't sleep. So I didn't." Matthew was straightforward and Gilbert liked that too. It made perfect sense to him. Matthew seemed composed and serene and that stillness washed over Gilbert, calming some of his panic and unrest from earlier.
"Ah. Okay." Gilbert reached for a cold metal bar. "Can I come up?"
"… Are you going to push me off?" Matthew asked but Gilbert waved it off and chuckled.
"I wasn't planning on it… But that doesn't mean much, honestly," he admitted.
Matthew thought about it. He nodded nonetheless.
"Alright then."
Gilbert clamoured up, knocking his knees against the painted blue bars, and stood next to Matthew. He gasped.
The playstructure sat in the middle of town square and he could see the streetlights and the shuttered stores and the statue at the centre of it all. He could see the darkened row houses and their gardens; he could see the plastic pool and toys in one yard and the flickering pale in another window that meant someone was watching infomercials.
It made a difference, somehow, standing on top of the playstructure; it let him rise above the expectations and judgements of their peers, literally and figuratively, if only for a moment.
"Wow…"
"Mmhmm."
"No, I mean it. Wow." Gilbert tore his gaze from the headlights in the distance, someone just passing through, and turned back to Matthew. His presence was surprisingly soothing and Gilbert basked in the strange phenomenon; it was a shame they had never talked before now. "Are you still going to jump?"
Their eyes met.
"Of course."
"Why?" He asked even though he meant 'Why would you give this up? This feeling of being above it all?' and not 'Why bother jumping?' Matthew gestured over the park, and the town, with an absentminded hand.
"Because I can."
They were quiet for a couple of minutes, watching the world turn beneath them. Gilbert could linger there forever, relishing the silence, but he thought that he finally understood Matthew's urge to jump. It turned out that being able to jump, being the one to make that choice… Well, there was a sense of freedom in that; a fleeting moment of control in their otherwise uncontrollable lives.
Gilbert held out his hand, palm up. Matthew stared at him.
"I want to jump too," he said. Matthew blinked.
"Okay…"
"I want to jump with you," Gilbert clarified, in case he had missed it. Matthew blinked again, twice, before blushing from his neck to the tip of his ears.
It was cute.
Gilbert wiggled his fingers and Matthew flushed another shade darker but he pressed his hand into Gilbert's palm. Gilbert wound their fingers together. He knew it was more intimate but this was an intimate moment and it deserved an intimate gesture.
He beamed.
"Ready…"
"Set…"
"Go!"
They jumped together, side by side; shouting and whooping. Matthew's curls floated around his head like a halo and Gilbert held his hand a little tighter. It was a long, long way down.
But that was just how they liked it.
Author's Notes:
This chapter is similar to chapter four and chapter eleven. I have always found that the most intimate and thought provoking moments come after midnight, and often at the local playstructure and swings. At least, that's where I always end up.
I imagine that Gilbert and Matthew were both struggling with acceptance in a town where their ideals and dreams went against the grain. They'll still leave in a couple of years, probably in the same rusting car, but hopefully their friendship will make the interim a little easier. Also, Gilbert tends to ramble but Matthew is straightforward and to the point: 'I'm going to jump', 'the bridge is closed', 'because I can', etcetera.
The definition of a town differs between countries, from populations of five hundred to as many as twenty thousand. This town is about three thousand; the kind where you would recognize all of the faces but maybe not all of the names.
We've hit sixty chapters. Ugh. o_0) I am still accepting requests for this. I use it to blow of steam, even when I should be working on other projects. (I do have a couple in the works, and I need to edit some pieces. Cough, cough, Crossroads, cough.) If you submitted something earlier than chapter fifty that I have not written yet, please resubmit it. It was probably on the list my cat ate…