(no subject)
keywords castles in the sky, envious, pure, sought after, glorious
Okaaay, so I know this is really early and long, but I thought I would enjoy the last few moments of summer's freedom while I could.
I like this one, a lot.
About 2000 words, PG-13 for excessive use of the word "fuck," and featuring Zack as a bad writer with romantic ideals.
how life feels
Oh, instincts are misleading
You shouldn't think what you're feeling
They don't tell you what you know you should want.
Death Cab for Cutie, "Lightness"
It was easy to be envious of Freddy Jones. His parents were semi-famous producers who both made twice as much money as Zack's parents and knew twenty times as many Hollywood stars. A lot of them were B-list actors, but that doesn't really seem to mean anything when you're in a room full of people who you recognize from throughout your whole life. It's easy to get star struck at one of the Jones' famous, all-weekend bashes; the neighbors used to call the police, but after they realized that the police couldn't do anything anymore they would just join the crowd of people inside the expansive mansion, mingling and laughing and dancing, bodies moving against one another in the room that is specially designated for getting your groove on or shaking your bon-bon or freak dancing, whatever is appropriate for adults.
Or at least, that is how Zack imagines the parties. He's never been to one; hell, he's only been to Freddy's house once, and that was because Freddy had forgotten his Lucky Drumsticks and he thought it was impolite to not invite everybody in for some food before they officially left for their gig. All Zack could remember of the house now was how completely perfect it seemed, pure white carpeting unstained by childhood mishaps, champagne beige walls and couches with deep mahogany furniture. It was large, spacious, and completely beautiful, like it had stepped out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine. Fuck, he half expected Martha Stewart herself to come out from behind one of the walls with a plate full of cookies and ask if anybody wanted to join her on the veranda.
Of course, there was a lot about Freddy that Zack thought was perfect, from his clothes to his body to his hair to his eyes to his personality to his fuck-me smile to his oblivious comments to, oh God, everything, But that wasn't something Zack often thought about. Or at least he liked to think that he didn't think about it.
When he was a kid, Zack never liked to write. In fact, the only times he would put pen to paper would be for school. In the beginning, these writings were little stories about bears and flowers, like everybody writes in kindergarten and first grade. In second grade, he graduated to writing summaries of the stories they had read in class, like penning a paragraph about the uses of an outhouse and why the children hopped on Pop. By fourth grade he was writing book reports on such classic greats as Where the Red Fern Grows and Chrysanthemum. But it was nothing compared to fifth grade, where he started writing songs.
If he was going to be truthful, his writing was pretty much all crap. His songs were kind of cliché, or just angry, with no in-between. Still, he managed to be the main writer for School of Rock. He always guessed that this was because he was the best. After all, the only way his parents would let him continue to be in a rock band was if he started taking advanced writing classes. After all, it was one thing to be in a dirty, grungy rock band. It was another thing entirely to be the writer in a rock band that just happened to be dirty and grungy.
He never thought that maybe there could be a better writer in the group. He also never thought that maybe the better writer was the loud blonde in the back who played the drums. It was surprising enough when he walked into English III AP on his first day of Junior year and saw that particular familiar face in the back of the classroom, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable and lost.
And no wonder. Zack knew almost nobody in the class, and he guessed that the same went for Freddy.
As big of a surprise as it was to see him even there, that was nothing compared to the emotional roller coaster he felt as Freddy read aloud the poem they were assigned to write. The lines flowed perfectly when they needed to and then grabbed you like a hook, short and biting when they needed to be. It was the most beautiful and genius and perfect poem he had ever heard.
The only thing that didn't surprise him was when right after class, Freddy came up to him, his mouth split in a nervous grin, and he voiced his opinion that maybe he and Zack should actually become friends.
When he thought about it, it was kind of silly that they had never become friends. After all, they had been in the same band. They had gotten drunk together, been on long trips together and, a few times, even had sex in the same room during their own brand of all-weekend-long parties, the kind that Zack didn't like to imagine his favorite B-list stars partaking in. Still, if you really, really analyzed it, it made sense. Freddy was popular, good-looking, and loud. Zack was quiet, kept to himself, and while he didn't think he was ugly he sure as fuck wasn't Cary Grant, or even Tom Felton or Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint or whoever it was the girls were going on about now.
The other thing was, Freddy was pretty well sought for. He was a lot of girlfriends (not that Zack noticed this kind of thing, because he really has no reason to, or at least that's what he tells himself.) and Zack had even seen him engaged in a lot of tonsil tickling across the quad at lunch. Zack, of course, like any self respecting high school boy, had acquired his own fair share of girls, each of them more dull and in love with him than the last. But still, he could never look as happy to be with them as Freddy always seemed to be with his own.
And, of course, there was the fact that the School of Rock had broken up three years ago.
They started hanging out outside of school exactly four months and three days into their junior year. Freddy invited Zack over to his house to do homework and watch TV and play music if they really felt up to it. It was the day that the teacher had read the blushing blonde's essay about A Tale of Two Cities out loud in front of the class, and Zack almost declined because it was that sort of thing that made being Freddy's friend really, really fucking hard. But he shrugged and said sure, and he was almost sure that he had smiled a little bit despite himself.
The house was just as big as he had always imagined it, possibly bigger, and it still held the aura about it that Martha Stewart was about to show at any minute. His mother was beautiful, of course, with perfect breasts and perfect, long legs and perfectly bleached hair. She even offered Zack some perfect cookies, and he would have thought that he was in some episode of Leave it to Beaver if it weren't for the fact that Mrs. Jones was currently wearing a white halter top and black, low-rise jeans that showed off the body that made it really hard to tell whether she worked exceptionally hard for it or just paid for it. And of course, Freddy's room was perfect, featuring everything a teenage boy could ever want in his pad: black, red, and pictures of almost-naked models hanging everywhere.
"I hate it," Freddy proclaimed as he jumped onto his king bed and started jumping up and down.
Zack had no choice but to get on the bed and start jumping, too.
One day, the two of them went to see a show.
It was really fucking weird, if you thought about it, that this would be so odd. After all, the two of them had devoted three and a half years to music and exploring every aspect of it in a rock band. But then, it wasn't so weird when you knew how the band ended, which the both of them did.
Still, the show was absolutely fucking amazing, as Freddy was sure to point out as he shouted into Zack's ear, even if it was just at a local park and even though the band was playing in a fucking gazebo. But still, the sky was dark, the alcohol was almost opaque in his hand, and Freddy was really fucking close, so close that it was hard to tell if his body was warm from the alcohol or his friend.
Halfway through, during the intermission, they spotted Alicia. It was easy to recognize her, because her body was still tough, petite and wiry, her hair was still in rows and rows of dreadlocks, and her eyes were still smeared with eyeliner. However, instead of Gordon, who she had been with the last time he had seen her, she appeared to be very, very intent on suffocating Summer with her tongue.
While Freddy merely laughed at this, it was enough to make Zack question what it was about rock music that turned people gay.
Exactly three days after Zack's birthday, a very loud voice came through Zack's cell phone when he listened to his voice mail.
"You fucking shit-headed ass wipe, I can't fucking believe you didn't fucking tell me about your fucking birthday, fuck, it's not every fucking day you turn fucking seventeen! I fucking hate you. No, I do. Seriously. What the fuck. Shit. Call me. Fuck. I need to get a present, and you need to get a fucking life. I hate you. Call me."
Zack had to sit down in the middle of Barnes and Noble, cover the receiver which was still blaring and causing people to stare at him, and laugh his ass of for about five minutes.
"It's not like I don't like my birthday," he explained later. "I just fucking forgot."
"Yeah right, fuck face. Just," Freddy growled, rolling his eyes. "Just go sit over there. I have a present for you."
He disappeared for a minute into the appropriately spacious bathroom that connected to his room, leaving a very tired and very amused Zack to sit on the appropriately large bed and listen to the Metallica Freddy had been listening to when he got there.
And when Freddy came out of the bathroom completely naked except for "Happy fucking birthday, now fuck me" written appropriately crooked on his chest, Zack had just enough time to realize both how cliché and gloriously appropriate this moment was before Freddy was on him, smearing his clothes with too-whipped butter and his mouth with sloppy kisses.
Zack can't write for shit. And now, he's man enough to admit it. His English III teacher tells him that there isn't anything wrong with his writing, per se. It's beautiful and it flows and it's often creatively done, even if the plots are a bit cliché.
No, the only problem he has, according to his teacher, is that he needs to employ the use of "show, not tell."
Zack thinks this is crazy. After all, the whole problem with "show, not tell" is that most people won't get it, unless they're unusually perceptive or actually give a shit about writing.
When he tells Freddy this, the blonde just smiles and buries his head in Zack's chest, laughing for five minutes before pulling him down for his appropriately sloppy and imperfect kisses.
Sometimes it sucks to have a boyfriend who's better than you at everything.
One Friday, Zack stays over at Freddy's house after a quick call to his parents to tell them where he will be. They lay on Freddy bed and watch Reservoir Dogs twice, turned almost all the way up before Zack realizes why.
"Are there, uh, a lot of people downstairs?" Zack asks when he finally catches drift of the noises and music coming from below him.
"Yeah, one of my parents' parties," Freddy mumbles, the annoyance and hatred in his voice not going unnoticed.
"Oh," Zack says.
They watched Reservoir Dogs again, declaring that the movie would never ever get old.
It is exactly two months, eighteen days and sixteen hours after he first had sex with his best friend that the last of Freddy's writing is read aloud in class. It is uncharacteristically flowery, almost like it was meant to be bad and cliché and all that nonsense. It is a poem, it is short, and Zack knows immediately it is meant for him.
"You're like the devil in my head," Freddy reads. "Flying me to your castle in the sky."
And it is perfect, because Freddy will never stop surprising Zack.
siren_mage's keywords: heterosexual kisses, oldies, Mountain Dew, trains, and everything taking place after High School
Okaaay, so I know this is really early and long, but I thought I would enjoy the last few moments of summer's freedom while I could.
I like this one, a lot.
About 2000 words, PG-13 for excessive use of the word "fuck," and featuring Zack as a bad writer with romantic ideals.
how life feels
Oh, instincts are misleading
You shouldn't think what you're feeling
They don't tell you what you know you should want.
Death Cab for Cutie, "Lightness"
It was easy to be envious of Freddy Jones. His parents were semi-famous producers who both made twice as much money as Zack's parents and knew twenty times as many Hollywood stars. A lot of them were B-list actors, but that doesn't really seem to mean anything when you're in a room full of people who you recognize from throughout your whole life. It's easy to get star struck at one of the Jones' famous, all-weekend bashes; the neighbors used to call the police, but after they realized that the police couldn't do anything anymore they would just join the crowd of people inside the expansive mansion, mingling and laughing and dancing, bodies moving against one another in the room that is specially designated for getting your groove on or shaking your bon-bon or freak dancing, whatever is appropriate for adults.
Or at least, that is how Zack imagines the parties. He's never been to one; hell, he's only been to Freddy's house once, and that was because Freddy had forgotten his Lucky Drumsticks and he thought it was impolite to not invite everybody in for some food before they officially left for their gig. All Zack could remember of the house now was how completely perfect it seemed, pure white carpeting unstained by childhood mishaps, champagne beige walls and couches with deep mahogany furniture. It was large, spacious, and completely beautiful, like it had stepped out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine. Fuck, he half expected Martha Stewart herself to come out from behind one of the walls with a plate full of cookies and ask if anybody wanted to join her on the veranda.
Of course, there was a lot about Freddy that Zack thought was perfect, from his clothes to his body to his hair to his eyes to his personality to his fuck-me smile to his oblivious comments to, oh God, everything, But that wasn't something Zack often thought about. Or at least he liked to think that he didn't think about it.
When he was a kid, Zack never liked to write. In fact, the only times he would put pen to paper would be for school. In the beginning, these writings were little stories about bears and flowers, like everybody writes in kindergarten and first grade. In second grade, he graduated to writing summaries of the stories they had read in class, like penning a paragraph about the uses of an outhouse and why the children hopped on Pop. By fourth grade he was writing book reports on such classic greats as Where the Red Fern Grows and Chrysanthemum. But it was nothing compared to fifth grade, where he started writing songs.
If he was going to be truthful, his writing was pretty much all crap. His songs were kind of cliché, or just angry, with no in-between. Still, he managed to be the main writer for School of Rock. He always guessed that this was because he was the best. After all, the only way his parents would let him continue to be in a rock band was if he started taking advanced writing classes. After all, it was one thing to be in a dirty, grungy rock band. It was another thing entirely to be the writer in a rock band that just happened to be dirty and grungy.
He never thought that maybe there could be a better writer in the group. He also never thought that maybe the better writer was the loud blonde in the back who played the drums. It was surprising enough when he walked into English III AP on his first day of Junior year and saw that particular familiar face in the back of the classroom, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable and lost.
And no wonder. Zack knew almost nobody in the class, and he guessed that the same went for Freddy.
As big of a surprise as it was to see him even there, that was nothing compared to the emotional roller coaster he felt as Freddy read aloud the poem they were assigned to write. The lines flowed perfectly when they needed to and then grabbed you like a hook, short and biting when they needed to be. It was the most beautiful and genius and perfect poem he had ever heard.
The only thing that didn't surprise him was when right after class, Freddy came up to him, his mouth split in a nervous grin, and he voiced his opinion that maybe he and Zack should actually become friends.
When he thought about it, it was kind of silly that they had never become friends. After all, they had been in the same band. They had gotten drunk together, been on long trips together and, a few times, even had sex in the same room during their own brand of all-weekend-long parties, the kind that Zack didn't like to imagine his favorite B-list stars partaking in. Still, if you really, really analyzed it, it made sense. Freddy was popular, good-looking, and loud. Zack was quiet, kept to himself, and while he didn't think he was ugly he sure as fuck wasn't Cary Grant, or even Tom Felton or Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint or whoever it was the girls were going on about now.
The other thing was, Freddy was pretty well sought for. He was a lot of girlfriends (not that Zack noticed this kind of thing, because he really has no reason to, or at least that's what he tells himself.) and Zack had even seen him engaged in a lot of tonsil tickling across the quad at lunch. Zack, of course, like any self respecting high school boy, had acquired his own fair share of girls, each of them more dull and in love with him than the last. But still, he could never look as happy to be with them as Freddy always seemed to be with his own.
And, of course, there was the fact that the School of Rock had broken up three years ago.
They started hanging out outside of school exactly four months and three days into their junior year. Freddy invited Zack over to his house to do homework and watch TV and play music if they really felt up to it. It was the day that the teacher had read the blushing blonde's essay about A Tale of Two Cities out loud in front of the class, and Zack almost declined because it was that sort of thing that made being Freddy's friend really, really fucking hard. But he shrugged and said sure, and he was almost sure that he had smiled a little bit despite himself.
The house was just as big as he had always imagined it, possibly bigger, and it still held the aura about it that Martha Stewart was about to show at any minute. His mother was beautiful, of course, with perfect breasts and perfect, long legs and perfectly bleached hair. She even offered Zack some perfect cookies, and he would have thought that he was in some episode of Leave it to Beaver if it weren't for the fact that Mrs. Jones was currently wearing a white halter top and black, low-rise jeans that showed off the body that made it really hard to tell whether she worked exceptionally hard for it or just paid for it. And of course, Freddy's room was perfect, featuring everything a teenage boy could ever want in his pad: black, red, and pictures of almost-naked models hanging everywhere.
"I hate it," Freddy proclaimed as he jumped onto his king bed and started jumping up and down.
Zack had no choice but to get on the bed and start jumping, too.
One day, the two of them went to see a show.
It was really fucking weird, if you thought about it, that this would be so odd. After all, the two of them had devoted three and a half years to music and exploring every aspect of it in a rock band. But then, it wasn't so weird when you knew how the band ended, which the both of them did.
Still, the show was absolutely fucking amazing, as Freddy was sure to point out as he shouted into Zack's ear, even if it was just at a local park and even though the band was playing in a fucking gazebo. But still, the sky was dark, the alcohol was almost opaque in his hand, and Freddy was really fucking close, so close that it was hard to tell if his body was warm from the alcohol or his friend.
Halfway through, during the intermission, they spotted Alicia. It was easy to recognize her, because her body was still tough, petite and wiry, her hair was still in rows and rows of dreadlocks, and her eyes were still smeared with eyeliner. However, instead of Gordon, who she had been with the last time he had seen her, she appeared to be very, very intent on suffocating Summer with her tongue.
While Freddy merely laughed at this, it was enough to make Zack question what it was about rock music that turned people gay.
Exactly three days after Zack's birthday, a very loud voice came through Zack's cell phone when he listened to his voice mail.
"You fucking shit-headed ass wipe, I can't fucking believe you didn't fucking tell me about your fucking birthday, fuck, it's not every fucking day you turn fucking seventeen! I fucking hate you. No, I do. Seriously. What the fuck. Shit. Call me. Fuck. I need to get a present, and you need to get a fucking life. I hate you. Call me."
Zack had to sit down in the middle of Barnes and Noble, cover the receiver which was still blaring and causing people to stare at him, and laugh his ass of for about five minutes.
"It's not like I don't like my birthday," he explained later. "I just fucking forgot."
"Yeah right, fuck face. Just," Freddy growled, rolling his eyes. "Just go sit over there. I have a present for you."
He disappeared for a minute into the appropriately spacious bathroom that connected to his room, leaving a very tired and very amused Zack to sit on the appropriately large bed and listen to the Metallica Freddy had been listening to when he got there.
And when Freddy came out of the bathroom completely naked except for "Happy fucking birthday, now fuck me" written appropriately crooked on his chest, Zack had just enough time to realize both how cliché and gloriously appropriate this moment was before Freddy was on him, smearing his clothes with too-whipped butter and his mouth with sloppy kisses.
Zack can't write for shit. And now, he's man enough to admit it. His English III teacher tells him that there isn't anything wrong with his writing, per se. It's beautiful and it flows and it's often creatively done, even if the plots are a bit cliché.
No, the only problem he has, according to his teacher, is that he needs to employ the use of "show, not tell."
Zack thinks this is crazy. After all, the whole problem with "show, not tell" is that most people won't get it, unless they're unusually perceptive or actually give a shit about writing.
When he tells Freddy this, the blonde just smiles and buries his head in Zack's chest, laughing for five minutes before pulling him down for his appropriately sloppy and imperfect kisses.
Sometimes it sucks to have a boyfriend who's better than you at everything.
One Friday, Zack stays over at Freddy's house after a quick call to his parents to tell them where he will be. They lay on Freddy bed and watch Reservoir Dogs twice, turned almost all the way up before Zack realizes why.
"Are there, uh, a lot of people downstairs?" Zack asks when he finally catches drift of the noises and music coming from below him.
"Yeah, one of my parents' parties," Freddy mumbles, the annoyance and hatred in his voice not going unnoticed.
"Oh," Zack says.
They watched Reservoir Dogs again, declaring that the movie would never ever get old.
It is exactly two months, eighteen days and sixteen hours after he first had sex with his best friend that the last of Freddy's writing is read aloud in class. It is uncharacteristically flowery, almost like it was meant to be bad and cliché and all that nonsense. It is a poem, it is short, and Zack knows immediately it is meant for him.
"You're like the devil in my head," Freddy reads. "Flying me to your castle in the sky."
And it is perfect, because Freddy will never stop surprising Zack.
siren_mage's keywords: heterosexual kisses, oldies, Mountain Dew, trains, and everything taking place after High School