fic 27 - graduation / the beginning of the rest of our lives [jesse/john]
title: graduation / the beginning of the rest of our lives
fandom: Brand New / Straylight Run / Taking Back Sunday
pairing: Jesse/John [José]
rating: PG-13
synopsis: Jesse and John graduate high school and begin the vacation which will become the rest of their lives.
author's note: Second person. John is the adressee. To everyone who's on summer break already: enjoy it. I've got classes until July 26th.
dedication: This goes out to Lauren (erraticxthought) who graduated yesterday.
word count: 2050w approx.
You take your time as your whole grade-who aren’t your grade anymore-spill out of the hot auditorium. And, strangely enough, you’re relishing the push and shove of the two-hundred or so kids all in their smart uniforms, all wearing their navy blue blazers even though it’s nearly midsummer, because it’s the last time you’ll ever do this. Sure, you didn’t relish much of your last few weeks of high school, didn’t register that last Tuesday’s cafeteria roast would be your last but you’re relishing this. Your final moments. You are no longer a high school student. After you step outside those gates you won’t be able to pretend you are one anymore. You’re out of here, out in the big bad world.
He sidles up to you once you’re out of the crush, he’s already got his blazer slung over his shoulder, hooked on one finger and he’s grinning at you. His white shirt’s sticking at his sides but he’s acting cool as anything. Seeing him everyday’s just about the only thing you’ll really miss about the place. He says, “Now we’re free of this place, you want to hang out?” And you’re incredibly relieved he asked because you thought, maybe, after high school, the two of you’d be through. Catholic high school’s a pretty small pond, he could do better than you, but he still wants to hang out and, well, you’re grateful for it.
“Sure.”
You go to a nearby café, the kind with an open fronted fridge which sells plastic-boxed sandwiches for more than a dollar a shot. Jesse shouts you a coke and buys one for himself. Probably, this is the first time you and Jesse have done something like this. Sure, you’ve bought cans of soda from corner shops and walked home drinking them and laughing or stopped off at the park halfway between school and the train station and drunk them sat stationary on the swings in the kids’ play area. A café’s different though, you think, a café’s got class or at least more than the play park or the streets.
You sit outside together underneath the green and white striped awning together, sipping ice cooled cokes and appreciating the steam-like moisture on the inner rim of the glass.
“What you doing this summer?” He asks, leant forward in his seat every bit the badly postured teenager he is.
You think about it for a minute, you don’t have anything planned. Probably, you’ll have to go job hunting or at least start thinking about your future. “I was thinking of getting a band together, you know, ‘cause I want to keep playing but I’ll probably have to get a job.”
“Ah, yeah,” He says, “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to think about working too, but, like, I just want to be free, you know?”
You smile, and say, “Yeah, I know.” Truth is, right now you want to be doing anything but working. Off the production line of education and all you want to do is get as far away from the society you’d been groomed for as possible.
“Hey, John, we’re still going to keep in touch, right?” He says, and you’re sort of taken aback. Sitting opposite you is Jesse, who could make friends with anyone without even trying, and, sure, you weren’t unpopular but you were just one of many. Jesse could do better, you figured, and sure you were sort of close, sort of a double act at times but half of that was because your mothers’ had hit it off and because it was convenient. You never thought this was going to be a lifelong friendship.
Your reply to his question is, “I hope so,” because you do hope so and you really like Jesse, more than likely, he’s your closest friend.
You drink a little coke, leaving the glass just less than half full now and Jesse suggests you do something this summer.
“What kind of something?” You ask, is something going on a road trip in a three hundred dollar decrepit piece of tin or just hanging out for weeks on end in either of your bedrooms living on your guitars and mix tapes and each other’s company?
“I don’t know, anything. I mean, we can do anything now.”
“That’s true. But what?”
He sort of laughs, it’s more of a staged laugh than anything, and finishes his coke. “Use your imagination, John. We could, I don’t know, we could, like go to Vegas or -”
“Go to Vegas?” One of the things you’d always loved about Jesse was how he really seemed to think that he could do anything if he wanted to. He knew he had limits, really, but he’d dream away, coming up with the most outrageous things.
“Well,” He half concedes, “I don’t really want to go to Vegas, but the world is our oyster.”
He’s pulled his feet out of his school shoes and has them perched atop the hot leather, sweating through his black socks, and he’s grinning at you as if he really thinks the world’s your, collective, oyster. You know that, really, Jesse is racked with insecurities. You know that Jesse will have spent more sleepless nights even than you have considering his future but you love his put-on optimism, even if that’s all it is.
“Hey,” he says, “How about we go to the beach or something?”
On Long Island the beach is nothing special, you know that Jesse spent half the weekends of his childhood on the beach surfing with his brothers and whatever else it was that Jesse’s family did but you smile and you say, “Sure, alright, let’s go to the beach.”
He’s grinning at you across the table, and you like the way he smiles. You down the rest of your coke as he slips his shoes back on and the two of you head home together, revelling in your new found sense of freedom and planning your trip to the beach.
It’s the next Monday morning when you roll in at the beach, you took the train then a bus and eventually you find yourself there, and you sort of wish you’d waited until school was back in and the vacation mob were gone to do this.
You spend most of the day just sprawled out on the sand together or wandering the seafront shops and at the arcade on the pier. Really, you just feel like a high school kid on the first day of vacation and you tell Jesse this as you sit on the pier, dangling your legs off the wood platform, still several feet above the water.
“Yeah,” Jesse says, “I guess it’s not so different.”
And you sense he’s feeling dejected and put down so you add, “It’s nice though, it’s been a nice day.” It’s not even five o’clock but you’ve planned to take the bus at five-ten to get the train at half-past.
“It’s been fun. Yeah.” Jesse says, then he says, “Actually,”
“We should probably head back if we want to catch the bus.”
And Jesse says, “Yeah, yeah, we should.” And you wonder what he’s so put out about. It’s summer. It’s just a few days after graduation. This is the beginning of the rest of your lives.
You both get up and smile at each other as you head back down the pier. You watch all the parents with their kids and the bearded men with their nylon fishing lines and buckets of seething yellow-grey crabs.
Halfway down the pier you feel it starting to rain, a few tingling drops, and you say you’re glad you’re going home now, since it’s raining and Jesse makes a sort of grunting ‘mm’ of a reply. You ask him what’s up but instead of answering he indicates the bus stop at the end of the pier and says, “Hey, isn’t that our bus?”
Together you run down the slightly damp, getting slippery wood. You reach the pavement as the bus pulls away and give up running, stop, take deep breaths and look from one to the other, resigned to it. You walk to the bus stop at a more relaxed pace, peer up at the bus timetable half hopeful that another will be due in ten minutes. The timetable says twenty and you share a look.
The bus stop is just a stick in the ground with a list of bus numbers and service times on it. It’s not even got a plastic shelter or a bench. Jesse leans up against the pole nonchalantly and you, more irritated than you want to let on, light a cigarette under your hand hoping you’ll manage to smoke it before the rain becomes worse than drizzling.
“Hey, you know,” Jesse says, as he watches you light up, “it could be worse.”
“I know,” you put your lighter away in your pocket uncertain as to whether or not you’ll be needing it again, “at least we’re together, right?”
Jesse smiles, or makes his best effort, then says, “I’m sorry for dragging you here.”
You shake your head, take the cigarette out of your mouth, exhale, and say, “No, seriously, it’s been good.”
“I guess,” Jesse says, “I guess, I’m just really into the beach.”
“I know.” Jesse’s naïve attachment to the beach sort of makes you smile, too.
“Hey, you know, I actually, sort of, wanted to tell you something today but I never really found the moment and,” Jesse swallows, you give up on your dampened cigarette and drop it to crush under your heel as Jesse goes on to say, “I just figured I should say that you’re, like, my best friend and I want to, you know, I want to keep in touch and stuff.”
You look at Jesse in his t-shirt, colour half gone from washing, the name of some surf beach and a little surfboard logo a cracked design on the front, his shorts are cut-off jeans which his mother had objected to having such a large hole in and you wonder what better friend you could ask for. But all you say is, “Yeah, yeah, me too.”
The rain’s picking up though it’s still pretty bright out and you think, really, this afternoon’s a good enough mirror of your life. Here you are, out in the rain, waiting for something to come and whisk you off to where you want to be and maybe you ought to be frightened or scared or anxious but you’re not because you know that, probably, it’ll come but until then and even after then you’ll have Jesse with you and, really, that’s good enough for you.
When you reach the train station, the train’s delayed and you’ve missed the five-thirty besides, so you drink coffees from a vendor, yours plied with sugar because you despise the taste and you pretend to be grown up as you drink it, wishing you could hold your nose. Jesse stood next to you on the platform smiles as he watches the disgust you’re failing to disguise.
The train journey’s little more than ten minutes and he gets off a stop before you do, leaving his empty paper cup on the table next to yours-which is half cold and still half full. He lowers the chair arm by his side and says “See you, John,” before leaning across you and giving what could have just been a friendly kiss goodbye but leaves your lips tingling and tasting of strong, dark coffee, no sugar. It’s a simple, bitter taste which leaves you feeling, just a little more alive.
You walk the last of the way home from the train station alone, it’s slowly getting dark and the weather’s getting stormy. When you can’t sleep that night because of the storm and the persistent, harrowing thoughts of the future you go down to the kitchen and make a cup of strong, black coffee without sugar.
You carry the coffee upstairs and curl up in bed with it, put your walkman headphones on and play a mix tape Jesse had given you the day before graduation. You smell the coffee, take a sip, grimace then put it down on your bedside cabinet. Then you lie back and listen to the tape until you fall asleep, thinking of Jesse.
fandom: Brand New / Straylight Run / Taking Back Sunday
pairing: Jesse/John [José]
rating: PG-13
synopsis: Jesse and John graduate high school and begin the vacation which will become the rest of their lives.
author's note: Second person. John is the adressee. To everyone who's on summer break already: enjoy it. I've got classes until July 26th.
dedication: This goes out to Lauren (erraticxthought) who graduated yesterday.
word count: 2050w approx.
You take your time as your whole grade-who aren’t your grade anymore-spill out of the hot auditorium. And, strangely enough, you’re relishing the push and shove of the two-hundred or so kids all in their smart uniforms, all wearing their navy blue blazers even though it’s nearly midsummer, because it’s the last time you’ll ever do this. Sure, you didn’t relish much of your last few weeks of high school, didn’t register that last Tuesday’s cafeteria roast would be your last but you’re relishing this. Your final moments. You are no longer a high school student. After you step outside those gates you won’t be able to pretend you are one anymore. You’re out of here, out in the big bad world.
He sidles up to you once you’re out of the crush, he’s already got his blazer slung over his shoulder, hooked on one finger and he’s grinning at you. His white shirt’s sticking at his sides but he’s acting cool as anything. Seeing him everyday’s just about the only thing you’ll really miss about the place. He says, “Now we’re free of this place, you want to hang out?” And you’re incredibly relieved he asked because you thought, maybe, after high school, the two of you’d be through. Catholic high school’s a pretty small pond, he could do better than you, but he still wants to hang out and, well, you’re grateful for it.
“Sure.”
You go to a nearby café, the kind with an open fronted fridge which sells plastic-boxed sandwiches for more than a dollar a shot. Jesse shouts you a coke and buys one for himself. Probably, this is the first time you and Jesse have done something like this. Sure, you’ve bought cans of soda from corner shops and walked home drinking them and laughing or stopped off at the park halfway between school and the train station and drunk them sat stationary on the swings in the kids’ play area. A café’s different though, you think, a café’s got class or at least more than the play park or the streets.
You sit outside together underneath the green and white striped awning together, sipping ice cooled cokes and appreciating the steam-like moisture on the inner rim of the glass.
“What you doing this summer?” He asks, leant forward in his seat every bit the badly postured teenager he is.
You think about it for a minute, you don’t have anything planned. Probably, you’ll have to go job hunting or at least start thinking about your future. “I was thinking of getting a band together, you know, ‘cause I want to keep playing but I’ll probably have to get a job.”
“Ah, yeah,” He says, “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to think about working too, but, like, I just want to be free, you know?”
You smile, and say, “Yeah, I know.” Truth is, right now you want to be doing anything but working. Off the production line of education and all you want to do is get as far away from the society you’d been groomed for as possible.
“Hey, John, we’re still going to keep in touch, right?” He says, and you’re sort of taken aback. Sitting opposite you is Jesse, who could make friends with anyone without even trying, and, sure, you weren’t unpopular but you were just one of many. Jesse could do better, you figured, and sure you were sort of close, sort of a double act at times but half of that was because your mothers’ had hit it off and because it was convenient. You never thought this was going to be a lifelong friendship.
Your reply to his question is, “I hope so,” because you do hope so and you really like Jesse, more than likely, he’s your closest friend.
You drink a little coke, leaving the glass just less than half full now and Jesse suggests you do something this summer.
“What kind of something?” You ask, is something going on a road trip in a three hundred dollar decrepit piece of tin or just hanging out for weeks on end in either of your bedrooms living on your guitars and mix tapes and each other’s company?
“I don’t know, anything. I mean, we can do anything now.”
“That’s true. But what?”
He sort of laughs, it’s more of a staged laugh than anything, and finishes his coke. “Use your imagination, John. We could, I don’t know, we could, like go to Vegas or -”
“Go to Vegas?” One of the things you’d always loved about Jesse was how he really seemed to think that he could do anything if he wanted to. He knew he had limits, really, but he’d dream away, coming up with the most outrageous things.
“Well,” He half concedes, “I don’t really want to go to Vegas, but the world is our oyster.”
He’s pulled his feet out of his school shoes and has them perched atop the hot leather, sweating through his black socks, and he’s grinning at you as if he really thinks the world’s your, collective, oyster. You know that, really, Jesse is racked with insecurities. You know that Jesse will have spent more sleepless nights even than you have considering his future but you love his put-on optimism, even if that’s all it is.
“Hey,” he says, “How about we go to the beach or something?”
On Long Island the beach is nothing special, you know that Jesse spent half the weekends of his childhood on the beach surfing with his brothers and whatever else it was that Jesse’s family did but you smile and you say, “Sure, alright, let’s go to the beach.”
He’s grinning at you across the table, and you like the way he smiles. You down the rest of your coke as he slips his shoes back on and the two of you head home together, revelling in your new found sense of freedom and planning your trip to the beach.
It’s the next Monday morning when you roll in at the beach, you took the train then a bus and eventually you find yourself there, and you sort of wish you’d waited until school was back in and the vacation mob were gone to do this.
You spend most of the day just sprawled out on the sand together or wandering the seafront shops and at the arcade on the pier. Really, you just feel like a high school kid on the first day of vacation and you tell Jesse this as you sit on the pier, dangling your legs off the wood platform, still several feet above the water.
“Yeah,” Jesse says, “I guess it’s not so different.”
And you sense he’s feeling dejected and put down so you add, “It’s nice though, it’s been a nice day.” It’s not even five o’clock but you’ve planned to take the bus at five-ten to get the train at half-past.
“It’s been fun. Yeah.” Jesse says, then he says, “Actually,”
“We should probably head back if we want to catch the bus.”
And Jesse says, “Yeah, yeah, we should.” And you wonder what he’s so put out about. It’s summer. It’s just a few days after graduation. This is the beginning of the rest of your lives.
You both get up and smile at each other as you head back down the pier. You watch all the parents with their kids and the bearded men with their nylon fishing lines and buckets of seething yellow-grey crabs.
Halfway down the pier you feel it starting to rain, a few tingling drops, and you say you’re glad you’re going home now, since it’s raining and Jesse makes a sort of grunting ‘mm’ of a reply. You ask him what’s up but instead of answering he indicates the bus stop at the end of the pier and says, “Hey, isn’t that our bus?”
Together you run down the slightly damp, getting slippery wood. You reach the pavement as the bus pulls away and give up running, stop, take deep breaths and look from one to the other, resigned to it. You walk to the bus stop at a more relaxed pace, peer up at the bus timetable half hopeful that another will be due in ten minutes. The timetable says twenty and you share a look.
The bus stop is just a stick in the ground with a list of bus numbers and service times on it. It’s not even got a plastic shelter or a bench. Jesse leans up against the pole nonchalantly and you, more irritated than you want to let on, light a cigarette under your hand hoping you’ll manage to smoke it before the rain becomes worse than drizzling.
“Hey, you know,” Jesse says, as he watches you light up, “it could be worse.”
“I know,” you put your lighter away in your pocket uncertain as to whether or not you’ll be needing it again, “at least we’re together, right?”
Jesse smiles, or makes his best effort, then says, “I’m sorry for dragging you here.”
You shake your head, take the cigarette out of your mouth, exhale, and say, “No, seriously, it’s been good.”
“I guess,” Jesse says, “I guess, I’m just really into the beach.”
“I know.” Jesse’s naïve attachment to the beach sort of makes you smile, too.
“Hey, you know, I actually, sort of, wanted to tell you something today but I never really found the moment and,” Jesse swallows, you give up on your dampened cigarette and drop it to crush under your heel as Jesse goes on to say, “I just figured I should say that you’re, like, my best friend and I want to, you know, I want to keep in touch and stuff.”
You look at Jesse in his t-shirt, colour half gone from washing, the name of some surf beach and a little surfboard logo a cracked design on the front, his shorts are cut-off jeans which his mother had objected to having such a large hole in and you wonder what better friend you could ask for. But all you say is, “Yeah, yeah, me too.”
The rain’s picking up though it’s still pretty bright out and you think, really, this afternoon’s a good enough mirror of your life. Here you are, out in the rain, waiting for something to come and whisk you off to where you want to be and maybe you ought to be frightened or scared or anxious but you’re not because you know that, probably, it’ll come but until then and even after then you’ll have Jesse with you and, really, that’s good enough for you.
When you reach the train station, the train’s delayed and you’ve missed the five-thirty besides, so you drink coffees from a vendor, yours plied with sugar because you despise the taste and you pretend to be grown up as you drink it, wishing you could hold your nose. Jesse stood next to you on the platform smiles as he watches the disgust you’re failing to disguise.
The train journey’s little more than ten minutes and he gets off a stop before you do, leaving his empty paper cup on the table next to yours-which is half cold and still half full. He lowers the chair arm by his side and says “See you, John,” before leaning across you and giving what could have just been a friendly kiss goodbye but leaves your lips tingling and tasting of strong, dark coffee, no sugar. It’s a simple, bitter taste which leaves you feeling, just a little more alive.
You walk the last of the way home from the train station alone, it’s slowly getting dark and the weather’s getting stormy. When you can’t sleep that night because of the storm and the persistent, harrowing thoughts of the future you go down to the kitchen and make a cup of strong, black coffee without sugar.
You carry the coffee upstairs and curl up in bed with it, put your walkman headphones on and play a mix tape Jesse had given you the day before graduation. You smell the coffee, take a sip, grimace then put it down on your bedside cabinet. Then you lie back and listen to the tape until you fall asleep, thinking of Jesse.