Title: Ours
Pairing(s): David Cook/David Archuleta
Rating: PG to NC-17
Genre: AU
Disclaimer: The real-life characters do not belong to me, and the story is fictional.
Summary: A year after his high school graduation, David is living with Cook in L.A., but keeping their love hidden from the public eye brings up obstacles that threaten their relationship.
Author's Notes: This fic was originally posted at
cookleta from September 2008 to October 2009. :) Thank you to my lovely friend
lost4everlouwho for the beta. ♥
16
I. David Cook.
“I suppose I would be lying if I said I hadn’t suspected anything between you and David Archuleta.”
Veronica’s voice was utterly composed and nonchalant, but there were signs of discomfort evident on her face, as if hearing the truth from me had affirmed her fears. Her hand was wrapped tightly around her designer clutch, her knuckles white despite her bronze skin. At the same time, it also surprised me that my confession was all she needed to yield to reality.
“I’m sorry, Veronica.” I meant those words. Yes, she had been disagreeable on several occasions, but it hadn’t necessarily been her fault for following directions from her management.
Her expression was still stiff. “Well, there was no way that I could win this fight, was there?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess not.” Just then, Gabriel - who could now walk fairly well by himself - came over to my side, appearing a bit drowsy. He murmured a quiet and sleepy “daddy” before reaching his arms up toward me. I scooped him up and held him by my waist.
“It’s uncanny how you found a baby who looks like he’s really yours,” Veronica commented, partly to herself, while she peered into her clutch for her cell phone.
I glanced at Gabriel, whose head was leaning against my shoulder, and back at Veronica. “He is ours.”
There was no hint of a smile, but Veronica simply gave a curt nod. I looked after her as she turned and headed out in the opposite direction, her unchanging, authoritative voice telling her manager to send the car.
+
Back at the hotel, I asked Jaidyn to meet me at the bar close to the lobby. Jason joked that he was going to dress up like one of the bartenders and eavesdrop on our conversation but once he sensed the gravity in my voice he assured us that he would keep Gabriel, David and David’s parents company.
I motioned Jaidyn to take a seat next to me at the bar and ordered our drinks. She was curious as to what this was going to be about, but she patiently waited until I brought the subject up. I didn’t beat around the bush.
“I told Veronica about me and Arch tonight after show.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Do you think she’ll tell the tabloids?”
I shook my head. “No I don’t think she will, to be honest. She took the news a lot better than I’d expected.”
“That’s probably because you would have to be completely senseless to not notice what’s going on between you and David.” She grinned. “Says a lot about those execs, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I took my glass and moved it in circles, listening to the ice cubes tinkle against one another.
Jaidyn observed for a few moments before asking, “What did you want to talk about?”
“Well,” I began. “Telling Veronica everything got me thinking, and now this idea won’t leave my head.”
She met my gaze. “Go on.”
“I was thinking how tired I am of keeping our relationship hidden away, especially now that we have Gabriel. It’s not fair to him to have his own parents be secretive about being a family and, frankly, it’s not fair to me or Archie that we’re pretending like the most important thing we share doesn’t exist.” I sighed. “I mean, before I thought that it was better to keep the media out. I thought I was being protective but now I feel like I’m being cowardly, you know?”
“What do you think David will say if you tell him that you want to make your relationship public?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest.”
“I would say that I agree,” came a voice behind us.
We spun around in our chairs and saw David standing there, a sheepish smile on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overhear,” he apologized. “I came down to say goodnight but…”
“You… You think it’s a good idea?” I could hear my heart beginning to race and thump vigorously against my ribcage.
“I couldn’t be happier about it. I think we’re ready for this, Cook.”
His answer was stronger than anything I could have said. I was awed at how much conviction and certainty supported those words. But then, I was reminded once again that David had always been the tougher one between us, the one without whom I would be lost.
I looked back at Jaidyn and could see her smiling back at the two of us. I suddenly felt a rush of elation at the thought that Jaidyn was truly content and comfortable with my being with her brother. She was still in my life, differently than before but perhaps our connection was much more powerful now, more resolute.
She took my hand and gave it a supportive squeeze. “What can I do?”
+
Jaidyn knocked on our hotel door next morning. I greeted her in my pajamas and invited her in. David was sitting on the edge of the bed, eating breakfast with Gabriel from the plates we’d ordered with room service. He grinned at Jaidyn, who took her seat in one of the armchairs with her notepad and recorder.
“Hold on, we’re almost done with breakfast.” David giggled when Gabriel started bouncing in his lap, bursting with energy despite the early hour.
“Take your time,” Jaidyn said with a casual wave of her hand.
A few minutes later, Jason sauntered in through the door, still dressed in his robe.
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Did you just walk down the hallway in that, Castro?”
Jason lazily looked down at his attire. “What, are you jealous that you can’t pull it off like I can?” I threw both of my hands up in mock defeat.
Taking Gabriel from David into his own arms, Jason gave both David and me one of his austere looks, or at least his ridiculous attempt at one.
“You two be good interviewees for Jaidyn, alright?” he advised as he passed behind Jaidyn’s chair. Still holding Gabriel, he leaned down and kissed her cheek, enticing a bubbly laugh from our son. “Now Gabe, let’s go hit the mini bar with your awesome uncle.”
“Jason,” David warned.
“I’m only half kidding, Davey.” But upon seeing David raise an eyebrow sternly, he conceded, “Fine, you know I’m just teasing. I’ll just have to do with teaching him a few pick-up lines that he can use in kindergarten. All rated G, of course.”
“Jason, get out,” Jaidyn said with laugh, ushering her boyfriend out of the room. She didn’t forget to give him a quick kiss before shutting the door. Once she sat down again, she said, “Okay, now we can get started.”
David patted the spot next to him on the bed and I joined him, both of us facing Jaidyn, who had flipped her notepad to a page where she had written down the guiding questions for the interview even though we all knew that those were just for formality’s sake.
“You guys ready?”
I took a deep breath and I could feel that David was doing the same. We nodded together, and Jaidyn switched on the recorder.
II. Jaidyn Archuleta.
Rolling Stone Cover Article / March 15, 2009
By Jaidyn Archuleta
Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed the morning after his concert at Mount St. Mary College in Newburg, N.Y., David Cook appears to be more relaxed than he has been in a while, despite having just begun his nationwide tour. Performing in front of crowds of enthusiastic fans nearly every night and going above and beyond their expectations each time must undoubtedly be exhausting, but Cook is beaming, and next to him, so is David Archuleta.
Some may argue that the fact that I am conducting this interview is a conflict of interest, considering that Cook and I had once thought that we would get married, and that the other David is my younger brother. But after a curious and inevitable turn of events, the three of us are where we were intended to be. Cook and I are no longer together but there is no need to feel bad for the writer here, as I have met my own better half. Well, that is enough talk about me; my brother and Cook are waiting to make an announcement, and I am here to lend them a hand.
“When I look back on it now, I guess the beginning was a bit cliché,” Cook says with a laugh, referring to his concert back in Salt Lake City, Utah in February 2008. Most people don’t know that this was where Cook and David - normally I use the last names for all interviewees but this is not your everyday article - first met as a star and his fan, respectively. “Several of my friends were already huge fans of Cook, and that’s how I started listening to his music,” David says. “I couldn’t believe myself that I’d turned into a fan boy so quickly, and I remember telling my family that the main reason I was going to Cook’s concert was to accompany [my sister] Amber.”
They saw each other while Cook was signing autographs and posing for photographs as he is known to do after his shows and call it trite if you wish but neither could forget the other afterward. If this were a romantic comedy, Cook could have swept David off his feet right then and taken him to his castle in the Hills. But real life is far more tricky and never that easy. So naturally, when Cook and David met again a few months later, Cook and I were dating. I realize that this may have caused you to stop in confusion, so feel free to take a moment to let the sentence marinate.
… Ready? Let’s continue.
“All the emotions and conflict became too much, definitely, when Cook came to stay with our family for a week,” says David. “I was in pain from the guilt, but I was really angry too that I couldn’t just forget about Cook and move on, act like it never happened.” David says that the only person who knew about his feelings for Cook was his best friend Jason. “We owe so much to [Jason]. I was so scared, and he was always there.” He then glances at Cook, who continues for him: “I quite literally fainted when I saw David. I didn’t think I’d ever run into him again, and then seeing him brought back everything that I’d kept bottled up for almost half a year.”
Life is rarely like a movie, but at times it can uncannily resemble a soap opera, and one of the major early plot points in our story is that I accidentally found out about how they felt about each other - through overhearing, no less. I was outraged, of course. I cursed fate and cursed at Cook and my brother, and I was determined to never allow them to come near me again. But life, as we know it, works in funny and inexplicable ways, and though I never thought I could ever forgive them, I did. Cook had come to see me, petrified like I’d never seen him be, and begged me to not abandon my brother. “I felt like I was grasping at thin air,” recalls Cook. “I didn’t expect to be forgiven for as long as I’d lived, but I could see how much the cold war was gnawing away at David.” Forgive me for not being able to perfectly describe my thought process, but listening to Cook made me see that he and I could only have been a broken affair because he was meant to be with my brother forever.
We hear all the time that you need to make lemonade when life throws you lemons. Of course, it cannot always work out that way, but it turned out that we were the fortunate ones. Cook finally worked it out with the right Archuleta and I gained a new best friend and still have the brother I adore. Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, I found someone who I had been waiting for. People may wonder how I can stand writing this without an ounce of bitterness. That’s the benefit of hindsight. Life does work in funny ways, but after the fact you can see how and even why it works the way it does.
With that odd mélange of a fiasco and a happy ending behind us, we all attended David’s high school graduation as a family. Yes, I mean all of us. Yes, Cook was there underneath a baseball cap. From this point on, things will begin to sound familiar.
“David came to L.A. after his graduation and accompanied me to the recording studios,” Cook says. “One day [an executive] heard him singing in the booth for fun, and instantly decided to sign him. He was the only one who was shocked to hear that his voice is amazing.” It really is not lie that David is impossibly modest. Truthfully, no one in our family or even our friends thought it was out of the ordinary except for, of course, David himself: “It was a whirlwind,” he says. “Going from a college-bound high school graduate to a recording artist is an enormous leap. I was scared to take the chance but the support, especially from Cook, was unbelievable.”
Cook adds, “But working together wasn’t easy. People saw us has friends and not as a couple, and we agonized over when and how we should make our relationship public.” Being a more experienced veteran in the industry, Cook was cautious for David’s sake: “His single had just been released and gaining so much attention and love from all listeners. He deserved it and I let others’ prejudiced opinions about couples like us influence my decisions when I should have just ignored them.” He confesses that his management advised him to “date” supermodel Veronica Cortez. “I would say that things ended as well as it could have between us,” Cook says. “She actually gave me the motivation to think about doing this interview, so I’m grateful.”
Another driving factor behind the decision is in fact the second part of their announcement. I can see my brother breathe in deeply, his appearance anxious but his eyes twinkling with excitement. “This past December,” David begins. “On the same day as my birthday, Cook and I adopted our son, Gabriel.” I can hear that his throat is closing up, and I reach out to hold his hand - my little brother, always. “We couldn’t believe it because he looks so much like the both of us. We said it was a miracle.” Having seen my nephew many times now, I can attest to the fact that, yes, Gabriel is their son regardless of the technicalities. “He keeps us up and we barely sleep,” Cook laughs. “But he’ll smile and everything is perfect. Keeping our family hidden away wasn’t right, for him and for David and me.” Cook gazes at David, who smiles back, and anyone could feel the strength of their bond, something the two have been brave enough to fight for, even if society may want them to choose otherwise.
Turning back to me, David sums it up: “I believe I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
This piece may have shocked you or upset you or even affirmed something you have suspected already. What’s important is that every bit, every word is unexaggerated and candid. No matter our creed, race, gender, et cetera, things happen to every one of us that may try us, challenge us and threaten to break us down. Sometimes we make it through to the other end and, if we’re lucky, come out as better versions of our previous selves. It’s something beautiful yet tenacious, difficult to acquire and therefore admirable - much like the two Davids sitting in front me. RS.
Fin
And here it is! The ending. ♥ I hope you enjoyed the series. Comments, of course, are love, especially since I deleted the old posts at
cookleta and the past feedback along with them!