[Swedish Idol 2005] - "How It Was and How It Ended" {Måns; Ola}
Title: How It Was and How It Ended
Author: kenzimone
Disclaimer: I would love to own them, but alas.
Fandom: (Swedish) Idol 2005
Rating: PG
Word count: 1,500
Summary: In hindsight, Måns realizes that it hasn’t simply been a bizarre coincidence.
In hindsight, Måns realizes that it hasn’t simply been a bizarre coincidence. That there had been a Plan, a Purpose, long before he had known of it; long before the gears of motions had started to groan under the stress of finally moving and setting events in motion, it had been decided that This is how it is supposed to be.
Måns meets his girlfriend in April, when he’s still eighteen and still in school and still longing for graduation to come so that he can be carefree and young. He works part time as a waiter at a small restaurant in central Lund, and one day she walks in through the door, blonde and smiling and her cheeks tinged with red, and he’s in love. They dance a strange dance for a couple of days, with late night telephone calls and feigned shyness before she lets him kiss her. Åsa is her name, and when she touches the nape of his neck the void in his stomach almost feels smaller.
One month later, he’s in Malmö and sitting on a hard and uncomfortable chair in a corridor, waiting for someone to call out the number that’s printed on the large sticker he’s wearing on his chest. People are crying and laughing and screaming and singing, and he almost gets up and leaves before he remembers that she’s outside waiting for him, and that she’ll be disappointed if he doesn’t follow through. He sings to the red head behind the table, and she smiles; that’s the moment he knows he’s made it.
In July he leaves Lund and goes to Stockholm. He shares the cab to the airport with a wiry blond, a boy his age that has lived on his block since fifth grade and whom he has seen at friends’ friends’ parties since he’s been old enough to drink. They don’t talk, and Måns spends the ride trying to remember the blond’s name. It is only when they arrive and there’s a man waiting for them, asking for them by name that Måns remembers that which has been gnawing at the back of his mind the whole ride; Ola.
Stockholm is wild and crazy and exhausting. Måns feels himself hanging by a thin thread by the end of the first day; half of the people from that morning are gone, and the city’s strange and different and like a dark shadow looming overhead. Ola’s on the other side of the room, and Måns sees rather than feels himself walk over and take a seat by the blond on the floor. For a moment, when Ola greets him and the dialect of his home town washes over him he’s somewhere else, somewhere familiar and safe, but then someone else speaks, a harsh sound of Stockholm’s suburbs ringing in his ears, and he’s back on the floor in the theater. And Ola’s the only familiar and safe thing still there.
Måns has always prided himself of being independent, of walking on his own and making his own decisions, but suddenly that’s not as important as having something there with you. He never says this aloud, and Ola never agrees with him, but they still meet halfway and spend the rest of the time in the capital together. Sometimes, something as simple as talking about the old man with ten cats that lives on the corner of a city block in the outskirts of a town far away over a hamburger and fries is all you need to not give into the stress that you feel clawing at you from the inside.
Ola lives in a green house five hundred meters from Måns’ home. Måns doesn’t quite know how he knows this, if he’s somehow counted his steps when walking to school, or if it’s simply a matter of subconsciously knowing the important things in life that you never knew were important to begin with. They go to the same school, Ola and he, and Måns can remember sometimes seeing the blond walking before him on the road up towards the bus stop. More often than not, there is a training bag thrown carelessly over his shoulders, and when Måns walks home later that day he’ll watch the soccer team on the field by the school gym run laps across the green expanse of grass. Ola’s blond locks are like a shining beacon in the dark against his teammates’ brown and black heads of hair.
It’s the end of July, and they make it through, both of them; from four thousand to twenty four, they’ve made it further than they’d ever hoped or thought they might. Ola celebrates by dragging Måns with him to a soccer game Måns would have had to beg and cajole his other friends to attend, and he spends the next few hours screaming his throat sore and raw beside his new friend. It’s only when the game comes to an end and they’re walking down the stairs and out of the stadium, Ola’s arm slung over Måns shoulders in a gesture of manly camaraderie that so many of the game’s attendants seem to be adopting all around them, that Måns checks his cell phone and discovers he’s missed a call from his girlfriend. He makes a note to call her back, but forgets and doesn’t get around to it until the following evening in his hotel room, when there’s a commercial break in the movie he’s watching and Ola’s curled up and asleep on his bed; three rings and she doesn’t answer, and he hangs up and watches his friend come out of his sleep as the commercial break abruptly ends.
It’s late September, and there are eight of them left. Måns hasn’t seen his girlfriend in five weeks, and the worry that the void she had filled would be ripped open once again at such long a time of separation has been put to rest; he feels whole, something that’s never happened before, and the missed calls filling his cell phone display doesn’t bother him like they used to. It’s thirty minutes past ten o’clock, and at one moment they’re both in the top ten, Ola and he, and in the next only Måns is. The screams of the audience cut into his head as he feels a warm pair of arms wrap tightly around him, and the sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach is one he doesn’t recognize until that night, when he tosses and turns in bed and then gives up because he’s never been able to sleep with the void eating him from the inside out anyway.
It’s December, and it’s over. He didn’t make it all the way, but he went as far as he’d hoped he would. He’s back in Lund, back in his old bedroom with the white painted walls and dark blue carpet, and when he looks out the window at four PM on Wednesday afternoons he doesn’t see the usual blond figure walking past, training bag swung over strong shoulders and what little hair visible under the grey cap shining in the sun. He makes a phone call, but there’s no answer on the other end, and so he calls his girlfriend instead. He can almost bring himself to smile when she answers at the first ring, but has to force himself to return her words of affection at the end of the call.
The green house seems empty, because Ola has an apartment in the capital now. Måns visits on the weekends, because Stockholm has grown on him and the bars are great and there’s something special about hearing that voice and that dialect amongst the biting sound of native Stockholmers on the subway. The blond drags him out on the town on Saturday night, and Måns leaves his cell phone behind in the apartment and only on the way back to the apartment, lightheaded and sitting on a bus with Ola curled up and asleep against his side does he wonder how many missed calls he’ll have waiting for him.
It’s January, and she finally gives him an ultimatum. He’s been waiting for it, but never quite expected her to muster up enough courage to leave. He has to choose, she tells him. It’s either Lund, or Stockholm. Either her, or him. It’s because he’s been waiting for it, because he’s gone over it so many times in his head at night, that he knows exactly what to say;
When I look back at the past year and think of what has made it special, of what I’ve done and the two people I’ve met, it’s not Idol I remember. And neither is it you.
He leaves Lund two days later, cheek red and still stinging, and Ola makes a point to poke at it and laugh at Måns’ pained expression before he helps his friend carry his bags in through his apartment door.
Author: kenzimone
Disclaimer: I would love to own them, but alas.
Fandom: (Swedish) Idol 2005
Rating: PG
Word count: 1,500
Summary: In hindsight, Måns realizes that it hasn’t simply been a bizarre coincidence.
In hindsight, Måns realizes that it hasn’t simply been a bizarre coincidence. That there had been a Plan, a Purpose, long before he had known of it; long before the gears of motions had started to groan under the stress of finally moving and setting events in motion, it had been decided that This is how it is supposed to be.
Måns meets his girlfriend in April, when he’s still eighteen and still in school and still longing for graduation to come so that he can be carefree and young. He works part time as a waiter at a small restaurant in central Lund, and one day she walks in through the door, blonde and smiling and her cheeks tinged with red, and he’s in love. They dance a strange dance for a couple of days, with late night telephone calls and feigned shyness before she lets him kiss her. Åsa is her name, and when she touches the nape of his neck the void in his stomach almost feels smaller.
One month later, he’s in Malmö and sitting on a hard and uncomfortable chair in a corridor, waiting for someone to call out the number that’s printed on the large sticker he’s wearing on his chest. People are crying and laughing and screaming and singing, and he almost gets up and leaves before he remembers that she’s outside waiting for him, and that she’ll be disappointed if he doesn’t follow through. He sings to the red head behind the table, and she smiles; that’s the moment he knows he’s made it.
In July he leaves Lund and goes to Stockholm. He shares the cab to the airport with a wiry blond, a boy his age that has lived on his block since fifth grade and whom he has seen at friends’ friends’ parties since he’s been old enough to drink. They don’t talk, and Måns spends the ride trying to remember the blond’s name. It is only when they arrive and there’s a man waiting for them, asking for them by name that Måns remembers that which has been gnawing at the back of his mind the whole ride; Ola.
Stockholm is wild and crazy and exhausting. Måns feels himself hanging by a thin thread by the end of the first day; half of the people from that morning are gone, and the city’s strange and different and like a dark shadow looming overhead. Ola’s on the other side of the room, and Måns sees rather than feels himself walk over and take a seat by the blond on the floor. For a moment, when Ola greets him and the dialect of his home town washes over him he’s somewhere else, somewhere familiar and safe, but then someone else speaks, a harsh sound of Stockholm’s suburbs ringing in his ears, and he’s back on the floor in the theater. And Ola’s the only familiar and safe thing still there.
Måns has always prided himself of being independent, of walking on his own and making his own decisions, but suddenly that’s not as important as having something there with you. He never says this aloud, and Ola never agrees with him, but they still meet halfway and spend the rest of the time in the capital together. Sometimes, something as simple as talking about the old man with ten cats that lives on the corner of a city block in the outskirts of a town far away over a hamburger and fries is all you need to not give into the stress that you feel clawing at you from the inside.
Ola lives in a green house five hundred meters from Måns’ home. Måns doesn’t quite know how he knows this, if he’s somehow counted his steps when walking to school, or if it’s simply a matter of subconsciously knowing the important things in life that you never knew were important to begin with. They go to the same school, Ola and he, and Måns can remember sometimes seeing the blond walking before him on the road up towards the bus stop. More often than not, there is a training bag thrown carelessly over his shoulders, and when Måns walks home later that day he’ll watch the soccer team on the field by the school gym run laps across the green expanse of grass. Ola’s blond locks are like a shining beacon in the dark against his teammates’ brown and black heads of hair.
It’s the end of July, and they make it through, both of them; from four thousand to twenty four, they’ve made it further than they’d ever hoped or thought they might. Ola celebrates by dragging Måns with him to a soccer game Måns would have had to beg and cajole his other friends to attend, and he spends the next few hours screaming his throat sore and raw beside his new friend. It’s only when the game comes to an end and they’re walking down the stairs and out of the stadium, Ola’s arm slung over Måns shoulders in a gesture of manly camaraderie that so many of the game’s attendants seem to be adopting all around them, that Måns checks his cell phone and discovers he’s missed a call from his girlfriend. He makes a note to call her back, but forgets and doesn’t get around to it until the following evening in his hotel room, when there’s a commercial break in the movie he’s watching and Ola’s curled up and asleep on his bed; three rings and she doesn’t answer, and he hangs up and watches his friend come out of his sleep as the commercial break abruptly ends.
It’s late September, and there are eight of them left. Måns hasn’t seen his girlfriend in five weeks, and the worry that the void she had filled would be ripped open once again at such long a time of separation has been put to rest; he feels whole, something that’s never happened before, and the missed calls filling his cell phone display doesn’t bother him like they used to. It’s thirty minutes past ten o’clock, and at one moment they’re both in the top ten, Ola and he, and in the next only Måns is. The screams of the audience cut into his head as he feels a warm pair of arms wrap tightly around him, and the sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach is one he doesn’t recognize until that night, when he tosses and turns in bed and then gives up because he’s never been able to sleep with the void eating him from the inside out anyway.
It’s December, and it’s over. He didn’t make it all the way, but he went as far as he’d hoped he would. He’s back in Lund, back in his old bedroom with the white painted walls and dark blue carpet, and when he looks out the window at four PM on Wednesday afternoons he doesn’t see the usual blond figure walking past, training bag swung over strong shoulders and what little hair visible under the grey cap shining in the sun. He makes a phone call, but there’s no answer on the other end, and so he calls his girlfriend instead. He can almost bring himself to smile when she answers at the first ring, but has to force himself to return her words of affection at the end of the call.
The green house seems empty, because Ola has an apartment in the capital now. Måns visits on the weekends, because Stockholm has grown on him and the bars are great and there’s something special about hearing that voice and that dialect amongst the biting sound of native Stockholmers on the subway. The blond drags him out on the town on Saturday night, and Måns leaves his cell phone behind in the apartment and only on the way back to the apartment, lightheaded and sitting on a bus with Ola curled up and asleep against his side does he wonder how many missed calls he’ll have waiting for him.
It’s January, and she finally gives him an ultimatum. He’s been waiting for it, but never quite expected her to muster up enough courage to leave. He has to choose, she tells him. It’s either Lund, or Stockholm. Either her, or him. It’s because he’s been waiting for it, because he’s gone over it so many times in his head at night, that he knows exactly what to say;
When I look back at the past year and think of what has made it special, of what I’ve done and the two people I’ve met, it’s not Idol I remember. And neither is it you.
He leaves Lund two days later, cheek red and still stinging, and Ola makes a point to poke at it and laugh at Måns’ pained expression before he helps his friend carry his bags in through his apartment door.