10give him pain and he will make something beautiful out of it. — for coppertone wars' monthly challenge.
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pairing: derrick/massie — the otp of all otps.
for these thangs: monthly challenge at coppertone wars. and level one ("write one fic about your otp") in the twelve days of christmas challenge at coppertone wars.
prompt: "come on take a walk on the wild side; let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain; you like your girls insane" from born to die by lana del rey.
a/n: gO LISTEN TO THE SONGS NOW OKAY:
—seaside, by the kooks.
—seven nation army, by the white stripes.
—where is my mind, by the pixies.
disclaimer: unfortunately, i don't own the clique. if i did, i would be a character and i would be dating derrick, cam, and josh all at once.
whiskey eyes
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Massie Block's funeral was something sculpted out of illusions-—
The breeze was just the slightest bit too frigid and down and the sky was a faint pinkgray that resembled swollen eyes and the guests were much too depressed, to say the least. It's not to say that they shouldn't be; the town's prized scarlet had just gone away for a bit, that's all.
There was no such thing as death, no accidents or murder or disease or sadness, just trips, because everyone went away temporarily. Everyone came back again, and so would she.
-—that is, to Derrick Harrington.
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"Do you remember when you last saw her?"
The woman's voice made his ears sting, and when her keen eyes flickered up to meet his, he immediately shifted his focus to his lap. She asked carefully, almost as if she was afraid of his response—or, she was afraid of him. It was the same thing. Instead, he steadied himself by staring intently at her inky pen scratching against the paper, no doubt recording all of his possible mental disorders and diseases that he was sure he didn't have.
"Derrick, do you hear me?"
He did hear her, but he didn't want to answer any questions about Massie Elizabeth Block. But his therapist's gaze was so sharp that he couldn't help but force his eyes back up to her, and found himself muttering out, "No, I don't hear you."
She let out an aggravated sigh and averted her newfound glare to the paper, scribbling a couple more words on and ignoring his wince at the noisy scrawl rather than asking him another question; Great therapist she is, he thought. Squeezing his eyes open and shut to clear his vision, he absentmindedly rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, still debating whether or not to talk, finally deciding on,
"I saw her last night while I was dreaming."
She blinked, breathing out once again, causing the boy to flush self-consciously and repetitively run a finger through his shaggy blonde hair, which had grown out considerably since the Day He Got Sad. Bringing his knees to his chest, he made the bold choice to meet her eyes and lower his eyebrows, hoping it would raise her mood—and thankfully, it did. The therapist motioned for him to go on, more gently this time rather than with sharp gestures.
"The last time I saw her, for real, was during school on a good day. I'm glad it was a good day, because it was her last day," he spoke quickly and dully, twiddling his thumbs. "After school, she wanted to go get smoothies. I wanted to go get ice cream. We ended up getting ice cream, and now I feel bad about that because it was her last day and she should've gotten what she wanted. It wasn't anything special, though. We just hung out and then I went home and then she went home," his voice began to crack, and he swallowed. "She went home and hanged herself. And I still don't know why. Do you know why?"
The therapist avoided eye contact and whispered so softly he could barely hear, "Nobody knows the true reason why people commit suicide. Only they know themselves—er, they think they know."
He nodded, and they were silent for awhile.
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And all of a sudden, he was freshly sixteen as soon as the therapy room went quiet for a moment. In his head now, he was naive and confused again, but his girlfriend knew where she was headed. Massie was never one to procrastinate or even go with the flow, which he admired in some way because it wasn't like him.
The place was the abandoned section of downtown Westchester, filled to the gap with urban clothing shops and tiny cafes. Derrick knew that it was secretly Massie's favorite part of town, despite her constant public obsession with big town designer shops. The two had been lingering on the sidewalks with hot cocoa in hand for the past two hours, discussing random topics that either of them could think of in the spur of the moment. And currently, a debate over reality television series vs. supernatural television series was amidst them.
"How do you find entertainment in a nurse who hunts down aliens in a phone box?" Massie crinkled her brow, throwing up her hands in frustration.
Derrick stood agape at her resistance, "First of all, he has a nickname which is coincidentally the 'doctor', not a nurse. Second, it's a police box. And third, Doctor Who is the most amazing television show of all time. Anyway, you shouldn't be talking, considering you find shows about four year olds with nose jobs competing in beauty pageants enjoyable to watch instead of corrupting."
Laughing, she shook her head and clutched his arm, pulling her beanie tighter around her chestnut hair to stay warm. "This isn't even an argument worth arguing," she shot back, but let out a groan once a few drops of rain began splattering atop their heads, and soon onto the sidewalk. "Let's go inside."
"Why? You don't want to ruin your hair?" he cracked a grin.
"No," she snapped, but it soon faulted. "Well, yeah."
"Let's stay out here," Derrick insisted, his smile widening at Massie's bewildered expression. "It may be raining, but it's actually a bit warm out." He lifted his hand in the air, and as if to prove his point, observed the water droplets that had landed drizzle down his arm.
"Derrick, you're crazy."
"I'm quite aware of that. Will you be crazy with me?"
Her expression represented plain are you kidding me, but after a moment it shifted into a small smile. He smiled at the sight as well, and the two were smiling together like idiots for a few silent moments before Derrick broke it by holding out his hand and murmuring, "Dance with me?"
"But—"
"But what?" he challenged, and took her hand in his. Despite the now pouring rain, her chin rested on his shoulder, and for once she didn't smooth down her dripping hair. The pair swayed back in forth to their own music, both hearts nearly beating out of their chests although they weren't quite that nervous with each other anymore.
"So what are we doing next?" she murmured against his neck after a moment, almost lyrically.
His brow furrowed and he replied just as softly, "What's wrong with right now?"
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with right now, but I know you. You're off doing one thing, before hopping up and deciding to go skydiving," she giggled at the truth of her own statement, causing Derrick to appear amused as well.
"Is it bad that I was about to suggest going to a drive-in movie?"
"Not at all," Massie tilted her chin up to lock lips with his momentarily, but soon abruptly pulled apart and grabbed his hand. As he followed her excited figure, he couldn't help but admire the exact way that she walked when she was happy, or the way raindrops looked on her thick eyelashes, or the way they were exactly the same but also intricately different at the same time.
And he would still remember every individual detail about her forever, as if she was still there.
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His therapist finally spoke up after the long silence, jolting Derrick out of the flashback that was sure to leave him deranged. Hesitantly, she chewed her lip and attempted to suggest with her voice shaking, "To answer your question, about why—suicidal thoughts are a side effect of depression. Were you aware that she was depressed in any way?"
"She wasn't depressed. Not wanting to live is a side effect of living."
He said it as if he was trying to convince himself that she hadn't been sick, not realizing the actual truth in one part of his statement. Inhaling from the back of his throat, he squeezed his eyes shut and locked in a swallow to stop a breakdown, the only thing running through his head being Massie and how he was never going to see her again. With this brought a jolt of self-loathing at his greed.
"Derrick.." the therapist, who he had yet to learn or care about the name of, breathed out, "Does that mean you don't want to live, either?"
He wasn't sure what it was about that—the truth of it, how that was what Massie was thinking, or maybe how easy it was to not live. In a split second he could just jump out this third story window, or even grab the eerily sharp pencil on his therapist's desk and shove it through his heart. Life was the most fragile thing on earth.
At this, he let out a choked, strangled cry, and his gaze shifted to his hands tapping restlessly on the chair.
"Derrick—"
"Shut up," he whispered, lowering his head but keeping eye contact with her. The attempt at keeping his guard up suddenly shattered, and he found himself collapsing inside of his body, and soon onto the floor. Clutching the legs of the chair he had previously been in, Derrick managed to stay sitting up no matter how much he felt drawn to underneath. He squeezed his eyes shut so tight they formed crevices, and began screaming, not caring a bit whether he sounded manly or not, just that she was gone and he missed her so fucking much—so fucking much.
"You," he choked out, "You don't know her. You don't know her. You don't—" he cut off with another sickly cry, burying his head into his knees while repeating his mantra under his breath, ignoring completely his therapist who had now crouched beside him yet with little means of comfort.
The tears gushed down and showed no signs of stopping, but the blonde boy barely noticed them or acknowledged his surroundings, just that all of his insides burned and his cheeks stung with the salt that sadness came with. No matter how hard he tightened the hug around himself, nothing changed but his loosening strength. With this, he smothered a hand across his eyes and cheeks, aiming to wipe the tears and snot away, but instead finding it on his face even more.
"I'm so selfish," he managed to croak out. "I'm crying because she's not here anymore."
"That's empathetic, not selfish."
"No, you don't get it. I'm sad because of what's missing in my life. We're all so selfish—" his words were muffled with his hand over his mouth, and he hunched over to erase the aching under his skin, writhing away from the therapist's warm touch on his back. "—and horrible and cruel and I hate it. I hate it so much."
His therapist tried rubbing his back again, but he instantly declined and stood up abruptly, ready to attempt the only action going through his mind at the moment. Eyes flickering around the room searching for the way of escape, they passed over the window and air shaft before finally landing on the door.
"Derrick, where are you—?"
He left the building without a word, trying his best to not show any emotion and realizing that people had been saying his name in that pitiful tone a lot lately. The weather was particularly more freezing than it was in the morning when he walked to the therapist's office, but he didn't notice it; in fact, he barely noticed anything. The journey to his dead girlfriend's house was long, but in the back of his mind he knew it would be worth it. His heart felt shallow. His mind felt empty.
Massie Block's house hadn't changed much since the Day He Got Sad, in terms of appearance. It was still overly extravagant and set apart from the other estates in the neighborhood, but it was now avoided out of sympathy and loss of words. Even her parents were barely there anymore, and were said to be always arguing and out drinking. He felt horrible, because she didn't deserve to have to look down on something like that.
She had killed herself in the attic.
She had also knotted the rope around her neck in the back left corner of the attic, and had stood on the rusty bamboo chair that had been a gift to her family from her grandfather, and had been holding a piece of notebook paper in her right hand. When everyone first saw the paper, they had assumed she had written a suicide note, and that's what Derrick would've preferred to have happened. Instead, it was blank. He wasn't sure what the exact meaning of that was—he doubted she had tried to trick everyone, and had brought himself to thinking that she just didn't write anything because she didn't have anything to say.
The rope tied easily into a knot, but left scratches and scars on his nimble fingers. He seemed to be so focused in his task that he didn't notice this, or the ache all around him. Within minutes, he solemnly stood on top of the same bamboo chair, the same rope hung loosely around his neck, in the same corner of the attic, and a blank sheet of paper from the same lined notebook in hand.
He didn't feel anything, but that was an overstatement. Instead, it felt as if all of his feelings were being drained from him, and he was becoming less human by the second. It only took a quick moment for him to reach up, tighten the knot, and kick the chair he was standing on away, not even able to stay breathing to hear it clatter on the dusty floor.
Derrick Harrington's death didn't involve a single thought except one:
I'm coming to visit you now.
so i'm finally getting around to the twelve days of christmas challenge, after months and months. it isn't even christmas anymore, either, but this goes year round (the christmas challenge, to specify. i'm actually on time for the monthly challenge, for once). as for the pairing, i have about a thousand otps. i've been meaning to write another massington fic for awhile, so here we are. this was originally supposed to be a poem and then this happened and i don't even know what this is.
this doesn't even have anything to do with the prompts, sorry.
leave a review, maybe? (:
lily.