Work Text:
Sometimes You Give Up To Get Better
There is a little town in Iowa called Decorah.
He was standing at his father's grave.
He was seventeen, standing at his father's grave and he felt nothing.
He knew it wasn't normal, that one was supposed to cry and weep and find this all sad and heartbreaking, to be torn apart by the thought to not have had more time with a person who was taken long before his time.
Especially when the person was one's father.
He looked at his sisters and he saw just that, sadness, grief, not understanding and heartbroken acceptance in Elianna's too young child face. Confusion and puzzled sadness in Samantha's eyes, she was a toddler and she shouldn't have been here in the first place, not if it had been his decision, but his grandfather had put his foot down, she had to be there or she would never understand.
But understand what?
Understand that the man whose DNA swimmers had created them wouldn't ever come back when he had barely been around in the first place? How could one understand that a father wasn't ever going to be in your life again when there hadn't been a spot for him from the very beginning?
His colleagues would miss him, they would probably mourn him like crazy and not know what to do with their lives, or how to move on from such a loss, because he had been such a huge part of their lives. He had created bonds with them, friendships and brotherhood, memories.
Chester could already not remember how Devon Simmons' eyes had looked like, the last time he had seen his father and not just heard his voice over hurried phonecalls on birthdays... it had been so many years ago. Before the big job at National Geographic. Before the big tours to Asia. Before he realized that he cared more about his work family than the real one he had back in Iowa, and what could they have ever given him in boring Iowa if the world had been calling.
A hand slipped into his numb one and he looked away from the heap of black dirt to the eyes of his best friend, gray blue stared back at him, searching, trying to form an opinion over his state of mind. Chester had gotten more and more quiet in the days leading up to this funeral, right up until he hadn't left his room all day yesterday.
Behind them, closer to the parking lot and the small chapel, his grandparents were still talking to people, their friends, townspeople, friends of his fathers. Samantha asleep in the stroller that Sadie kept on moving, Elianna quietly crying while Gideon rocked her on the bench, his friends were the best human beings in the whole wide world. Zach's and Sadie's families have already gone ahead to the town hall where coffee and lunch would be served to mourners, half of which had no idea why they should be sad.
This was the worst funeral ever.
"We need to go soon," Zach began quietly, not even phased a little over Chester just stupidly staring at him, "There is still the whole food thing happening, though if you wanna bail on it, I can make shit up." Zach proposed and Chester knew he would do it if he gave only the smallest sign of wanting some privacy for the rest of the day, Zach would do everything for him. "Zach?" He needed to say something because otherwise Zach would get Gideon and those too big puppy eyes or Sadie and her punch first, hug it out later attitude. Zach was the one with patience and snark and understanding, Zach was the one who knew him best and if he couldn't even tell him what was going on then who was he becoming.
"I feel nothing," well, maybe not the best thing to say but it was something and it certainly brought forth a reaction in Zach, eyes blinking, lips dropping open so Chester spoke again before he could. "My father is dead, Zach. Nothing but worm food," Zach winced, probably trying frantically to fight down the visual. They had been playing a Zombie game when Chester's grandfather had come up to their dorm room with the news. He could remember weird details like that but his father's eye color was faded already.
The man really left an impression.
"He wasn't really around much," Zach admitted, looking like he wasn't sure if he got the right wave length from Chester or if he had just told his going-into-shock friend that his father had been kind of a douche.
"Well, still more than Mum," Chester grumbled and chanced a brief look over to his grandparents still shaking hands, no sign of a tall blond woman in dress blues. His mother was somewhere in the Pacific, had been there for the last two years, all leave offers slapped away because she was sick of Iowa.
Sick of her own kids.
Samantha didn't even know what Elianna and Chester meant when they called the woman in the pictures Mum.
And what great plate of offerings was that, a father who didn't care enough and a mother who didn't care at all. How they managed to be together long enough to get married was a puzzle, and them getting three kids together was just unexplainable and a pure miracle. Twenty years, three kids in a span of seventeen years.
"I feel nothing because there is nothing to feel," Chester's silence and short worded bubble of answers finally broke and Zach visibly straightened up, ready to listen, ready to just be there. "I can't mourn something I never had. I didn't have a Dad or a Mum, and now I will never have a Dad because he is gone but how I can be sad over missing something that I never had? If Grandpa had died I would be shattered, I'm not ready for that. He is everything I wanna be and he has so much left to teach me still but all my father ever taught me was what not to do, what person not to turn into. I can't go there and pretend I'm grieving, Zach."
"No one wants you to pretend anything." Zach comforted him and soothed hands over Chester's suddenly so tense arms. "Don't pretend that the majority of these people don't know that Devon was a failure as a father. His friends know that he loved his job more than people, especially those back in Decorah. They're here because it's a funeral and yeah, maybe he was an idiot for not loving his kids and being there for him but he still didn't deserve to be wrapped around a telephone pole by a drunk driver."
"I'm not saying he did," Chester argued because he felt sad for the person Devon Simmons whose life had been snuffed out long before his time. 41. Who was ready to die at 41? Who expected to die at 41? "This is all so fucked up." He summarized this whole mess and reached up to drag a hand through his hair, stopping himself only at the last minute because his grandmother had spent so much time on it this morning. "Can we get me drunk tonight and then I'll get all this talking bullshit out of the way?"
"In our dorm or in your room?" Zach wanted to know and they both knew that either of those choices was just an impossible hurdle to take. They had one strict eagle eyed and fox eared prefect on their floor who would not tolerate that kind of behavior, even if the son of the headmaster had needed to bury his absentee father today.
Tomorrow was a school day after all and by god, had Chester actually managed to finish that essay later or had he forgotten that? He would so not have the energy to dive into cellular biology tonight.
And potential homework, dictator prefects and overbearing glee club heads aside, there was something more important that weighed against getting drunk tonight. Two dark haired girls who needed their big brother.
"We'll turn booze into sugar and fast food and cartoons in my room," Chester revealed his changed opinion, saw no surprise in Zach's eyes because of course he had already known, "I'm not leaving Eli and Sammy alone tonight." They could still talk, would talk if Zach's face was indicator but he would manage to do it sober, figure out how he felt about all of this in all its bright spectre without alcohol making everything easier.
They turned their backs on the simple grave in Decorah's old creepy graveyard and walked over to their friends and Chester's sisters. Elianna saw him come closer and slipped from Gideon's lap to stumble over, eight was too big to be carried or babied she had emphasized repeatedly only two weeks ago, that was before their father had died, now she stretched up arms and Chester picked her up because seeing her sadness didn't leave him numb.
"We're all gonna stay together in the house tonight," he told her in a faux whisper, just loud enough for Sadie and Giden to hear it as well. Gideon and Zach would need permission to not return to the dorms on a school night but Chester had a feeling his grandfather might just give that blind tonight, and Sadie wouldn't give a damn anyway. Gideon slowly got up, one year younger but taller than Chester and Zach, all gangly limbs and awkward posture of someone who was huge but liked to be small.
When Sadie pulled up next to him, still handling the stroller, Chester could almost smile, the size difference between their big teddy bear and the little spitfire was always so funny. "Alright, let's get this lunch behind us."
--
"I stood at that grave and I felt nothing," Chester repeated his words later after sunset, Samantha and Elianna were asleep on his bed with him, wrapped around his limbs like twiners, both of them out cold, nothing short of the tornado warning siren would wake them now. There was music on in the background, some new edge stuff from some country belonging to Scandinavia that Sadie was trying to get them into, and so far failing epically at it.
Said owners of those CDs was curled up on the couch like a cat with a blanket, her body fitting into spaces her ego and character never could. Next to her Gideon was fixed on getting the rubik's cube solved, keeping his hands busy while his head worked through something. Zach was spread out over the bottom of the bed, his hair a mess because he could never say no to Elianna, even if it involved a hair brush and hairbands.
"I would be surprised if you hadn't," Sadie responded to his confession and ignored the look that Zach sent her in warning, as if someone could ever keep her tongue in check. "Come on, Zach, when was the last time Devon actually called on their birthdays and not just two days later when he remembered he forgot something? When was the last time he turned up? Do you remember? Because I don't. He didn't come home when Trudy had the heart scare, he didn't come home when the tornado hit the school two years ago right after Sammy was born. Why is he supposed to feel anything over it? Devon Simmons was basically a stranger."
"She's right, Zach," Chester weighed in when Zach only looked like arguing against it, "She is totally right. I don't even know him. Can you tell me one thing he liked? Except the obvious." The obvious being photography, his cameras had been his children, the real ones of flesh and blood had belonged to Iowa and Iowa had been shunned. "It sucks that a person died, it sucks even more that some idiot drunk driver ripped him out of this world because they were too wasted to distinguish red from green. But I just can't feel anything when I get it into my head that that man was my father."
"Did it hit you yet?" Gideon wanted to know, his voice showing all the emotions and empathy that Sadie usually lacked, as always.
"Oh, it hit me. It hit me the moment Grandpa raged himself through his office for an hour." Chester pointed out and Zach winced, had unfortunately been around for that. "And look, even he isn't bawling in tears and he lost his only kid. He had to bury his son and I know that all he feels is anger because that man in he coffin hadn't cared enough about any of us to actually give a damn and visit sometimes. So much time I spent arguing against Grandpa, don't give up, he'll come around again, he'll get it someday. I told him that he just needs to get it out of his system and then he'll come back again, he'll be a Dad yet, it's not too late for the girls."
He stopped and stroked hands through the dark hair of his sisters.
Neither of them would have any memories of their father in ten years.
Because how?
How could they possibly have anything to remember when Chester was already running on empty?
And maybe it was actually better like that, his mind just then provided him with, remembering nothing meant not remembering the bad parts, the disappointments, the waiting for nothing and no one. Sammy would never experience a birthday sitting on the porchsteps, watching the sun rise and then start to settle and the driveyard remained empty of any cars.
Red hair catched the dimmed light of the room when Sadie shifted to sit up, pulling her legs under herself as she leaned against Gideon. "What's the epiphany you just had, Ches?"
"I'm gonna be okay," Chester answered her, his chest suddenly feeling lighter and less like a dead weight of numbed flesh, "I gave up on him, and I didn't even notice. I found my idols somewhere else. Today didn't hurt because I cut him out of my life for that exact reason, I didn't want it to hurt anymore."
He gave up.
After years of maybe, of hoping, of arguing, of "one day".
Chester had given up.
And strangely, it felt indredibly amazing.
"We should get some sleep, grieving or not, Grandpa is gonna throw us out for school tomorrow." He decided then and knew that his friends would somehow find their corners. Gideon and Sadie pulled out the couch and Zach only pulled a blanket over himself after Chester had thrown him a pillow.
--
It was three in the morning when Chester woke up because he was kneed in the crouch by something skinny. He grimaced and carefully shifted Samantha into safer waters. Elianna had turned away from him by now, hugging the edge of the bed like she so often did, totally having stolen almost the entire comforter, just like he was used to from her.
Quietly he somehow climbed out of bed without waking either of his sisters or Zach and he picked up Samantha with gentle hands. Let Gideon have some fun with pointy knees. His baby sister didn't protest or wake when he set her down between Gideon and Sadie and when he turned around again to decide between back to bed and heading down for a glass of water, Zach was blinking himself away. Bedhead and droopy eyes and everything and yes, Chester would need that cold glass of water.
Awesome timing as always.
The night of his father's funeral and he was getting hot and bothered over these newly discovered feelings for his straight best friend.
So you, Chester, just so you.
Zach raised an eyebrow, question clear, and Chester made a gesture to the door and raised his hand like holding a glass then. Zach nodded and carefully slipped out of bed as well, nearly stumbling over discarded shoes and Chester had to silently lunge to catch him because contrary to his sisters Sadie woke up at the smallest noise and was unbearable if woken before her five hours were done.
They didn't speak until they were down in the kitchen, doors closed and Chester nose deep in the fridge because now where he was down, he could eat something, too.
"You okay?" Zach yawned and somehow managed to get up on the chair at the breakfast bar, not a small deed, the last time Chester had been terribly hungover and so tired he had tried the same and fallen off, sprained his foot.
"Yeah," Chester answered quick, convinced and sure and light, finally deciding on the bowl of chocolate pudding that Grams had made among others two days ago. He turned around and showed his findings to Zach who nodded so Chester grabbed two spoons. He set the bowl and the spoons down in front of Zach and then went to fill two glasses with tap water. "I feel like I've made a discovery about myself that changes the whole game. I spent the last five years existing on a path that was only based on 'don't become like him', and it's like his death and this funeral now made me realize that I can abandon that thought because I'll never become like him."
"You care," Zach took the next words out of his mouth while Chester climbed up on the chair next to him, "You care about your family and your friends so much. You care about the school and the town. You find Iowa boring and dull but you also would never turn your back on it for good, you know this is home and that you'll always come back." His words cut off when he took a good spoonful of pudding in his mouth and Chester smiled.
For the first time in over a week he really truly smiled.
"It's like I have this pool of choices before me now and any and all directions are okay because none of them will lead me down the Devon road." He clarified and rolled his eyes when Zach made sure to take a bigger spoonful than him.
"So I can stop worrying now?" Zach wanted to know and yawned again, Chester used his chance and grabbed a huge spoonful of chocolate, if anything turned his peaceful best friend into a fighter then it was chocolate in all forms.
He also snorted because sure, Zach and stopping to worry.
"Didn't know pigs could fly yet," he voiced his opinion on the whole agenda and Zach elbowed him, "Thanks by the way, I know I was kind of a douche the last week."
"Your father died, Ches, absent or not, pretty sure it gives you a free pass in being a douche to your best friends." Zach excused it all because he always excused even the worst of Chester's habits, "God, I don't think I can get up the stairs again."
"Lawn chairs and stars?" Chester proposed because he wanted good things right now, his head felt so relieved, Zach yawned himself through a nod and emptied his water. Chester rolled his eyes over it and brought the remains of the pudding back into the fridge before helping an already half sleeping Zach down from the chair. He led him through the corridors to the back of the house, both hands on Zach's shoulders to keep him away from sideboards, shelves and doorframes.
It was really nice outside still, summer was hot and beautiful at night and Zach sank down into the lawnchair like a dead weight, probably not even realizing that Chester went to fetch blankets for a minute or two. He smiled fondly down at his best friend when he pushed the fluffier blanket over him, knew how his face would look, all soft and open, like he only gave into when Zach was sleeping because everything else would bring up questions Chester wasn't ready for.
He laid down himself and watched the stars in the nightsky, a pool of choices, a pool of possibilities, leave Iowa after high school, don't leave Iowa. Go to college somewhere else and then come back and teach here at his grandfather's school, at his school. Go to college somewhere else and then live somewhere else, maybe in a big city, but always come back for visits, always come back because he was an Iowa boy and he would always be an Ioway boy.
He cared so much for Decorah, for the people here, his family and his roots. How had he ever thought he could somehow turn into his father? Their lives were already so different.
He made a promise to himself then, in the thin light of an only a few days old new moon, let go of the bad memories and keep the good ones. Give up on the father he never had, and remember the good moments he had had with the man Devon Simmons.
Sometimes giving back meant making your life better.