Work Text:
"I should've helped him."
Jimmy blinked over at Pete. "What's that?" He heard him just fine; he just wanted clarification.
"It's stupid, but I feel like I should've talked to him more. Done more. Or said less. Something. Maybe everything wouldn't have happened the way it did. You know?"
Thought so, Jimmy thought, mood instantly souring. It was about Gary; it always seemed to come back to Gary with them.
It was just the two of them now; couldn't they just enjoy it as it was?
He didn't say that. Instead he said "What would you do different?" Because from where he was sitting, Jimmy wasn't sure there was any stopping Gary Smith.
"Been a better friend. A better person. I...I made a joke about how he had to take meds once." He sighed. "More than once. I said a lot of stuff to him I regret. It was usually after he was...you know. Being Gary. But it was still stuff that was uncalled for."
Jimmy frowned. "That's, uh..."
Pete groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I know, I know. You must think I'm an asshole."
Pete had a point. Beneath his polite mild-mannered exterior lay something nasty; Jimmy had seen it before. Sure, there was that whole 'calling him dumb' thing near the start of the school year, but there was more. Pete wasn't much of a fighter; when he was backed into a corner, he seemed to resort to using cutting words to defend himself, calling the jocks dumb and the preps inbred. Hell, one time when Jimmy had snapped at him, Pete had spat back "At least I know who my dad is!" If that had come from anyone else, Jimmy would've socked them in the jaw, but it had come from Pete, which had shocked him into silence. It had given Pete enough time to storm off.
He'd apologized the day after, but Jimmy had never forgotten the incident. It was good to keep in mind; he'd severely underestimated Pete.
Pete had once told him "You're not a nice person, but you're a good one. If that makes any sense." Did that make Pete nice but not good?
Hell; Jimmy had no idea. He'd regularly gotten Cs in Galloway's class, occasionally being lucky enough to get Bs. What the Hell did he know about the English language? What did words even mean?
"Yeah, but it's not like I'm any better."
Pete peeked through his fingers. "What are you talking about? How can you say that after...everything?"
Jimmy sighed. "I've done a lot of stuff I'm not proud of. Especially this year; I stole girls' used underwear and gave it to Mr. Burton for money."
Pete's hands fell. "You did what?"
"I blew him up in a porta potty afterwards, but that was all Zoe's idea." It was the very least that creep had deserved.
"Yeah, that's...still pretty scummy."
"It gets worse. You remember those posters of Mandy all over town? Earnest paid me to take those pictures."
Pete's expression had just gone from shocked and vaguely scandalized to outright angry. "What the Hell, Jimmy?" he demanded.
"I destroyed the posters afterwards," Jimmy continued, "but it doesn't really change the fact that it was my fault."
Pete shook his head. "Christ..."
"Oh, and I think I accidentally helped the lunch lady date rape the chemistry teacher." In retrospect, had any of those things even been worth the money he'd gotten?
"God...just stop..." Pete pinched the bridge of his nose, like this flood of revelations was giving him a migraine.
"So yeah. Maybe you can be kind of a dick sometimes, but between the two of us, I'm pretty sure I'm the one going to Hell."
"No, no; I'm pretty sure I'm still going to Hell. Maybe I'll just be on a level higher up than you?"
Jimmy grinned wryly at him. "See ya there!"
Pete managed to smile at him, despite everything he'd just learned. In that moment, Jimmy remembered why Pete was his best friend. "Still...you didn't do anything that could have killed someone. You didn't set the gym on fire."
Jimmy frowned. "True." He'd never tell anyone, but he still had nightmares about that day. Mandy had sounded so terrified, and seeing all those guys passed out from smoke inhalation, seeing them all trapped and helpless...
Whatever he'd done, at least he'd never put people in that kind of danger.
"We knew each other since we were kids." Pete sounded like he was talking to himself more than anyone else. "I mean...he was always...like that."
"You mean an asshole?"
"Well...yeah. But this was the first time I ever saw him do anything like this." Pete wrapped his arms around himself. "Maybe I could've convinced him to keep taking his meds. Maybe..." Pete sighed. "I don't know. He had an awful childhood."
Jimmy shook his head. "Don't know if you noticed, but my home life isn't easy, either."
"That's true; even after all you've been through, you still try to do the right thing. Most of the time."
Jimmy frowned as he watched his friend tug at a stray thread in his pink shirt. "None of us can help where we come from, but we all make choices. We made ours; Gary made his. Now we all have to live with it."
"Guess so." Pete didn't look very satisfied with that answer. Which was fair; it wasn't a satisfying answer. But as far as Jimmy could see, that was all that was left to do.
"So," Jimmy said. "What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know...try to be better?"
Jimmy patted Pete's shoulder. "Good answer." Bullworth, this tiny Boston town, and the world, in general, needed more people to realize that.