Work Text:
AN UNHEALTHY SUBSTITUTE
summary:// ruling the world never passed for autonomy.
“Managing” is a word that proves to be both ugly and boring without even trying. Gary, who has never been fond of his own name, decides that perhaps it lies in the letter G: that guttural, claggy sound between and at the end of the word like he’s swallowing phlegm, and those fast paced consonants around them that feel as though his mouth is running from something. For now, though, he’s static - eight years old and with a pocket full of marbles, peering over a mahogany desk at the wrinkling mouth of one Doctor Ford.
“The condition is manageable, with the right medication and therapy,” the Doctor is saying in a comforting tone. Gary’s mother nods desperately, her face sallow, and he hates her. The chair where his father should sit is miraculously empty.
ADD is the official diagnosis, pushed onto him from the steady distance of the one and a half meters between his chair and the Doctor who met him twenty minutes ago. But still, the guy seems to have him pegged, listing character traits like they were created on his tongue and nodding to himself along the way. Although the main problem is his hyperactivity, there are other things, too – dysfunctional family dynamic being one of the phrases used, seeker of negative attention, crybaby (and that one stings a little). But overall, it just strikes him as odd that his mother, with those yellow bruises hidden under her three hundred dollar dress, would feel the need to spend money on an appointment to find out something they both knew fully well already.
From then on, it’s pills and puppets, all use these toys to show me how that makes you feel, dear, from the too-sweet mouths of therapists in rooms that are worn and smell like cold coffee. They ask him why he pushed Petey over in the playground, what made him try to set the school on fire. They ask him if he has any regrets. But all of the thoughts he has are too big and too abstract for words, although one day he’ll look back with perfect understanding. So getting caught is what he says, because it’s closest to the truth.
He makes his first good slingshot at age eleven, and carves a tiny lightning bolt into the handle so as to mark it as his own. Petey never quite masters the art of slingshot making, which is okay, because he’s cool with the other kid that week so he makes one for him, and then together they launch soapy mashed up toilet paper at the houses on his street. It’s all fun and friendship until it isn’t, and honestly, he has no idea what his plan even was for after he shot through the Harrington’s window and ran, he just lost control for a moment. But, it’s his first time really meeting the police, and so the moment sticks with him fondly.
Petey, the big wimp, cries the entire ride home from the station – first loudly and with desperation, but then in big, silent globs after Gary stares him down. They don’t really speak for a while after that, although Pete isn’t annoying or whiny and Gary isn’t cruel like they usually are during their bouts of non-friendship. It’s just awkward, really. Like he’s crossed a line they didn’t know existed up until then.
He thinks it’s passed fairly without incident until his father reveals he’s had to pay for the damages, that the window was stained glass and that now the Harringtons plan on dragging his already smeared name through the mud. Gary had never really thought about anything to do with money or neighbourhood politics, because it was more just a case of “let’s go prank that kid Derby Who Goes To Private School,” but the moment changes things. He likes the way his father’s face goes red, the way he can’t hit him anymore because Gary’s eleven and clever and the man knows that he’ll tell. It’s in that moment he realises that power over the man who pays to medicate him and keep him quiet is the best feeling in the world. Why simply manage at home, or scrape by, when he can rule the roost?
When Gary is twelve, his father unofficially separates from his mother and leaves them both in the house whilst on an extended business trip to Washington. He does not call or send postcards and Gary’s mother wilts away rather than blossoming as he’d imagined. It’s then that he thinks he knows the worst feeling, possibly.
Cut to fourteen years of age and he’s busy getting The Scar in a most uneventful way. It happens climbing a tree, of all things, when he slips and falls and the next thing he knows is waking up in a hospital with his eye half out. The bandages come off just as summer ends, and when the kids in Bullworth make up stories and rumours about his gruesome wound, Gary decides he really rather likes freshman year. He’s stuck rooming with Petey, because they’re the two kids nobody else wanted to pair with, and that’s okay, really. Enough time has passed since they faded apart for them to meld back together rather quickly, and he likes having someone to half-heartedly pick on.
All he hates now are the meds, with their ever-growing prescription and diagnosis lists, the slow days and the mania and the way that sometimes his hands shake in the mornings even when he doesn't want to move at all. But it’s bearable, doable, okay, if he doesn't think about his mother or the doctors or the fear. He can manage.
but then one day in sophomore year a kid turns up with ginger hair and petey likes him better and his mother’s in the hospital because of pills and pills, pills, pills, they’re ruining his life and he wants his old slingshot back and hands to stop shaking and the world in his pocket and he remembers then that managing is the most ugly word and he doesn't want it, not any more
His monthly prescription refills look kind of cool when they’re going down the toilet, but he doesn't stay and watch for long because there’s work to do. Hopkins has already rallied three cliques to his cause, because Gary simply isn’t trying hard enough. When he looks in the mirror his eyes are bloodshot and his hair’s a mess but he likes to think of himself as appearing like a young prophet, tortured by either knowledge or responsibility.
He can’t sleep because Jimmy doesn't, probably, he’s not actually sure, but he’s up anyway pacing and plotting because he had it and he needs it back from the grubby hands of this dumbass imposter. In order to pull this off he must play coy with Crabblesnitch, but play dirty with everyone else. He needs to be everywhere until he’s in the one place that counts, and then on the bell tower, nearly touching the sky, he’ll snatch the world back and all will be worth it at last. It’s no more pills, and all the puppets are his own.
It occurs to him on the fall from the tower that he’d never actually planned on what he was going to do after he seized control of the school and all its alumni.
His mother doesn't visit often and his father makes a shitty playdate, but things reach their worst when Petey comes to see him. Once again, things are all “why did you do that?” and “what were you thinking?” except this time he hasn't just tipped paint all over the crafts table at six years old, he’s being kept in a mental institution and tried as an adult for the assault of his - former - Headmaster.
People still don’t understand, looking at him with those pathetic, sad round eyes (like the therapists or Petey in the back seat of a cop car or his mother staring out of the window), but he thinks he gets it now. There’s a lot of time to think things over where he is.
For a moment, at the top of that tower and with Jimmy’s dull face squashed into a confused frown before him, nobody owned Gary Smith. For the first time since eight years old, the world was almost snatched back into his grasp, and he felt like a winner.
Thoroughly crashed back down to reality, with some remnants of the fight still poking out of his skin, he supposes that’s the best he ever could have hoped for.