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David knows-and isn’t that what he’s meant to do, know more and do more and shine so fucking bright, until he isn’t- no-focus. Focus, David, you can do better.
David knows something is wrong with the neighbours. That’s not hard- not difficult, too easy, why can’t he just think?- it’s easy to see the mother running wild.
That’s not interesting, and god knows what IS interesting, but who does interest him- their son. He doesn’t know his name, and it bothers him.
Not knowing, it’s supposed to bother him, he’s supposed to know and learn and shine- but it’s not like that. This isn’t something he should know, nobody ever talks to the son, none but his mother- and yet he wants to know- he always does, and yet he doesn’t feel like he needs to know, like always.
He wants to know.
He isn’t going to ask. He’s new, the son. Well- not new. But David sees him a lot more then he used to-ever since uni and graduation and…and yet the boy doesn’t seem to see him.
It’s not that the boy is keeping him alive. It’s not…David doesn’t think it’s like that- and David is good at thinking.
But…the boy is something that is inexplicably interesting- somehow-worth it? David doesn’t much care for himself and his damned thinking anymore. It’s- what does he have left? But…if David squints- the boy looks a little bit like him.
So he waits, and just…lives for a bit longer.
The boy sits in the window a lot. Curled up, waiting. Looking out, smiling at his sister. David looks at him too- sits in his room, at his desk with the books that were going to be his fucking future, and yet here he is, looking at a boy his age, wondering how who he is.
~♧~
Gabe…waits. Diana had said he should keep up with his homework, so he goes to his room. Natalie arrives, and he knows her mom won’t greet her. Dan- Dan might.
He waits.
It hurts, but it always does, when nobody needs him to be alive and well and next to her.
He sees the other boy, David, across the little space between his own garden, the fence and the other family’s garden. Gabe lets himself look, study the room and the boy. Diana said he was smart, and Dan said Natalie might go to Cambridge too.
He won’t look back, Gabe knows. He doesn’t…want him too, exactly. He desperately wants anyone to see him- Dan- Natalie- everyone. But he doesn’t know how anyone that didn’t know him could see.
So- so when David makes eye contact with him, looks directly at him, and gives him an awkward wave- he’s too shocked to wave back- and he just stares. Stares at the boy who can see him, and when the boy looks away- he lets himself fall on the floor and lie down out of view of the world.
He has to try and speak to him, he decides. Gabe waits, until Diana is cleaning, and until he’s sure both of David’s parents are gone.
He goes down, notes Diana isn’t cleaning too fast, and calls out to let her know he’s going out. He doesn’t usually go outside unless Diana thinks he should be out. It’s…lonely.
Gabe rings, and waits.
~♧~
David hears the bell. He doesn’t want to go. He’s- he doing nothing, lying on his fucking bed staring at the stars painted on the ceilings, stars he was meant to reach.
But the drugs and the medicine and whatever one of the people that must be his friends gave him wouldve finished working by now.
So he might as well.
It’s the boy from the neighbours- the sad one. He looks mildly surprised,and kind of out of place.
‘Hi?’ David asks, and it comes out less angry than how everyone always says he sounds.
‘Hi- I’m…’ The boy hestitates, almost as if he doesn’t entirely know.
‘I’m Gabriel. Gabe. I live next door and- I don’t know. I’m sorry for not waving back. I didn’t think anyone- I was surprised.’
He looks a little panicky. David…finds a lack of the apathy that’s so familiar to him.
‘I’m David. D’you- want to come in? I don’t…I don’t have much to eat that isn’t drugs or old people food.’
Gabriel nods, surprisingly solemnly. “We have a lot of drugs too. They don’t usually work. Any interesting ones?’
David laughs, and it doesn’t even sound bitter.
‘You tell me- my room’s the second one on the left’
~♧~
And now they’re sitting in his room, comparing party drugs to prescription medicine. They broadly overlap, turns out.
It’s…fun, and it’s new. That is- until Gabe knows his mom thinks he can be home any minute now, and he has to go.
He doesn’t want to go.
But he can’t- fight it. He’s tried, but…it’s easier to just be what he is, and follow Diana’s thoughts.
Sometimes he can follow Dan, but…usually it’s better to just exist like he’s meant to. Diana’s image of him is nice enough- though the football is questionable.
Still, this is the first time actually wants something different from Diana’s son. He wants to stay with this boy, and talk without having to pretend to interact with people just enough for his mother to believe him to be real.
He tells David he has to go, and sees the disappointment in his eyes. David shrugs, and says:
‘I don’t really listen to my parents- it’s fine.’
But Gabe- he can feel himself fading a little, like when Diana needs him, and knows he doesn’t want to disappear from this room and just appear wherever it is she’s seen him now. So-
‘I’d love to stay- but I can’t. My mother, she’s…’
He doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t know how to. He knows what David will assume- Diana has had public meltdowns enough times for the entire street to know she’s ‘fragile’.
So he walks down the stairs, like he’s alive, opens the door like he’s real, walks down the street in the rain that goes straight through him but soaks him anyway, and goes home.
~♧~
Gabriel has visited multiple times after that, and they've gone up to David's room every time. David has had to answer the door every time, like his parents don’t even fucking hear the bell.
Still- his mother hasn’t said anything about it, and his father hasn’t said anything to him either, for that matter.
But now- everything is loud and it’s raining- and David isn’t a star, he’s just a candle that’s been doused by the expectations that were supposed to ignite him.
He doesn’t want to go home, still drunk and god knows what else, and he’s burning away the spark that might not even fucking be there.
The streets, the gardens, the people in their neat little beds in there neat little fucking houses- nothing more nothing for him. He wants- he wants it to stop, he doesn’t want to be the fucking star anymore. Creme de la fucking creme and he can’t do it anymore.
He can’t- he can’t fucking do it anymore, he can’t be whatever it is that’s so fucking brilliant about him. He wants to fucking be normal, and that terrifies him. Normal and boring and terrifying and yet they also seem so happy.
He wants- he wants to talk to Gabriel- Gabe never said he was brilliant- never said he was a star. Gabriel said he was kind, Gabriel saw him, not the fucking PhD. Gabriel didn’t- didn’t expect him to be anything more or less.
Not a star or a genius but a friend.
He rings the door of Gabe’s house. His father opens the door, looking sleepy. Fuck. It was- 4am or something, David didn’t know.
‘Hello? Are you okay? Are you one of Nat’s friends- I can call her?’
He looks worried, and David doesn’t want it- he just wants-
‘Can I talk to your son?’
His father looks…hurt.
‘No. He- he’s not…This isn’t funny. I don’t know what Natalie told you, or why she would think- He’s not here. He’s-’
David- David is suddenly very, very scared, and he tries to cling to the image of the boy he has talked to so many, instead of the thought that is trying to take over his scattered, hurting, useless, brilliant brain.
‘Is he- okay?’
At this, the man in the doorway seems to steel himself.
‘No. He’s dead. Go away. I’ll tell Natalie this isn’t funny. You can’t talk to her anymore- don’t come here again.’
The door shuts and David collapses.
Gone- the kind, perfect, beautiful boy that had started to be the only real friend he had was dead and David remains, a lone star in an empty sky. A comet without a trail, a firework without a spark, alone and brilliant and fucking worthless with only a brain and no one to tell him he was more than that.
He drags himself home- lets himself in- lies on his bed and cries.
Alone. Gone. And now- there’s nothing anymore, David realises. The future he was promised- long gone. The friends- the people at the parties never cared. The only person who ever listened- who ever cared without fear- dead. He couldn’t even ask how. Why.
There’s nothing left for him here. Nothing but the education he wasted and people to disappoint and the bullshit that’s meant to be life. Maybe it’s time for the brightest star to fall.
When Gabe wakes up- something is wrong. Dan is yelling at Natalie, and he knows Diana knows he’s dead.
Everything is how it really is. Everything Diana imagined, everything Gabe had told her, everything that made his room more than just a guest room was gone.
Worse- he’s in so much pain- can’t think. He’s 8 months old and so so so very scared again.
It’s a long time before he can think properly again, and even longer before he can walk. He knows Diana won’t need him, and he knows he just wants to be held for a bit. His mother can’t see him, not for a bit, can’t hug him but- maybe…
Maybe David can.
He gets down the stairs, somehow. Walks through the door, doesn’t need to pretend.
He rings the doorbell, knowing he’d wake David up, preparing to apologise. David doesn’t answer- so he just walks in. He could just say his parents let him in.
There is a strange feeling in the house- it’s familiar somehow. Gabe doesn’t like it, but doesn’t know why.
David isn’t in his room. His bed looks slept in. David isn’t downstairs. David isn’t- his shoes were still at the door, none of his coats were taken.
Gabe searches- sees David’s parents having breakfast. His father is complaining about him, and Gabe feels a faint pang of longing. David’s father, at least, is complaining about a person, not just a symptom.
Then, finally, he finds David. And the world falls apart again. David is- Gabe doesn’t want to think it, doesn’t want to think about the irony of one dead son grieving for another.
He’d known David was struggling- and he thought he was helping. David had said he was. Said Gabe was the only one who helped- and how strange was that?
Gabe doesn’t want to think.
Doesn’t want to exist like this, stop pretending to be alive and well.
He knows- he can’t even show it. Diana doesn’t know, so Gabe has nothing to be sad about. It hurts- it hurts more than ever.
Gabe curls up next to the body of his friend, and cries.
He lies there. He lies there until finally, David’s parents find their son and find out it’s already too late.
He lies there until he feels himself vanish, feels a smile on his face, feels his legs move to walk into the drive, feels his arms open the door, hears his voice greet his mother as she remembers a son to come home from school.
Feels a hug, and sinks into it. He wants to melt into it and cry- but he can’t. Diana doesn’t know anything is wrong, so there’s nothing wrong.
He goes into his room to pretend to be alive, and keeps feeling his mother’s delusions move the strings that keep him performing the act of existence.
After three weeks, he starts moving by himself again. He still sits in his window, looking at the matching empty window across from him.
Until one day, David waves back.
~♧~
David doesn’t know why he’s still here, exactly. He knows his mother has started talking to him.
He doesn’t talk back. He’s tried- but his voice isn’t working yet. Maybe it has to heal.
Do ghosts heal? Or is he forever bound to not only have a brain that is still on fire, but only a lack of outing his thoughts.
Gabriel.
Would he still be here too?
He sits in his window and waits.
~♧~
Gabe is running- throwing himself down the stairs and scaring Diana. He doesn’t even pause to give an explanation, bound only to open the door because she’s looking at him, rushing up the stairs of David’s place and-
He’s there.
He’s there and they’re hugging and Gabe can see bruises on his throat but David is here and while Gabe knows that doesn’t mean he’s alive, it means they can both pretend that they are.
David tries to explain. Writes on pages that’ll stay blank for anyone but the two of them. Gabriel looks guilty- so guilty- and then explains-
He’d always been dead. David had befriended a dead boy and hadn’t even known.
Gabe said that he hadn’t expected David to see him, but…David thinks he understands.
After all, whatever Gabriel is, it’s clear that he’s connected to death. And in the end, after Cambridge, David had been thinking about it so much it had seemed like a friend.
His only friend, when Gabriel seemed unreachable.
And now he could never escape its embrace.
~♧~
After a week, David can talk again. Gabe is more relieved than he shows, even though he has spent every moment with him since…
Since no one in his family knew David, only Gabe can see him.
So- he sits on the counter when they have dinner, makes faces at Gabriel as he pretends to apologise for being late, and Gabe catches himself longing for him in the moment he’s alone.
Since his room has a bunk bed and David’s parents have cleared out his room, David usually doesn’t bother going home, and Gabe falls asleep to the sound of someone else pretending to have to breathe.
It’s strangely comforting, and sometimes Gabe feels so alive he forgets he needs to pretend.
The outside world is less lonely with David too. They can go to the mall, and Gabe shows him how to convince the world enough to let him hold something or eat something.
Nothing actually changes, except for them, and it means the world to him.
It’s mostly about believing in each other's existence, and with the two of them it’s almost enough to be normal.
~♧~
David isn’t a star anymore, and even though his brain can never stop running, Gabriel never seems to mind the half-formed thoughts or rambling sentences.
They spent almost every moment together, breaking into random houses to watch tv alongside the inhabitants, going to Natalie’s recitals and trying to annoy Dan.
David feels safe, now. Gabriel doesn’t have high expectations, and always seems to catch him, even as David’s breath sometimes catches at the sight of him.
They’re sitting on the roof of Gabriel’s house, watching the sky.
‘The stars are beautiful, don’t you think?’ The sky is cloudy, and Gabriel obviously knows it.
‘I was meant to be a star’ David says. ‘I was meant to shine. Light up the whole damn sky. I don’t want to be a star. I don’t think I can be.’
Gabriel smiles at him, and David's heart starts beating just enough to skip a beat.
‘Pretty enough to be a star’
It’s a mumble, and maybe David imagined it. Gabriel speaks louder, as if his previous comment was just a thought, not meant to be heard.
‘You don’t have to be a star. You’re dead now, you can be anything. You could be a woodland fairy or a malevolent spirit. You choose.’
David laughs, and hears Gabriel do the same.
‘Can you imagine me in a flower crown? I bet it’d fit you much better’
He focuses, and when the world relents to his will, Gabriel is wearing a crown of blue and white flowers. He pulls a face, and asks David:
‘How I look?’
‘Cute’ David hadn’t meant to say it- but now Gabe is blushing and David is too-
‘Sorry- I didn’t mean-’ he tries, certain he’a ruined the most precious thing he has.
Gabriel is grinning though, almost dangerously.
‘Am I not cute David? Are you saying I’m ugly?’
David scoffs. He can play the game too.
‘I thought I was the pretty one here? Pretty enough to be a star, wasn’t it?’
The air is warm, the start of summer, and David doesn’t want this night to end.
‘I stand by that. Still, maybe it’s just the flower crown? Here-’
Gabriel moves his hand up, up towards David’s hair and he stops breathing. He reaches up as well, and feels a wreath of leaves, and catches Gabe’s hand as it leaves.
‘And?’ he asks, meeting his eyes.
They’re both whispering now, and even in a world that cannot hear them, it feels like everything is waiting for them.
‘Breathtaking’, Gabriel says, and then, carefully, hesitantly ‘as always’
David moves, turns to face him fully, still holding his hand,before answering.
‘I could say the same about you. You’re beautiful, you know?’
Then, they’re both moving.
David kisses like it's the only thing in the world, and Gabe has never felt more alive.
They separate, and the world starts moving again.
They sit there for a long time, two dead boys keeping each other alive.