Well, today, I was in a diabolical mood. Then I saw a post on Tumblr and inspiration struck instantly. So, enjoy this little Nive one-shot I wrote. It's a Human AU, taking place sometime during college.
And don't worry, I'm working on the next chapter of In Sickness and In Health now, it will be done soon. After that, I'll have another chapter for A New Hope up, and maybe a Navrina one-shot too.
So, like, 5 days ago, I read the Revenge of Seven. Honestly, the first thing I thought was: What? That's it? No! It can't be over! That can't be it!
This is going to be one long year of waiting.
DISCLAIMER: Uh, I'm pretty sure I'm not Pittacus Lore. That would be pretty awesome though. I'd change quite a few things.
WARNING: Mentions of suicide and self harm.
"Where the hell are you?" Cody yells into his phone, pissed. After calling three times, his boyfriend, Stanley, finally picked up.
"M'just going for a drive," the voice on the other line replies.
"Like hell you are, get back here now!" Cody shouts.
"Why? Since when are you the boss of me?" Stanley retorts angrily. Cody struggles to resist the urge to throw his cell phone at the wall.
"Since my boyfriend doesn't seem to know that when you're in a committed relationship, you don't flirt with other guys!" Cody screams. "And, don't forget, you're drunk!"
"So what?" Stanley says, slurring slightly.
"You shouldn't be driving!" he shrieks, starting to pace back and forth. "I can't believe you! I come home, ready to go out on a nice date, and you're drunk! We were planning to do this for weeks; you were so excited! I was too! Then I come home and you're wasted! I thought you swore off drinking!"
Stanley is quiet as he rambles, and he doesn't speak until a while after Cody is done. "M'sorry."
"You're sorry? Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you? Actually, maybe there's something wrong with me. Instead of leaving you like I should, I stay with you, of all people. No matter what you do, no matter how much you rub me the wrong way and push all of my buttons, I just never leave. But this, I'm sorry. This has happened too much for me to stick around any longer. I'm done." Cody rubs his face tiredly; glad to have gotten that off his chest, although he's still furious. "I'll pack my things, and I'll be out of here by tomorrow. Goodbye, Stanley."
"Wait!" Stanley cries, stopping Cody from hanging up. "Please! Let me explain!"
"Explain what," Cody grumbles. Stanley takes a deep, shaky breath and it's then that Cody realizes he's crying. How long has he been doing that? Cody wonders.
"I love you, Cody. I love you so much, it's just, I can't do this anymore!"
"What do you mean?" Cody asks, his anger starting to dissipate. Stanley doesn't seem to hear him; he doesn't even acknowledge his interruption.
"I-I mean, I can't fight like this anymore. And I can't take this guilt! It's my fault, Cody! You know it!" Stanley starts to sob; his loud, hoarse cries make Cody want to burst into tears himself.
"No, it's not," he protests weakly. But he knows it's futile, Stanley has never believed him before. No matter how much he reasons, Stanley still believes that it was his fault his uncle died.
"Yes it is! I was there, I was right there! But I was too dumb to do anything! It's my fucking fault, and now he's dead, he's dead because of me!"
"No, not because of you. You didn't kill him yourself, did you?" Cody tries to reason with his ex-but-not-quite boyfriend.
"It's like I did!" Stanley sobs again, coughing a little. "Then, today, I forgot that it was his death anniversary!"
"It's okay…" Cody is cut off.
"No, it's not! It's not fucking okay! Stop treating me like I'm fucking twelve! I forgot about him! How could I do that! And to top it all off, I drank for the first time since he died! Do you know how much of a major letdown that probably is for him?" he cries. "I'm a failure! Just admit it!"
"Stanley," Cody starts. "Please, you're intoxicated, you're upset and you're driving. Just come home and we'll talk. You can vent and cry all you want with me, okay?"
"No! Just, fuck you, Cody. Fuck you. I don't want you're help. If there's one thing you suck at the most, it would be helping."
"Excuse me?" Now, Cody's angry again. "I'm trying as hard as I can to help you, you just are refusing to accept it! What else do you want me to say? That you're right? That it was your fault Sandor's dead? Fine then, now it's my turn to vent." Cody takes a deep breath, he knows he'll probably regret this, but he's just too angry to let this go. "You're a failure! See, I admitted it! But you're my failure, and I love you, but sometimes, it gets really hard to want to stay in a relationship with you. You cheat, you ditch, and you're really fucking whiny. 'Cody do this, Cody do that!' I can't fucking take it anymore! I really thought you were the one, but apparently not, because we can't go five minutes without arguing! I'm so fucking sick of your bullshit, and I can see now that it's never gonna end. So I'm just gonna have to walk away. So no, fuck you, Stanley." Cody is panting at the end of his rant, but it feels good to finally say these things out loud.
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
"And here we go again! You think you can just say 'I'm sorry' and all will be forgiven. Well, it's too late. 'I'm sorry' isn't enough this time. You can't pull me back into this again, because I won't let you. I hate you, Stanley Worthington! I hate your bullshit, I hate how you always know how to make me come back to you; I hate it! I hate you!" Stanley gasps, and Cody can hear him cry even more. He doesn't even feel bad, this time.
Stanley tries to apologize again.
"I'm so, so sor-" Cody hears the tires screech, then Stanley screaming. All of the sudden, there's a loud crash, and Cody can hear the glass shattering through the phone.
The silence is almost deafening, and Cody sits in shock, listening. He can't hear Stanley. The mere thought that he might be gone seems to choke Cody, making him stumble and grab the edge of the table to support himself. The utter fear that washed over him like a tidal wave is like nothing he's ever experienced before.
"Stanley!" He screams, his vision getting blurry. He gets no response. "STANLEY!" Still, nothing. Now Cody does start to cry. "Stanley, goddamnit! Answer me!" He waits for what seems like an eternity for a reply that doesn't come.
Before he can stop it, an image of Stanley lying dead in the front seat of his car, a quarter-full bottle of beer in one hand, his face frozen forever in a scream with his dead eyes staring blankly at nothing, never to see anything again.
It's almost too much to bear. Cody grabs his home phone; careful not to end the call he has on his cell, and dials 9-1-1. When he hears a female voice on the other end of the line, he starts to speak in a rush. "M-my boyfriend got in a car crash, I'm not sure where, but he's not saying anything. I think he might be hurt!" The woman talks to him calmly, later asking him questions about what happened. Cody tells her everything, not leaving out a single detail, besides the fight they were having. He can't tell her about that without crying more. After he's finished explaining everything, he hangs up and sits down on the couch, feeling hollow inside.
Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay…
…
It's three am when his phone rings again. He's still sitting on the couch, not even bothering to try to get some sleep. He picks it up, hands shaking.
"H-hello?" he stutters.
"Is this Cody Banks?"
"Yes." And Cody thought his hands were shaking before.
"I'm calling about a Stanley Worthington…" The man can't even finish his sentence before Cody stops him.
"Is he okay?" he interrupts eagerly, his voice shaking. The man sighs, obviously not sure how to say the next part. After a few agonizing seconds, the man chooses to go with just bluntly stating it.
"He's dead."
And that's when the world shattered into tiny pieces.
The man continues to talk, but Cody doesn't hear him. He only has one thought running through his head; everything else seems to have shut down.
It's all my fault. Then, his brain realizes something else. And the last thing I said to him was "I hate you!"
…
At Stanley's funeral, Cody is sweaty with nerves. And guilt, don't forget guilt. He tugs at the collar of his suit, swallowing thickly. Stanley's last few moments play out in his head, over and over, and he tries to imagine Stanley's face before the end.
"Excuse me?" He asks, furious. "I'm trying as hard as I can to help you, you just are refusing to accept it! What else do you want me to say? That you're right? That it was your fault Sandor's dead? Fine then, now it's my turn to vent." He pauses. "You're a failure! See, I admitted it! But you're my failure, and I love you, but sometimes, it gets really hard to want to stay in a relationship with you. You cheat, you ditch, and you're really fucking whiny. 'Cody do this, Cody do that!' I can't fucking take it anymore! I really thought you were the one, but apparently not, because we can't go five minutes without arguing! I'm so fucking sick of your bullshit, and I can see now that it's never gonna end. So I'm just gonna have to walk away. So no, fuck you, Stanley."
Cody can picture Stanley's face, tear streaked, his eyes squeezed shut for a second before he blinks them open again.
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
Cody sees him taking a swig of his beer, and then making a bitter face. Stanley never liked the taste of beer, or any alcohol, actually. He only drank it for the effects it had, how it seemed to make everything better for a short period of time.
"And here we go again! You think you can just say 'I'm sorry' and all will be forgiven. Well, it's too late. 'I'm sorry' isn't enough, this time. You can't pull me back into this again, because I won't let you. I hate you, Stanley Worthington! I hate your bullshit, I hate how you always know how to make me come back to you; I hate it! I hate you!"
Now, Cody watches as Stanley's face freezes in shock and hurt, his mind working as he tries to come up with something to say.
"I'm so, so sor-"
Then the tires are screeching, the car spinning out of control, careening off the side of the icy mountainside road. Echoes of Stanley's screams go with the crash.
He should have known that road was icy; it was the middle of the goddamn winter. Even drunk, Stanley should have known that.
Unless he wanted to die, a small voice whispers in the back of his mind. He tries to push it down, but it doesn't leave. Maybe the only thing keeping him from killing himself was you, then, in that car, during that fight when you said you hated him, he decided it wasn't worth it if you didn't love him anymore. So, he crashed the car intentionally.
Shut up, he thinks at it.
But even if he didn't try to commit suicide, it's still your fault.
SHUT UP!
His argument with himself is interrupted by one of Stanley's friends, Marina, tapping him on the shoulder. He looks at her, confused and slightly grateful for her pulling him out of his thoughts.
"It's your turn to read your eulogy," she whispers. Cody freezes. Oh no. He looks fearfully at her and she smiles. "It's okay."
Those words seem to break the temporary dam Cody had set up in his mind to hold back his emotions. A sob tears itself from his chest and he puts his head in his hands, saying, "I can't, I can't. I'm sorry!" over and over again. When he finally lifts his head from his hands, everyone is looking at him.
Cheeks red, Cody stands up and sprints, trying to get as far away from their eyes as possible, disgusted with himself.
…
Months later, he still feels the same as he did on that day. He feels like the guilt is a weight on his chest, slowly dragging him down as he swims, preventing him from breathing. He's drowning.
And the sadness is an ache in his stomach, always there, never leaving. It's made him ill on several occasions.
Every night, he thinks about his last words to Stanley, and the ache and the weight worsen.
His grades plummet, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything really. Not anymore. All he can think about is how he killed his boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend. They broke up about a minute or two before he crashed.
At four am, when he's sitting on his bed, sobbing beneath the covers, he can hear himself screaming, over and over again.
"I hate you!"
No, he doesn't.
"I hate you!"
Actually, he loves you.
"I hate you!"
He loves you more than anything else in the entire world.
"I hate you!"
He just wishes he could tell you.
"I hate you!"
If only he could take back what he said. But he can't.
"I hate you!"
No, he hates himself.
…
December 9th, 2013. That's when he died.
Now, a year later, Cody sits at his kitchen table, his fifth bottle of beer in his right hand, the one where the arm has no scars. He finishes the bottle quickly, getting up and stumbling to the fridge for another.
The events of that horrible day, all of those years ago replay in his mind.
It's your fault.
His hand clasps around the cold bottle, the frost sending chills up his arm.
He shouldn't be dead.
The beer opens with a hiss and he brings the bottle of burning liquid to his lips.
You deserve to die.
He takes a long drink, nearly downing the entire bottle.
You should die; you want to die, don't you.
He finishes it off quickly, walking over to the stairs in a drunken daze.
It would be so easy, so quick. And, you could see him again.
The stairs creak as he makes his way up to the attic, opening his dad's trunk with all of his stuff from the army. Buried under a heap of clothes, is a gun. He loads one bullet into it, lifting it up to his forehead.
Click.
Before he pulls the trigger, Cody whispers one thing, almost too quiet to hear.
"See you soon, Stanley."
Bang.
Ahh, I love Nive. There's just so many possibilities for AUs I can write. So, anyway, please leave a review or two for me to see and smile at, and maybe check out my other stories if you have the time. I promise, they'll be less sad (well, I hope this one was sad, it was what I was going for).
I hope you all enjoyed this, see you next time I update!