Archive of Our Own ^beta

Notes:

• For Gruoch.
• Inspired by Put Out Every Star by Gruoch (orphan_account)

There are many standout scenes in that story that I found understatedly sublime. But this was an image I just couldn’t get out of my head. So it turned out to be the one to stir me out of my endless creative funk. 

 

Later, they lie hip to hip on the narrow bottom bunk bed in Peter’s room. There are pictures and other things tacked to the bottom of the top bunk right over where their heads rest on the pillow—photos of Peter with his friends, a picture of May and Ben hugging and smiling at the camera, their faces bright and happy, oblivious to the cascade of tragedy that lies ahead. A cartoonish drawing of a pensive, Bambi-eyed Peter, the words “LOSER IN CRISIS” etched in block letters across the top. Another doodle of Happy, this one angry and buffoonish. A list of Spanish vocabulary words with a warning—“Fail and kiss your GPA goodbye, Parker!!!!"—written with sharpie in Peter’s messy handwriting. Tony has seen it all so many times now that he can close his eyes and picture every detail perfectly.

 

“I’m scared I’m going to come in here one day and lie on this bed,” May says, “and it won’t smell like him anymore. Like, I have thousands of pictures of him, I’m never gonna forget what he looks like, and I have all these videos and voicemails I’ve saved so I can always hear his voice. I have some of his baby teeth in a jar somewhere, for crying out loud, but I’m so scared I’m gonna forget what he smelled like. Is that weird?”

 

“No,” Tony says, folding an arm behind his head. “No, I worry about it, too.” He thinks about the clothes and pillowcases he keeps closed up in special boxes for that very reason, about all those little rituals and behaviors that look completely insane to outsiders but are perfectly rational to the bereaved. He wonders if there is anything in human behavior as intimate as the act of grieving for a loved one.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)