Gallavich AU: The Fault in Our Stars

Chapter Six: Inevitabilities

It turns out I didn’t have to find a way to stop myself because it was only two hours later that my phone buzzed with a message from him. I couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off my face as I dropped my book and opened the text.

From Mickey: U got any other boring ass movies to recommend?

From Mickey: watched all mine like 40 times

To Mickey: perks of a stay at home cancer life huh?

I could practically hear him scoffing at me from his place.

From Mickey: U always got some smart ass thing to say dont U?

To Mickey: It’s a talent of mine

From Mickey: U gonna recommend a movie or do I have to do it myself?

To Mickey: hmm, classic movies…

From Mickey: that tube thing is just for show isnt it? Cancers really in your brain huh?

To Mickey: that was overly harsh!

From Mickey: fucks sake…

I was in the middle of typing a reply when the screen lit up, he was calling me. I answered it quickly, still smiling like a fucking lunatic.

“You know it’s not nice to say someone has brain cancer,” I teased.

“Yeah well you’re actin’ like it,” he grumbled and I just laughed.

“So why the need for new movies?”

“Told you, I finished all ours,” he said.

“Thought you could watch Seagal movies all year round?”

“Even I’ve got a limit man,” he said. “You know any good ones?”

“Are you going to bitch about them for eternity like you are with Dead Poets?”

“Probably,” he said. “If you give me a shitty movie to watch.”

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad!”

“Have you even seen it?” he quipped.

“Hey, could have been worse. I’m sure my younger sister has some real sappy shit on the hard drive.”

“Yeah, yeah, so what you got for me?”

I started reeling off a couple of movie titles but he was so fucking fussy. Nothing would do, and in a way it was a little aggravating, but he was still on the phone and that had to be a good sign right?

“Alright! Okay! No Groundhog Day, how about Legends of the Fall?” he scoffed at my selection and I grunted loudly, and now he’s laughing, like hilariously chuckling down the phone line. “What is so funny?”

“You’re gettin’ so worked up man. Fine, I’ll give that one a shot, eventually.”

“How have you not seen half these movies? They’re notoriously amazing,” I said.

“My dad likes Seagal movies, doesn’t really watch any of that other shit.”

“Just shoot-em-ups and movies with plots that could be solved in about twenty minutes but are filled with so much ridiculous violence that they drag on for at least two hours?” I asked.

The line was silent for a moment before I heard him shuffle in his seat. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

“Well you have to have at least seen Shawshank,” I said and there was more silence on his end. “Please tell me you have seen Shawshank Redemption?”

“What’s it about?”

“Holy shit, when the fuck are you free? I’m going to sit you down and make you watch that movie,” he chuckled again. “Jesus, it’s like not having seen the Green Mile.”

“How do you watch so much crap? I mean even with fucking cancer, how is there time to watch it all?” he said, which I take to mean ‘well, I have also not seen that one either’.

“It’s been like five years,” I said. “Five years of nothing but sitting in my living room on the couch with a TV in front of me. It’s not like I can do much else.”

“You can’t get any job or something?”

“I had a job for a while, down at the Kash ‘n Grab,” I said.

“Oh yeah, I used to steal from that joint.”

I laughed because of course he did. “Yeah, well, they couldn’t keep me on because I couldn’t do half of the stocktake stuff. Too many heavy boxes, bad lungs… you know the drill.”

“Sucks,” he said.

“Yeah.”

And we were at a crossroads again, silence – and white noise – the only things hanging on the line. I looked down at the time on the screen and it surprised me.

“Shit, it’s past midnight,” I said.

He made a grunting sound, “too late to start a fucking movie now. Damn it Gallagher.”

I smiled, “I’m sorry, am I keeping you from a good night’s sleep before your big board meeting tomorrow?”

“You’re a fucking dick,” he said, but I could hear him laughing behind it.

“I know,” I said. “I guess I better go, get some sleep.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said.

I was about ready to hang up when I heard him say something else.

“You busy tomorrow? No doctors’ appointments or shit?” he asked.

“No, no, I mean yeah I’m not busy,” I stammered, scrunching up my eyes and mentally chastising myself at how stupidly available I made myself sound.

“I’ll come pick you up after lunch, you can give me your fucking hard drive with all the essential movies on it,” he said.

“Okay, they’re in a folder labelled ‘100 movies to watch before you die’,” I said and he laughed louder than I had heard all night.

“You really are a morbid fucker aren’t you?” he asked.

“I guess I am.”

So we hung up the phone and I dropped it on the bed beside me. I couldn’t stop smiling. Tomorrow, all I have to do is wait until tomorrow, no waiting a week for him to maybe call, no, tomorrow…

The only problem is that instead of doing what I should be doing, namely accepting that he wants to spend time with me as a friend and leave it at that, I’m doing almost the opposite. I’m getting my hopes up for something more. If there’s one thing that having cancer teaches you, it’s that hope is more toxic than the drugs they pump into you, because if they don’t work then they don’t work, you try something else. If hope fails, then there’s nothing left.

If you start out without hope you can’t be disappointed. Hope is the last fucking option and it’s that one stupid thing that will make or break you. It keeps you hanging on the edge and waiting to fall back or fall over it and you never know which one it’ll be.

I thought I’d given up on hope but it’s not something you decide to do and then stick to, hope is that thing that creeps up on you until you give up. Believe me, I know how it feels to have no hope, to be filled with something so empty and dark that you have no idea how you move past it and keep breathing. I’ve spent days locked in that dark place with no hope.

The only thing that breaks through that void is finding it again.

Hope it toxic, because you can't have it or be without it. Either way is a fucking nightmare.

So I have hope, and lots of it, because Mickey is so unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He’s rough and sharp around the edges, but it’s like he’s only showing me that side of him because there’s something much softer on the inside.

It’s just a guess though, I might just be falling for a complete and utter jerk. The worst part is that I don’t even care, I’m just sort of invested now.

So by the time the next morning came around I was waiting until noon, and it seemed to take forever. I’d managed to weasel the hard drive out of Lip’s clutches and when I mumbled something about Mickey he’d just laughed and given in.

Fiona was still hanging around at about one, she didn’t start her shift until that night and she didn’t seem too impressed about me going out again. Told me that I shouldn’t be trying to do too much too fast.

She might be right, maybe I’m pushing myself but I know my limits. I know how far I can go, and today is a good day as far as I can tell. I actually feel half-way to normal.

When Mickey pulled up he just honked the horn again and I kissed Fiona on the cheek. She yelled from the kitchen for me to be back before eight and that she’d have Jimmy text her the minute I walked in.

I just rolled my eyes and headed out with Mickey.

He drove down to this old abandoned building not far from our houses and we just headed in and up to the roof. It took me a little longer, at least he could get used to his leg, learn how to use the damn thing like a semi-normal human being. My lungs were just perma-shite.

We took a seat in the warm afternoon sun, he took a small netbook out of his backpack and told me to shove anything good on there. I had a sneaking suspicion that the computer was probably stolen but I said nothing, we haven’t bought milk or bread in years.

We just sat back talking, me spouting ideas about movies and him rebutting with stupid points that actually made some sense and annoyed me because I couldn’t argue them. He seemed to find that amusing, and I like his smart-ass smile, so I let him one-up me.

“So how’s Mandy dealing with her break-up?” I asked as the sun got lower in the sky.

He shrugged, handing me another bottle. Relax, it’s a soda.

“Usual,” he said. “She’s pissed.”

“What, anger? That’s it?” I asked.

“See, with Mandy, she gets pissed off, but half the time that’s just her way of pretending it don’t fucking hurt. She’s either angry, or fucking depressed, and she just acts pissed no matter which one of those it is,” he said. “It’s easier to be angry than it is to be sad, more to be angry about and more people to take it out on. No one wants to listen to anyone crying but they’ll fight you ‘til they can’t fucking speak anymore. Just what it’s like at my house.”

He lay back against the warm concrete and I did the same, looking over at him as he stretched out, his shirt pulling up a little at his waist and I tried not to let the sight of his bare skin distract me, but it did.

“She’s always in a mood about somethin’ though,” he said with another shrug. “Just the nature of it all, huh?”

“That’s the thing about pain,” I said quietly. “It demands to be felt.”

“Demands to be felt, huh?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, I mean you can hide from it, take different paths or try and avoid it but in the end it always finds you. It demands that you feel it, it’s one of life’s great inevitabilities. You will feel pain, and it will fucking hurt, no matter how tough or strong you are. You can’t hide from pain forever, just makes it worse, you know?”

“You spend a lot of time thinking about shit like this don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I do. It’s just a hopeless way of trying to understand why I’m the one with cancer while everyone else gets to live their lives like they were meant to. It sucks, and it’s not fair, and while they all have to feel the pain of my cancer, none of them understand it like I do.”

He nodded, “Mandy’s like that,” he said. “I mean sure it affects her more than my fucking dad, even my brothers sometimes, but she doesn’t know shit about what it means to be fucking dying.”

“They try to understand, but shit I hate it when they say that. ‘I understand what you’re going through,’” I scoffed. “I know they’re only trying to be supportive but you’re right, they don’t know shit. I’m an almost seventeen year old kid who’s gonna die.” I swallowed hard. “I’m going to die before I do anything worth doing before you die, and I can't even do half the shit I want to because we can't afford it or I physically can’t do it with my shitty lungs.”

“My shitty leg…” he added and I smiled.

“Your shitty leg,” I said and then I sighed. “Makes it worse when the people around you waste the good fucking lives they have been stubborn jerks. My brother is like genius smart, he could get a full ride into the college of his choice but he’d rather piss up his life down here in the South Side.”

“My stupid fucking sister, she always looks for the fucking douchebags to bring home and then she gets fucking stomped on. Afraid she’s gonna get left in this shit-hole if she doesn’t find someone soon,” he said, putting both hands behind his head and stretching out. “She’s got the fucking chance to do something but she’s too busy screwing herself over to realise it.”

“We’re just the unlucky ones I guess.”

“What’s luck got to do with it?” he scoffed.

“Everything in the whole fucking world is just random selection. We got cancer and we were born on the South Side, some people get born to fucking movie stars. And then if that’s not enough, where we get stuck shapes us into being something else entirely. Side effects of life.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“We’re all side effects of something Mickey,” I said. “Whether it’s the piece of shit town we live in or the varied process of human genetic mutation, we are, and that is more the truth than anything else.”

He gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah well if that’s the truth then I’m a side effect of shitty contraception.”

I snorted even louder and we both laughed.

“Not true Mick… you’re a side effect of no contraception.”

I laughed harder and he shook his head.

“Yeah well if that’s mine then we can be fucking side effects together,” he said.

“Together?” I asked and he nodded.

“Together.”

I laughed a little more, softer this time and closed my eyes.

“Maybe ‘together’ will be our always,” I said without thinking.

Holy fuck, did that really just come out of my mouth?

“What did you just say?” Mickey asked, turning his head to look over at me with a cocked eyebrow. I just bit down on my lip to stop anything worse slipping out as I shook my head. “How about ‘fuck you’? How’s that?”

“Fuck you?” I said, almost as a question.

“Yeah, fuck you,” he said it as though he meant it to be harsh or spiteful, but it seemed to come out in more of a playful way.

I turned to face him too, my eyes scanning his face. “Sounds good to me,” I said with a small shrug and for a moment he just stared at me.

Then a grin seemed to wash over him and he shook his head in his usual ‘fucking Gallagher’ way.

“Fuck you,” he said, a little softer this time as he lay back again and closed his eyes, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.