Work Text:
Exam reviews floated across the campus park. It was the last day of the spring semester. The warm breeze hit the back of John’s neck. He sat on his special bench in the park, writing furiously. He had a great idea to write a novel about a couple with cancer and one of them dying. I am finally going to get published. John thought to himself. He wrote down his thoughts; they seemed to flow right out of him today.
“Hey Nerd! What you doing there? Writing in your diary?” shouted a voice across the way. John pushed his glasses up with his forefinger.
“Shit,” He muttered to himself, “Not again. They are going to ruin my novel.”
John shoved his notebook into his bag as quickly as possible. As soon as he started to take his arm out, a hand reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“You should take that out and show it to us.” The boy laughed.
John looked up and looked in to the eyes of Ansel Elgort, the most hateful, vicious, intolerable boy on campus. He was John’s rival. They had grown up together, but they hated each other. Not because they had done something trivial like take the other’s toy, but their parents hated each other; Ansel’s family was rich, John’s was poor. Ansel was beautiful and John was nerdy. Woah, did John just think that? No, Ansel was not beautiful, he was the devil.
“Why the hell would I do that? So you can make fun of me?”
John said, trying to act as calm as he could as he yanked his wrist away. His heart raced, but he had to act like he was not flustered.
“Oh, John! You want to hold hands?”
Ansel grabbed his hand. John’s face turned beet red and he tore it away before he started to sweat.
“No way! Why would I hold your hand? You are an asshole!”
“You know why you would.” Ansel teased, winking at the hazel-eyed boy. John glared into Ansel’s stupid eyes.
Ansel turned on his heel, leaving John to stare after him. John hated Ansel so much. But, Ansel was right. John did want to hold his hand, as much as he hated to admit it. John wanted to caress that smooth hand of Ansel’s. John could not help but be swooned by Ansel’s figure. He was skinny as a stick and tall. His luscious brown hair swept over his eyes like waves on the tide. John could never forget the moments when, despite their parents hatred for each other, Ansel was nice to John. This one time, in middle school when John was a nerdy thirteen year old. John was being picked on by the bullies of the eighth grade, per usual. John was a hairsbreadth away from a swirlie when Ansel stormed in and, essentially, kicked their asses. John was speechless. Ansel had just helped him. Ansel looked at John, his eyes full of fear and embarrassment. Ansel flushed red, and ran out of the bathroom. John will never forget that moment. That was the moment John fell in love with Ansel.
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Damn. I am such a dick.
“You know why you would.” Ansel smirked at John.
Ansel turned around and started walking away. Ansel didn’t know why he tortured John so. Maybe because his dad brought him up that way? Or maybe it was because he was mad that he liked John? He liked how John had some meat on his bones and was on the shorter side. He loved the way John did the puff in his hair. Despite their differences there have been times when John has been nice to him. One time, freshman year, John and Ansel had history together. Their ass of a teacher, Mr. Boone, asked Ansel a question.
“Ansel, who was the 10th president of the United States?”
Ansel, trying to be funny, said “Uh, Doctor Who?” the class laughed finding it funny, but Mr. Boone glared at Ansel.
“You think you are funny boy?”
“Why yes, sir, I do.”
“You think it is funny that you do not know the presidents of the United States, but you know about some stupid TV show you little twit?”
Ansel was dumbstruck. He knew the president Mr. Boone was talking about. He was just trying to be funny and talk about his favorite show.
“Um, sir?” said a quiet voice from the back.
Ansel swiveled his head around and was looking upon the voice. It was John.
Great. The know it all is going to get me in further trouble now. Just to get at me.
“Yes, Mr. Green. What is it?”
“I would like to inform you,” John cleared his voice, “that, Doctor Who, is actually an informal show. There is actually an episode that talks about the presidents, which I am assuming Ansel has seen because it is his favorite show.” John blushed, “So, Ansel was just trying to be the class clown that he always is, but I am sure if you asked him again he would switch his answer to the right one.”
Ansel’s jaw dropped to the floor. John was helping him. Mr. Boone also looked confounded.
“Also, I would like to add that as of the school handbook page 10 section 4, that you can not call a student a ‘twit’ or imply that one is dumb. So I would like to go issue a report to the principle and take Ansel with me.”
John got up and started to walk out the door.
“Well, are you coming?”
Ansel, still in shock, quickly packed everything up and headed towards John. As soon as they were in the hallway, Ansel looked at John, still shocked that he had helped, and said,
“Why did you help me?”
John shrugged, still red in the face from blushing.
“Because Mr. Boone is an ass, and I like Doctor Who too.”
And that was the moment Ansel fell in love with John.
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John walked into his house after his encounter with Ansel. John’s brother,Hank, came running up to John exclaiming,
“John! There is a party at the Elgort’s place! We need to crash it! Come on! Get ready to go kick some Elgort butt!”
Hank ran out the door, getting the car started. John sighed, wishing it was not expected of him to go to the party and ruin it. He wished he could just have fun for one night.
“This party is going to be off the hook!” Hank screamed over the wind as he drove 20 mph over the speed limit.
Yeah, right. John thought to himself.
When they got to the party, John let himself in through the back door. When he got in, it was just like any other party. Music was blaring out of the stereo so loud that he was not sure how people could hear anything other than noise. The lights were turned off and strobe lights were set up everywhere in the room. Teens were snorting cocaine off the coffee room table. People were high on weed and some other drug in one corner, while a couple was having sex in another.
Disgusting. Who would want to do it in public?
John looked around trying to find Hank. When he could not find Hank among the sex and the drugs, he grabbed a Solo cup and started drinking from it.
Mmmm. This does not taste so bad.
It tasted like a Tootsie Roll. John gulped down a glass and felt his head start to get cloudy. John had two more glasses before a hand reached out of a bedroom and dragged him in. John spun around, his glasses becoming askewed. He was now face to face with Ansel.
Oh God.
John could feel his heart rate pick up. It started going 100 mph. He could feel his face turn red and hands start to shake.
“Um, what do you want Ansel?”
“I want to know why we fight all the time.”
John could feel Ansel’s eyes drilling into his forehead as John looked down.
“Because..... Because my parents taught me too.”
“Exactly! So why can we not create our own destiny’s instead of the ones our parents have made?”
“What do you mean?”
John looked up into Ansel’s wide brown eyes, questioning Ansel with his own eyes. He was not sure what Ansel was getting at.
“I mean, maybe, we can love who we want.”
John felt like he just got slugged in the stomach. He started to come out of his drunken haze. His head cleared. He started catching onto what Ansel was saying.
He knows. Oh gosh, he KNOWS.
“I am not sure who you are talking about.” John trying to keep his voice even.
“You know exactly who I am talking about.”
Ansel reached down and tilted John’s chin up. Ansel parted his lips and leaned in, kissing John right there on the lips. His lips moved against John’s stiff ones, trying to warm him up to the idea. John’s walls slowly broke down and he became more relaxed. Ansel grabbed John’s hips and helped move them to the bed. Soon they were lying there, kissing, tangled together.
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“Oh my god!”
John shot up out of his sleep. Where the hell was he? He looked around the room. Oh god... The memories of last night started to flood towards his brain. The party. The person pulling him into the bedroom. The change in destiny. The kiss. The sex.
Oh my god! We had SEX!
John rolled over and looked at the sleeping Ansel. He couldn’t believe it. The boy he had liked for so many years has finally noticed him and taken charge! He started to smile when he realized Hank was probably looking for him right now. John swung out of bed and pulled on his pants. He threw on a shirt and leaned down to Ansel.
“I will be right back love. Do not worry. I will come back for you.”
John climbed out of the window and crawled the wall. He started to walk home when a car honked the horn.
“Hey loser! Get in the car. We are going some place!”
Hank pulled up next to John throwing open the door for him to get in.
“So, where did you go? I couldn’t find you and you are now wandering the road at 9 am?”
“Um.. Well... You see...”
John started to blush. He felt Hank’s eyes getting wider.
“Oh my god! Johnny boy got laid! So who was the lucky girl? Was she hot? What was her name?”
“Well... Hank.. You see...”
Those were the last words John ever said to Hank. A car came out of no where, T-Boning the car. The metal of the car crunched beneath the weight of the other vehicle. The car hit Hank on straight impact. John yelled for Hank to wake up. But John knew from the blood flowing from Hank’s side, that he was gone.
“NO!” John screamed.
John jumped out of the car. He grabbed the pistol Hank would leave under the seat for protection and ran up to the car that had hit them.
“Why the hell would you do that?! You just killed a man!”
“Well, why would we not? He was a Green.” The man looked up at him and John recognized the smirk that was on his face. The blood drained from John’s face. The man was an Elgort. Without hesitation, John shot him in the face. John, realizing he had just killed a relative of Ansel’s, ran into the forest out skirting the town. Running away from the crash, running away from Ansel.
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“Ansel we have something to tell you.” Ansel’s mother said to him.
She couldn’t look him in the eye. Ansel was afraid that they knew what happened last night with John. God, last night was amazing. He could not believe he finally got up the courage to grab ahold of John. He finally got the courage to tell him how he felt.
“John, I love you.”
“Ansel, I love you too. God, I love you so much.”
“Do you think anyone will find out?” Ansel said.
Ansel looked over at John. John’s body was amazing. He did not have one ounce of fat on him like Ansel had always thought. He was always just wearing baggy clothes. John turned to face Ansel. Ansel could not handle the way John’s brown eyes danced with excitement.
“No, I don’t think so. We have to run away. Get as far as we can from this place. Go to England or New York.”
“John, I promise as soon as we can we will run away together.”
Now that all felt like a dream. Ansel was brought back to the world when he heard his mom starting to sob.
“Wait, what did you say mom?”
“Your brother has been shot and killed!”
“What? Mom! Mom by who?”
“It was by that Green kid!”
“Hank?”
“No! Warren killed Hank! It was John!”
Ansel felt the life force slip from him. He felt himself fading faster and faster away from his mother. John. No, John couldn’t have. There had to be a reason. Wait, Hank was killed. John must have avenged his brother not realizing who it was. Oh God, Ansel felt sick. John may have killed Warren, but Ansel still loved him. God, that made him feel even more sick. Ansel leaned over the side of his bed and puked. Ansel had to find John, but he did not know where John would have run off too.
Wait, what was that book we read in class?
Ansel hobbled towards his backpack and pulled out Romeo and Juliet.
That’s it! I have an idea.
Ansel left his house without a word. He was pretending he had to get out to grieve his brother. As Ansel reached downtown, he turned his car down an alleyway. He knew this alleyway like the back of his hand. He has traveled down this road so many times to get weed for his extravagant parties.
Ah, there he is.
Ansel’s favorite drug dealer came swaggering up to Ansel’s car. His name was Nat Wolfe. NAt came up to the window and knocked on it. Ansel rolled it down for him to reach out.
“What can I do for you tonight Ansel?”
“I would like some kind of drug that knocks me out so hard that I seem dead.”
“Ah. You are looking for the Tetrodotoxin, poison from the pufferfish.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s what it is called.”
Nat reached into his trench coat pocket and picked out a small vile of the poison. Ansel handed him some money and grabbed the poison.
“Now to make sure you are really faking them out, here is some cocaine. Now make it look like you overdosed on it.”
Nat handed over some white-powdery crystals. Ansel took the drug carefully, afraid of the power this drug holds. There was so much there.
“Be careful, if you actually take too much of it, you will die. This stuff is worse for you then the normal stuff.”
“Hey, wait. Can you give this to John? He is in the forest. Just wait outside my house tonight and give it to him.” Ansel handed him a letter explaining what Ansel was doing.
“Will do.”
Ansel carefully placed the cocaine in his coat pocket. Ansel turned his wheel around and drove off down the alley.
Ansel came home to an empty house.
Ah. Perfect.
Ansel grabbed the bag of cocaine out of his pocket. He started to spread the white powder across the coffee table on a mirror. He found one of his dad’s shaving razors and rubbed it in the dust to make it look like he cut it up and took the razor running through the dust. He took out a piece of paper and wrote down his suicide note:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I can not live with myself knowing that I know this and am not ashamed. I am in love with John. I know. He killed my brother. But, I can not live with myself knowing that no matter what, I still love him. So I decided to end the pain. Tell John that he did this to me.
Love, Ansel
When Ansel finished he folded it in a rush, trying to make it look like it had been done in the last few seconds of his life. Ansel then took out the vile and said,
“This is for you John.”
And he downed the vile in one gulp.
Nat stood outside of Ansel’s house. He stood there for 2 hours when he finally gave up on waiting for John and left.
If I leave nothing really bad can happen, can it?
John ran through the forest. He did not know where his legs were taking him, but he just went with it. Soon, John recognized where he was. He was by Ansel’s house. John decided to see if Ansel’s parents were home and then go visit him, telling Ansel what had happen and hope Ansel does not hate John. John put the gun in the waistband of his pants. John crept up to the side of the house. He went over to the garage.
Good. Nobody is home. Just Ansel.
John noticed that the door was unlocked when he tested the doorknob.
Weird. Why would he leave it unlock?
John opened the door and walked into the living room. The sight he saw was so unnerving he fell to his knees. Ansel laid on the floor, pale as a ghost. Cocaine covered the table but there was a note along side the razor blade.
“No!”
John screamed as he crawled towards Ansel’s unconscious body. He checked to see if there was a heartbeat in Ansel. But, the feeling of his pulse was gone. The thump of his heart had left his body as John’s spirit left him. He felt like he was torn in half. His life had no meaning anymore. He couldn’t save his brother and he couldn’t save the one he loved the most. John, with a shaky hand reached for the note and read it to himself.
“This isn’t what I wanted to happen Ansel! I never wanted this! Why couldn’t we have just run away last night when you talked about it? Why did it have to come to this? I am so sorry!”
John kept muttering I am sorry as he held the limp Ansel in his arms. The body that had so much life in it last night. Ansel’s eyes were closed. John would never again see his beautiful eyes, alive with excitement ever again. John was filled with a depression that could never be helped.
“If I can not be with you in body, Ansel, at least I can be with you in spirit.”
John took the rolled up dollar bill on the table and without hesitation cleared the entire table of the cocaine. John dropped the dollar.
THUMP
His body started to shake in spazzes.
Thump
His eyes rolled into the back of his head
Thump
and he fell to the floor.
thump
His final breath was “Ansel.”
Silence filled the air.
Ansel lifted his head up.
Huh. I am still in my house. This poison was not really that effective.
Ansel looked at the table next to him.
That is weird. All the cocaine has disappeared. Did the wind blow it away because the garage door is opened?
Ansel tried to stand up. His legs shook from lack of use. He looked at the clock and noticed that it was almost midnight. Ansel had been out for almost a whole day. It is a surprise no one found him yet. He blinked his eyes trying to get use to the dark. He started to walk when he tripped over a lump on the floor. Ansel screamed and was sprawled across the floor. He looked up and into the closed eyes of John.
“John? Are you asleep? John, wake up!”
Ansel crawled to John’s body and started to shake him. He could not wake John.
“Oh, God. No. God. No. John you have to wake up! Dammit John! Wake up!”
Ansel cried into the silent air. He slowly moved his hand to John’s neck to search for a pulse. Tears danced down from his cheeks onto John. He could not find a pulse. He had lost John because of his plan. It was all his fault. He had a stupid plan and it had costed John’s life.
“Dammit! Goddammit! I am an idiot! A complete idiot!”
Depression swallowed him up. He couldn’t live with himself. He couldn’t live on this world without John. He looked back at John’s body with his eyes clouded with tears. He noticed something sticking out of John’s waistband. It was a gleaming gun. Ansel reached for the gun and looked in for bullets.
There was 1 bullet left. He had one chance to make this right. If John was not on this Earth, he did not want to be either. Ansel raised the gun to his head.
THUMP
Ansel pulled the trigger and shot himself in the temple.
Thump
The shot’s roar sang through the silence.
Thump
Blood ran down his face, making him choke.
thump
Ansel’s last breath was “John.”
Silence filled the night air.