valmora | [snippet] Rumors Fly (tGE AU, assorted ships)

Title: Rumors Fly (NO U, NO U, THEY'RE AMERICAN IN HERE)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: tGE AU
Pairings: (take a deep breath before reading this one aloud): Roger Bartlett/Sandy MacDonald, Louis Sedgwick/Eric Ashley-Pitt, Danny Velinski/Willie Dickes.
Disclaimer: If these guys were mine, I'd be a lot richer, and Danny probably would have kissed Willie on screen, rather than just in my fic. Therefore, all to MGM/UA.
Notes: This is from the same AU as the "wedding rhyme" snippets. It was a mutually inspired idea created by

figletofvenice and myself.
I refer to Ramsey as "RJ." This is deliberate. I didn't think any self-respecting modern teenage boy would want to be called "Rupert." Therefore, I arbitrarily decided that his middle initial was "J" and declared that his nickname was RJ. Teachers call him Rupert. His baby sister calls him "Roo."
Warnings: CHARACTER DEATH ~~(not like that's against canon or anything)~~

Nobody was really sure what happened for the first few days because the rumor mills were flooded with the regular post-Prom gossip anyway: who had slept with whom, who had gotten drunk and thrown up on the teacher, who had been caught smoking pot outside afterwards and was going to prison. Most of it wasn't true, and the only fact-checker they had wasn't at school.

Eric's fingernails were bitten down to nothing from nerves, and Louis traded a wire-and-duct-tape contraption of dubious practical use to Bobby for some packs of chewing gum just to stop it, though it wasn't completely successful.

Eric slugged Willie in the jaw when Willie asked him if Roger'd been drunk when the car crashed. Didn't break it, but gave him a gorgeous bruise that ached for days. Snarled, "Wasn't his fault," and went to do it again - would have, except Louis caught his arm mid-swing and pulled him away, just like Danny was pulling Willie away, murmuring something to him about the wisdom of irking the bereaved.

He went to their funerals and watched Roger's old girlfriends talk during the memorial service. They sounded like cicadas, buzzing endlessly. He wondered if they, like real cicadas, had hibernated for seventeen years before awakening, and decided that they would never wake up.

Walking past a couple of them, he overheard one say, "You wouldn't believe what I saw that night" to her companion.

"What?" the other one asked, breathless with anticipation of gossip.

"In the conference hall that was on the second floor - you remember where that was?" A pause, in which the other girl nods. "I saw him'n Sandy." The note to her voice is almost triumphant.

A quiet little gasp of not-quite-surprise from the listener, and Eric feels physically ill. He has to stop, to walk away just to get some air that doesn't feel like it's been polluted by her gossip.

He doesn't know if it's true. Doesn't care. The only people who should care are dead. It doesn't matter if Roger woke up and saw what everyone had known since before Sandy came out. It doesn't matter if Sandy was kissing him against the faux-wood door of Conference Hall 2 at ten o'clock on Prom Night. Eric isn't sure why anyone cares whether it happened or not, though Louis says it probably did, since Sandy had that secret smile on his face before they left, the one that said I don't want to make the effort to feel good for you right now because I'm putting all my effort into feeling good for me.

None of it matters. The only thing that matters is that Eric misses them.