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fandomweekly2019-03-07 11:12 pm
[#010] Enough Pie (The Big Chill)
Title: Enough Pie
Fandom: The Big Chill
Rating/Warnings: G, generic morbidity
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 995
Summary: College era. They've eaten enough pie to kill two men, or at least they're pretty sure they have, and they're never going to eat again. Well... not until morning.
“This was a mistake. I’m going to die.” Alex groans, commandeering Michael’s thigh to use as a pillow.
“Take me with you. I’m never eating again.”
“If you die and I die, who arranges the funeral?”
“If you think I’m arranging your funeral, you can just think again.” He flicks Alex’ ear, and gets a contrite if awkwardly-angled squeeze to the knee. “Make Sam do it. Sam!”
Sam leans in the doorway. “The two of you are really going to take up that whole couch, huh?”
“That’s all him.” Michael says. “Sam, we’re entrusting you with arranging the funeral when our stomachs explode. We would like to be buried together. Just scrape us into the same box and dump us in a hole and give a really good eulogy.”
“No one forced you to eat that much pie.” He shakes his head. “You’ll live.”
“Boo.” Alex lets one arm flop dramatically down to dangle from the couch.
“How do you want to do our joint funeral?” Michael asks, opting to ignore Sam’s assertion that they will, in fact, live.
“Well, for starters, we’ll both be dead. Unless you want to fling yourself on my funeral pyre.”
“My parents would not approve of a funeral pyre.”
“Would they have approved of the part where you and I are having a joint funeral?” Alex opens one eye.
“Before they’d approve of a funeral pyre.”
“Has anyone ever told you you guys are sick?” Sam sighs.
“It’ll have to be a secular funeral, of course. One of those modern city hall funerals.”
“Of course. They’ll bury us somewhere nice and unconsecrated.” Michael runs his fingers through Alex’ hair.
“Sick.” Sam repeats.
“What’s sick?” Harold asks, ambling into the room and-- finding the couch occupied-- dropping into a battered armchair.
“We’re planning our eternal union in death. After the pie kills us, we’ll be buried together in a random field.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to bury people in random fields.”
“Unconsecrated ground.” Michael elaborates.
“You don’t want to start an eternity together without the presence of God. The rock, the foundation, that all joint burials are based on.”
“He’d have to convert.” Michael says.
“And we’ve already eaten enough pie to kill two men, so it’s really too late to start the process.” Alex adds.
After a bit of fumbling, their hands find each other, without either of them looking.
“Would you be willing to convert so that we could get buried?” Michael asks, with an overwrought sigh and an air of ridiculous melodrama.
“Baby, for you? I’d do anything.”
“... That would be sweet, if it wasn’t wrong on every level.” Harold shakes his head. “Sam, how come you never say anything romantic like that to me anymore?”
“Because your girlfriend just laughs at us when I do.”
Alex huffs softly, and brings Michael’s hand to rest over his heart. He can’t complain, exactly, that Harold and Sam assume they just play around at it together. Sam’s used to the way the guys in the theatre department joke, and Harold is… well, Harold’s Harold, and he’s theatrical himself, and he’ll go along with any joke the rest of them are all enjoying, it’s just…
It’s just weird sometimes to not be joking, when everyone around them is too straight to realize. And right now it’s all a joke, but he likes the idea of an eternity together. Even if their bodies aren’t them. Maybe they’ll be reincarnated together somewhere. He’s decided to believe in reincarnation. It’s hard to believe in his parents’ picture of heaven, a place with old bearded guys in robes and winged cherubs and streets of gold and no homosexuals. But he and Michael could be reincarnated as anything together. Just do it all over again, and maybe next time around they’ll both find it easier to be happy.
Michael doesn’t know what happens when you die. He thought about it for the first time only a couple years back, and he’d like to believe it’s something nice. That some part of you remains somewhere and that there’s no suffering, that you still exist as energy in the universe or something. He’d like for the afterlife to be a place you go. He’d like to see his parents again.
“You know if we went out and bought another pie, those two would eat it for breakfast.” Sam says to Harold.
“No. Never again.” Alex insists. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
“I don’t want to think about breakfast. And I’ve sworn off pie for life.” Michael says.
“... Just the whipped cream, though, I would eat.”
“Obviously, ah, when I say I’ve sworn off, sworn off pie, I’m not counting cheesecake. Some distant day.”
“Mm… you know what I’d eat for breakfast?”
“Please don’t talk to me about breakfast yet.”
“Coffee. In bed. With a scoop of ice cream in it. And I bought blintzes… and they really won’t be as good if we don’t eat them tomorrow morning…” Alex squeezes Michael’s hand.
“I really will die if you start feeding me blintzes.”
“Good, we’ll go out together in a blaze of glory. Or blueberry.”
“Don’t even say ‘blueberry’. I want our headstone to say we died as we lived.”
“Lying in bed, full of pastry, putting off studying for our exams. Michael Asher Gold, make me the happiest corpse on earth. Let’s get buried.”
“Aww…”
“Really, you guys, that is morbid.”
“We get so much more morbid than this.” Michael says, tone soft, too caught up in gazing down into Alex’ eyes to think about much else. He goes back to playing with his hair. “We should have a long engagement so we can finish school, but of course the answer is yes.”
“Take me to bed. The impending food coma is as close to death as we’re getting tonight.”
“For a while.”
“For a while.” Alex agrees, a whispered promise. There’s some comfort found in the jokes, but heaven-- or whatever the alternative is-- can wait.
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I love the combination of humour and reflection in this - really lovely.
And now I want pie...
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And of course, all the talk about pie and cheesecake makes me want dessert.
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(writing this has me itching for it to be pi day just to excuse getting some pie!)
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(I'll be giggling over "I don't think you're allowed to bury people in random fields" at LEAST until I go to bed tonight.)
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(someone has to be the practical friend who thinks about these things...)
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