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Thom/Beck - Part 2	By : VinylTap Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Radiohead Views: 1975 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not know Beck or any of the members of Radiohead, Sonic Youth, or REM. This story is a work of fiction, and I make no money or profit from it.

Chapter List
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Beck had tried Leigh at work, but couldn’t get a hold of her. He’d been home when he heard, he got the call from his mother in the middle of the day, and there were all his patchwork defenses, flapping weak into position, unable to sustain their hold and tearing all through.
By the time he’d finally found Leigh, he’d been a proper mess, he saw her car pull up at the end of her alleyway well before she’d reached home.
Is that Beck? She squinted, unused to finding him hanging outside her building like that, she realized it was because he’d waited there for quite some time. He’d recognized her car and trotted toward her, baggy jeans and a flannel, hair in an unruly mess.
She slowed down at his side instead of looking for someplace to park, then leaned over the passenger seat to unlock the door.
“Hey— dude, what’s wrong?” She asked, foot on the brake, seatbelt tight as she stretched over to kiss him. She could see now something was really off— he was utterly disheveled. He’d definitely been crying, this was something bad. Leigh stopped, one hand on his arm, scanning his face with concern.
“Beck, what’s wrong? What happened?”
A car honked behind her; she was blocking the way.
“Fuck,” she muttered, pulling toward the curb, where there was a fire hydrant and you weren’t supposed to park. Beck had his hand on the seatbelt, like he’d been most of the way to buckling it but never did.
Leigh put the car in park and turned off the engine, she undid her seatbelt and reached over to the passenger’s seat. It was really uncomfortable to hug someone like that, one of her legs went up against the parking brake, she couldn’t quite get her arms around his back.
“Baby, what’s wrong,” she asked, he let her hug him despite the strained position, his arms came around her and he hugged her weakly at first, then very tight.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it; it felt too profane and grotesque for something that had been so personal, and preciously unique. Saying it aloud somehow watered it down, and diminished all that there was to something you heard about all the time and that was just part of life.
Leigh had become very worried. Her hand went on his hand where still he was holding the seatbelt partway to the buckle, uselessly midair, like he’d forgotten he'd held it. She carefully unraveled the seatbelt from his hand, it slid back into position with a snap. Beck gazed down at the buckle, then out the window, then back at Leigh, completely glass-eyed.
“I, ah—” he said, then stopped, like the hoarse sound of his own voice startled him.
He stared at her pale-faced for several moments before managing finally to convey that his grandfather died.
You may not know this, but Al had comprised at least half of what Beck was, and that never changed. Mortality was something you heard about and kept in awareness at the back of your mind, like it belonged in a storybook or textbook or to much older people, but you didn’t really get that it was real and how close to it you really were till it happened— far sooner and far more personally than you expected.
When it happened to people you loved, it was naturally devastating, but all the while it felt more than ever that it was part of you, like it wasn’t the same death you’d always known in general context. In this sense, death really was an old friend.
“I— tried you at work—” he murmured, she left her car in the red zone and helped him out, she gripped him very tightly, face pressed to his chest.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” she said, leading him across the grass by the curb, he followed absently, skin and bones beneath his flannel. She had groceries left in the trunk, she’d get to that later. Beck followed inside her apartment like a lost child whose parents never came to pick him up from school, fingers grazing the furniture, the white imperfections in the wall—
Go in August, he’ll understand.
She was so freaking stupid. But this was no time for self-deprecation; his eyes followed her small figure as she moved through the kitchen, the sound of liquid pouring, she sat beside him on the couch with a glass of water.
Five years into a relationship, it’s not like she’d never seen him this way before; but it was pretty bad. It turned reality into something distant and surreal, and overwhelmed you with unrelenting emotion that was exhausting over the long term.
He seemed so small beneath his clothes, more fragile and thin than a person should be, he held the glass with both hands without drinking and murmured about flying abroad for the funeral.
He could have flown two weeks earlier, like he he’d wanted. But you had no way of seeing stuff like this come, you’d spend your whole life worrying if you did.
And fuck the record, he thought he didn’t care if he never finished it at all.
Bibbe had known how difficult this would be for him to take, but it was tremendously difficult for her in the first place; her heart broke for her father, and for her sons to whom he’d meant so much. The shock of it hadn’t settled in for any of them, really.
“Listen,” Leigh said, her eyes dark and warm, somehow strong with wisdom; she took both Beck’s hands in hers, protective and determined. She looked at him directly, the way you’d reassure a patient. “Stay with me from now on,” she said, “I’ll take care of you.”
She’d not given it a second thought, and Beck had been too shaken up and exhausted to feel emotionally moved that she finally wanted to live together. How the hell she’d fit all his stuff in her tiny apartment, she wasn’t certain, but they’d figure something out.
“Let’s get you a ticket tomorrow,” she said, aware no measure of comfort could really undo how bad this hurt. He wanted to ask her to stay home with him the next day, but knew how dumb that would be, so he said nothing of it; we’ll finally have to get a bigger bed, she thought, though it would take up half the space in her room. For the time being, she’d let him sleep in her twin-size bed, as he had millions of times in the past, even though it was only big enough for one.
He’d really slept a very long time. In the delirium of in-between dreams, he’d been uncertain if really he’d slept that whole while, or if he just didn’t want to get up and deal with everything. He finally forced himself out of bed sometime at night, craning his head to see the iridescent red digits of the alarm; twenty minutes past three. It occurred to him Leigh hadn’t come to bed, even though she’d stayed by him earlier till he’d dozed off.
There was a low light emanating from under the closed bedroom door, he needed to pee, he slowly unraveled his legs from in-between the sheets and climbed out. He’d begun to step along when his foot crunched on something on the carpet, he stopped in place and brushed back his hair, then leaned slowly in the darkness to pick up whatever it was.
A folded sheet of paper. He could see vaguely the silhouette of the desk in the dark, he leaned across to reach for the desk lamp, then flipped the switch and squinted against the yellow light. He’d really got the paper wrinkled, he cursed under his breath while trying with all the poor coordination of after-sleep to smooth it out.
“Fuck,” he muttered, hoping it wasn’t something from work— but it was.
He’d never meant to read her personal stuff; this one he’d read before ever meaning to.
Gleaming bright white of the sheet, blue-black contrast of misshapen shadows, grotesquely out of form, the paper and his hand; the meaning of the printed words registered slowly, and his heart sank. He wondered how far Leigh had got through the letter, herself, before tossing it to the floor because it was too much.
She’d been fired that past morning, apparently.
And never said a word.
Beck shielded his eyes as he padded out of the bedroom, aware he was still in his day clothes, the light was too bright in the hall;
There Leigh was, fast asleep at the kitchen table over her crossed arms, papers all over the place. Beck frowned; he moved sleepily closer, the letter dangling forgotten in his hand.
It was all work stuff, all over the kitchen table, documents and sketches and diagrams partway beneath her arms and on the floor and nearby chair; some on the counter, in a fastened portfolio, maybe he’d just been too confused from sleep, and that’s why this didn’t make sense—
He stood in place for several moments, uncertain whether to wake her up. Vaguely aware he still needed to pee. Exhausted emotionally from the hopelessness of grief from before. He regarded the table with the distant half-cognizance of lingering sleep, eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the light.
Too-bright, white papers, one after the next, in what once had been stacks, it appeared, but had fallen apart into disordered piles. There was one image that caught his attention because it was in full color, partly obscured by some other stuff.
Beck leaned curiously over the table to pick the thing up, very carefully, he had to shake it gently from under Leigh’s elbow as not to wake her up.
Laminated cardstock, he’d seen her make illustrations like this for presentations at work. His eyes darted sleepily across the shiny surface for several moments before he realized what he was looking at: it was him, in a cowboy hat, with a red jacket and a boombox. One image from the front, one from the back, one from each side, arms partway midair. At the bottom right in cursive handwriting was a very small 400 Blows.
Shit, he muttered, under the image were a number of others, measurements noted all around, of the underclothes, dimensions, accessories. 400 Blows was a French film from the ‘50s, he recognized the outfit from the cover—
This wasn’t for the festival.
This was for his video.
The date on the document went back to last month, there was a whole portfolio attached…
He’d never had something so elaborate and exacting planned out specifically for him, completely without his knowledge.
Someone else who saw things this way—
His heart broke somewhere inside, he felt the heaviness laden hard in his chest, the laminated documents brightly reflecting the light of the ceiling lamp. Leigh passed out over her arms like a bored high school student, oblivious to the weight of what she had done—
Beck stared in silence, unaware he was trying to keep from making a sound even while breathing, he slowly stepped back and bent down on the rug where another file organizer was lain flat. He’d never meant to go through her personal stuff, but now he couldn’t help himself; his long fingers slowly unraveled the string that held the whole thing together, it came open like an accordion, about twelve tabs meticulously ordered inside.
Somehow, he felt he was choking—
File after file, everything there was for him. He paged through, one by one, brow furrowed, eyes damp; he recognized slowly that everything in there would be what he would call ‘60s stuff, maddeningly organized, each a full set, in color, with accurate measurements, fabric type, dimensions and numbers, version and style, multiple views.
He’d say it was exactly what he’d wanted, except that he’d never quite grasped this was what she was capable of.
He remained in place, on his knees on the carpet, gazing upward at where Leigh still was asleep in her chair, the documents idle in his hands. He never was meant to know about any of this.
(On to Chapter 5)
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Thom/Beck - Part 2