I wrote this like two months ago and put it on ao3 but also just realized that hey, you know who might also enjoy my weird little song-inspired Keefitz human AU? The wiki!
A couple notes- every time it says “crap” or something it was originally swearing (because it’s from the perspective of a teenage boy what do you expect) but I changed it to post it here. Hopefully it doesn’t sound too weird.
This was inspired by For Forever from Dear Evan Hansen so some of the lyrics are worked into the fic but listening to the song is in no way needed to understand this.
Also, I think the kiss scene is ok but please tell me if I need to tone it down at all.
Quite a bit of this talks about homophobia and stuff like that, as well as general bad parenting (although that’s much less important to the fic- just mentioned).
Ok, here’s the actual fic:
As long as Fitz could remember, he and Keefe had gone to the orchard every year.
Sometime around the end of May or early June, as spring started to bleed into warm, picture-perfect summer days, their families would all get together and drive the winding country roads to that place, Della and Alden wrangling Fitz, Biana, and Alvar into their car, and Cassius, Gisela, and Keefe following behind in theirs.
On the way, they’d stop for ice cream. Fitz always got vanilla. Keefe got something different every time, teasing Fitz for being “boring”. Fitz would retort back that he liked vanilla, thank you very much. (And when Keefe didn’t like his ice cream choice, Fitz would trade with him- even if Fitz didn’t like it much either.)
They’d drive a while longer, Keefe always somehow ending up in the same car as Fitz.
And then they were there, an open field of grass and wildflowers framed with trees.
It wasn’t really an orchard, per se. More of a picnic spot, and not even one that many people seemed to know about- no one else was ever there. But once upon a time, someone had called it “the orchard”, and so the orchard it was.
Often, the first thing to happen would be Keefe starting a game of tag, running as fast as his legs would carry him as Biana, the ever-vengeful little sister, would chase him. (She caught up every time, and that’s when Keefe would drag Fitz into it. Fitz, refusing to let anyone get out of the game, would tag Alvar, and soon they all were playing, running until they couldn’t breathe.)
The adults would find a spot to sit down, somewhere to talk about adult things and watch their kids play.
Those days felt like they never ended. Playing in the sun, climbing trees, having fun…
In the end, it was always just Fitz and Keefe, Keefe and Fitz.
Best friends.
But then the day would end and they would drive back home, Keefe with his family, Fitz with his.
It wasn’t like they never saw each other- in fact, they saw each other practically every day, even when school was out. But nothing compared to a day at the orchard, and those only happened once each year.
And each year, those days felt a little shorter, a little less magical.
The only thing that stayed the same was Keefe and Fitz, Fitz and Keefe. Best friends. Always.
Except as they got older, Fitz started to look at Keefe differently. The way Alvar talked about looking at girls. He couldn’t focus when he was around, couldn’t stop thinking about how good he looked, how his hair fell across his face, how his eyes glittered when he came up with a new terrible idea. He found that he couldn’t say no to him, even more than before. He wanted to be around him all the time.
But they were just friends. That was all it was. Fitz convinced himself of that, until he didn’t. Even then, his feelings for Keefe remained his best-kept secret.
It didn’t matter anyway. They didn’t talk as much as the years went on, and the orchard became one of the few places where it was just Fitz and Keefe, not Fitz and Keefe and Sophie and Dex and Tam and Linh and Biana and Marella. Even then, it still wasn’t really just the two of them.
And then they stopped going altogether, and it mattered even less that Fitz couldn’t keep his mind away from his best friend’s lips when they were together.
The last time they went, Fitz and Keefe were fifteen and two of the original group were missing. Gisela had been imprisoned only a few months previously, and none of the Vackers had heard from Alvar in almost half a year.
That day didn’t feel right. Fitz and Keefe and Biana were too old to spend hours playing tag and capture the flag and hide and seek, and besides, Alvar wasn’t there to propose new game ideas the way he always had. And each year, Della had spent more time talking with Gisela than she had with her husband or Cassius, and now the carefully concealed fractures in her and Alden’s marriage were more obvious than ever.
The next year, they didn’t go.
Or the year after that.
Fitz’s definitely-not-a-crush-shut-the-heck-up on Keefe didn’t go away. He ignored it as much as he could.
And then Fitz and Keefe were newly eighteen, just finished with their senior year of high school, and they were tired of the past and scared of the future, and, though they wouldn’t admit any of this to each other (or to anyone), they wanted to feel like kids again. They wanted to feel like everything was ok.
And so one of them proposed that they go to the orchard.
And so they did, just the two of them.
Fitz, always the more responsible one, drove. He let Keefe control the music, even though what they listened to was nothing alike, and also Keefe liked to annoy him by doing things like-
“Oh my freaking god, Keefe, if you play Country freaking Roads one more goddamn time I swear-“
After that Keefe only played Country Roads two or three more times, which was really the best outcome in that scenario.
They stopped at that ice cream place, and Fitz got his “Single scoop of vanilla ice cream in a sugar cone, please,” while Keefe went with “Could I try the cotton candy? Uh, single scoop. And let’s go with a waffle cone.”
Back in the car, Keefe said, “First of all, I think I’ve gotten this flavor before. Second, I shouldn’t have gotten it again because there is no flavor to this, only sugar, and I didn’t remember that until I’d already licked it.”
“Stupid,” Fitz said affectionately, then held out his cone. “Switch?”
Keefe grinned. “Thanks.”
Fitz licked the bright blue ice cream and winced. Keefe was right- it was literally just sugar. And weirdly artificial for literally just sugar.
But the waffle cone was good, and it was all worth it to see Keefe happily eating his vanilla ice cream, although it did prove to be somewhat of a distraction that Fitz’s brain decided that Keefe licking his ice cream was more than a little bit attractive.
It was fine. Everything was fine. The orchard would fix everything. Fitz wasn’t in love with his best friend.
He turned a corner and then that thought actually processed.
Crap, Fitz was in love with his best friend. He hadn’t actually thought that much about his feelings for Keefe, other than to (fail to) deny and repress them, because he was a Vacker, and certainly not gay, Vackers couldn’t be gay, as Alden liked to say every time he saw a queer couple or anything pride-themed. “Family of mine would never be like that. Vackers aren’t gay!”
Fitz was gay. And in love with a boy. And completely and utterly screwed.
“Hey, Fitzy?”
“What?” Fitz asked, mildly annoyed at the interruption to his thoughts.
“Pretty sure you just missed the exit.”
“Freaking-“
They got there, eventually, with no other major incidents.
That same field, same trees, same perfect blue sky. Keefe swore up and down that the weather never changed; Fitz told him that was impossible. (Though secretly, he wasn’t entirely sure Keefe was wrong. It was genuinely weird.)
It was awkward, at first. Fitz couldn’t remember the last time he and Keefe had actually talked about anything, and it was strange to be at the orchard without anyone else. Strange, but kind of nice, too.
And then Keefe took off running across the field just like he always used to, and the awkwardness melted away, and it was just Fitz and Keefe, Keefe and Fitz, and it didn’t matter that they were eighteen instead of nine, or that Fitz couldn’t get his mind off of Keefe. Everything was perfect.
Just sun and sky and laughter and trees, and it felt like it could go on forever.
Fitz found himself collapsed on the ground with Keefe, staring up at the clouds. At first they pointed out shapes- well, Keefe did. (“Hey, doesn’t that one kind of look like-“ “No, it doesn’t, shut up.” “You see it too! You wouldn’t be arguing with me if you didn’t!” “Shut up!”) At some point, that became just talking, about stuff they’d done and stuff they wanted to do. About school, about the future, about college and moving out, about girls, briefly, although Fitz refused to say anything on the subject and Keefe gave up surprisingly quickly. They didn’t talk about any of the big stuff, though.
Keefe never brought up his mom, that he hadn’t visited her since she was sentenced, or how much it sucked to be living with just his terrible dad.
Fitz never brought up his parents’ constant expectation of perfection, or how some nights, he was terrified of Alden. Nothing had ever happened, but it sometimes felt like it so easily could.
They didn’t talk about any of that. Didn’t even think about it. This was their escape, where they didn’t have to think about it. Here, they could pretend everything was okay.
At some point, Keefe turned to Fitz and said, “You know, this was a good idea. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“Me too,” Fitz said. It did nothing to capture what he actually meant. He was pretty sure Keefe felt the same.
They laid there a while longer.
Then Keefe got up. “I’m gonna climb that tree,” he said, pointing. And he burst off running across the field.
“Follow me!” he called out, but Fitz was already running after him. I’d follow him anywhere, he thought, half-drunk on happiness and sugar.
They hit the tree. They climbed, one foot after the other, one branch after another.
They worked their way slowly upwards towards the huge, blue sky until it felt like it swallowed them; until it felt like the whole entire sun was shining down on them, just them and the tree; until it felt like they were just two tiny ants in their giant world; until it felt like nothing mattered anymore.
“I love you,” Fitz thought about saying. He knew he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, there were so many reasons why he shouldn’t.
He didn’t say it. He just looked at Keefe through the branches, sun warming his face, and hoped that someday, he could. That someday he will.
He climbed up a little higher. He put his weight onto a branch that would probably hold him and then he realized he was wrong.
The branch gave way, and he fell. And fell. And fell. He hadn’t realized they’d climbed so high.
He’s on the ground, now. Alone.
All of the happiness filling him just a moment ago is gone.
Everything hurts.
He looks around, and then-
“Fitz?! Fitz, oh my god, are you ok?”
Keefe’s panicked voice fills the air and all Fitz can think is, he came to get me. He came. He cares.
“Oh my god, Fitz, are you-“
Fitz throws his arms around Keefe and it’s like sunshine. “I’m okay,” he says. “I’m okay.” And then Keefe pulls back and kisses Fitz, full on the lips, and he’s so much better than okay.
God, he’s so much better than okay. His hands are in Keefe’s hair, on his waist, wrapped around his neck, Keefe’s kissing him, kissing down his neck, across his jaw, kissing his mouth again.
And then Keefe is on the ground and Fitz is on top of him, straddling him, kissing him harder, more passionately, and Keefe is kissing back with the same intensity and Fitz can’t breathe, can’t think, doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to stop, and then he does, for a moment, for a heartbeat, to catch his breath, and it hits him.
He can’t be doing this.
He can’t be doing this.
He’s kissing Keefe, he’s kissing a boy, and he can’t be doing this. Someone could see, they could tell someone else, and then people would know, his father would know, everyone would know that Fitz Vacker is gay, and he can’t be gay because Vackers aren’t gay.
The words echo in his head, his father’s voice. Over and over and over. “Vackers aren’t gay!”
“Fitz…?” Keefe asks. It sounds like it isn’t the first time he’s said it.
“We can’t do this,” Fitz says, standing up, moving away from him, avoiding his eyes.
“Okay,” Keefe says, quietly.
“Someone could see, people could find out- no one can find out.”
“Okay.” Keefe stands up too, walking towards Fitz with messy hair and red cheeks and Fitz thinks I did that, first with pride, then with shame.
He takes a step back- “Keefe, I…” -and Keefe catches his hand.
He looks Fitz in the eyes. “I know,” he says, and everything they haven’t said passes between them. How scared they both are. How much they want this, and how much they feel they can’t have this.
It’s a look that says I get it. It’s a look that says we can forget this ever happened, if that would be better. It’s a look that says, briefly, quietly, almost imperceptibly, I love you.
“Okay,” Fitz says, squeezing Keefe’s hand, just once, and then dropping it. Keefe looks sad. Not surprised, but sad. Fitz feels the same way.
They don’t stay much longer. It doesn’t feel right.
On the drive home, they don’t talk. Keefe puts one of Fitz’s playlists on, and it feels like an apology.
When Fitz drops Keefe off at his house, there are a thousand things he wants to say. “I want to kiss you again.” “I think if I kissed you again I’d never stop.” “I wish we could do this.” “I hate that I’m too scared to do this.” “I love you.”
“Bye,” he says.
“Bye,” Keefe says. He waves, awkwardly.
Fitz waves back, just as awkwardly. It feels like there should be something more, something to mark the moment, except there isn’t.
Fitz drives home in silence, mind still at the orchard.