Current mood:	apathetic
Current music:	alkaline trio

I'm still alive. Sort of.
Title:The Lord Is My Shepard

Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, never happened, permission less. Also would like to add that this is entirely fictional and I don’t know that much about AFI. So this isn’t a history on them. It’s a fictional homoerotic story.

Rating/pairing: (ratings are assigned to individual chapters) PG 13. Davey/Jade.

Chapter: one.

FYI: Some people are actually into very long chaptered stories that gradually lead up to sex. Some people also enjoy high school stories that don't focus on the band itself too much. Some people like strange, impassioned, expirmental writing. Some people like my writing. If you agreed with at least two out of four, give this a read. And if you don't like it, don't read the other chapters. Just move on and forget this ever happened. yay!

Dedication: malyssaaa, I told you anything Davey related gets dedicated to you. That’s just the way it is. As I know nothing about Davey at all, I use your personality as a default for him. I swear, as I’m writing this, I keep asking myself, what would Malyssa do?

Alsoooooo…neonbandages, for making me write that two and a half pages to that part that I really didn’t want to write. And thanks for not catching Davey’s hair on fire? And thanks for keeping me company when my best friend abandons me. And for taking me with you for hot chocolate and skate sharpening! Trains and strawberries, I figure you’d appreciate that.

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Davey Marchand doesn’t have his camera with him, but he remembers hearing from someone that it was illegal to film crows anyway. The rest of the conversation doesn’t fall within his recollection, but he’s retained that bit, if only because it was so bizarre.

His skin feels like it’s sticking to his bones because the air is so heavy and dripping with humidity. He’s trying to keep the toes of his shoes from sinking too deep into the wet soil beneath him. His palms are slick but cold and the atmosphere is strangely buzzing, the leaves on the distant trees turning over to signify a coming storm.

He can feel the electricity in the air but his body remains uncharged.

In movies, they use doves and paint them black. It’s okay to paint a bird. It’s not okay to film crows.

It’s okay if someone dies. It’s not okay if your father dies.

It’s okay to be upset. It’s not okay to cry.

Davey Marchand doesn’t have his camera dangling from a string off his neck, but if he did, he’d be smashing it into the damp earth right about now.

He corrects himself as soon as the thought shifts through his conscious. He’d run across the wet grass to the parking lot and demolish the damn thing. It would be an excuse to leave the funeral party. He’s feeling locked in between his solemn faced mother and his sniffling baby brother.

Mikey probably doesn’t know what’s going on, since he’s a toddler and doesn’t have much conception of death, but he knows when he’s tired and hungry. The younger boy shifts in his metal chair, his short legs sticking straight out in front of him, stifling a yawn and leaning his head against Davey’s rigid shoulder.

The sudden weight feels warm while the rest of Davey’s body remains clammy and chilled, his breath coming out silver from dry lips.

Davey doesn’t feel like taking comfort in much of anything besides the black winged birds circling the bleak sky. The clouds are low and thick, the air heavy and wet in Davey’s lungs. He keeps his chin tilted upwards, his shoes pressing down against the spongy ground. He keeps his body still and centred, afraid to move or make a noise.

The preacher’s voice is touching his ears, but Davey’s not letting himself absorb any of the words.

The birds are perched on one of the stone steeples almost silhouetted against the darkening sky, their beaks pruning through their feathers. A cold breeze is licking the back of Davey’s neck and he can feel his jaw tremble slightly, his teeth threatening to start chattering.

The graveyard is wide and endless, the small funeral party pathetic and huddling and hurrying to complete itself. There’s thunder in the distance and the downpour is eminent. This is called ominous and Davey half remembers there was a time when he’d be scared right now. Was it last week or forty minutes ago or years ago?

That’s irrelevant to him.

He would be praying right now for deliverance. Protection. He could do a seven second Hail Mary. He should feel his heart jack-hammering against the inside of his ribcage, but he doesn’t feel anything.

If he wasn’t focusing on staying still, he’d be checking his pulse.

If he still believed in anything, he’d be bowing his head instead of looking up defiantly.

If he was still waiting for miracles, he’d be hanging off the preacher’s words.

Davey remembers in fifth grade, when an older boy bloodied his nose and told him Santa Clause wasn’t real. Davey remembers being heart broken. He remembers entering through the back door of his house as quietly as possible, stealing into the bathroom to silently nurse his wounds. He’d never mentioned the incident to anyone. His parents had still continued the Santa Clause tradition and he never said anything to deter them from it. They enjoyed the pantomime. He let them. It comforted them and gave them a reason to be giving and joyous.

He would let them have it.

When the preacher tells them to bow their heads, Davey does so, but slowly. He thinks this will be his last prayer. He admonishes himself for needing the closure at all.

With his head down and his sticky palms pressed together, Davey keeps his eyes open and his gaze tilted upward, the lid of the coffin catching in the bottom field of his vision. He was scared before that he might cry, but now he feels safe and in control of himself.

He draws syrupy air into his lungs, as if he needs oxygen to power his silent words. ”Fuck. You.” Davey isn’t surprised when his muscles tighten on their own accord, his body preparing itself for an omnipotent rebuke. When nothing comes, Davey finds himself looking towards the birds again and the stone steeple. The graveyard stretches out endlessly with grey markers and a few freshly loosened leaves scattering the grounds.

He listens to his own cold breathing, his shoulders trembling slightly.

If he ever needed more proof that God is bullshit, he just got it.

It’s not a broken heart. It’s not disappointment. It’s something deeper, but more hollowed, like under ground sewage tunnels.

He suddenly feels isolated. Hope is something blind. However joyous or uplifting it can be, it’s nothing but a state of mind. It’s nothing tangible. It never will be. It’s an abstract idea and hardly exists outside of the word.

It’s a lie people use to wake up each morning.

Davey has no hope and along with that, he suddenly has no safety net. There’s nothing to fall back on. There is no bright destiny to look forward to; there’s only what he creates. He looks down at his hands, flexing his fingers against his kneecaps.

There is nothing there but being proactive. There’s nothing more then this.

Davey glances around him, at the people dressed in black pressing down on all sides in their metal fold up chairs and the clouds pushing down low in the sky. Right now, for all intent and purpose, this is the only plain of existents there is.

There’s no god. There’s no hope. There’s no destiny. There’s no eternity, no possibility, no faith, no certainty, there’s nothing at all outside of Davey’s own person.

Before, Davey would call it self obsessed. Before, he would’ve called it self indulgence. Now, he accepts it as reality while the whole religion philosophy is just glorified fantasy.

He would give anything for the latter to be true.

He would give anything for Santa Clause to be real.

He would give anything for his father to come home.

That’s just not the way it is.

At the end of the sermon, Davey stands up stiffly with his mother, catching his brother’s sticky little hand in his larger one. He feels the weight on his chest fall away as he stoops to the ground, the damp, homely smell of the earth filling up his nasal cavities. The fingers of his free hand dig into the mound of freshly dug dirt, his eyes focusing on his movements.

He’s following his mother’s lead, avoiding looking into her face. He can look at the coffin now, lowered into the bleak hole, but he’s not sure if he can handle her hollowed eyes.


The handful of dirt is dripping from between his clutched fingers, some stuck beneath his nails. He feels his mother looking at him, but he keeps his gaze on the smooth wood of the coffin, his fingers flexing slightly, feeling the gritty texture against his skin.

The graveyard is silent as his mother tosses her own handful of dirt onto the coffin, the sound coming off heavy and echoed, like rain hitting drainpipes. Davey makes his arm move in one loose, fluid movement, his fingers relaxing at the last second, the dirt cascading down through the air, falling on the grave.

One of the crows squawks from its perch on the church steeple, the hair on the back of Davey’s neck standing up, his arm stuck out in front of him with his hand spread out wide. He’s frozen again, feeling all the judgemental eyes of the funeral party boring into him, seeing his blasphemy.

He shifts, his shoes sinking into the ground and his bangs ruffling across his forehead from another cold breeze.

“That’s it,” his mother says, and Davey nods his head, embarrassed by everyone around him- by their faith and stupidity.

He won’t say anything.

The only comfort his mother has right now is that his father is in a better place and Davey will spare her the truth.

He stares down into the grave, holding his brother’s hand and letting his mother lean her weight against the other side of his body.

His father is not in some utopian after life, lounging on the lap of a magnificent god. His father is lying dead right in that grave, the embalming fluid delaying his body’s decay. His father has not gone to a better place. His father has gone six feet under ground.

Davey doesn’t mention it, but his mother said it best. He looks into the grave a last time, feeling listless and exhausted.

That, right there, the deep hole and polished coffin, that’s it.