youth
flavours: the love club: mots doux d’une défunte, arctic monkeys
ingredients: eva’s dad!alex (too many happy hot dad fics, he’s a shit dad here) meets JC. this is crack that i really liked. rpf + fictional crossover ig.
description: Eva Love’s dad visits her by the shore
allergens: suicide, child neglect, child abuse, as mentioned alex is a terrible dad, angst, alex is terrible mentally
contents: 1k words, again crack taken too seriously
it’s an awful sight really. the body of Eva love sits bloated by the riverside. nobody wants to touch it. a couple of the braver students have taken shitty selfies with it. the gossip page has made the corpse somewhat of a school site. it hasn’t been moved yet for police are yet to come. her mother was called. no answer. so Eva’s father came instead.
he stands there by the body a few hours after it washed up. by now, all the dares of prodding the body have been done. tape sections that small part of river off. Eva’s father crouches down to examine his daughter’s face closer. he brushes a strand of hair out of her face. blonde. like her mother.
he doesn’t know Eva’s mother well; she was just a hook up. he had paid child support dutifully but never been a real dad. it was no wonder Eva took her mother’s name. he wonders if Eva even knew his name? most he’d ever done for her other than pay her mum monthly was look out for her in a crowd at french concerts. he didn’t even know what music she liked. or anything about her for that matter.
he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “bloody hell…” he mutters. nobody’s listening (that he knows of). maybe if he’d shown up or at least pretended to give a shit about her she wouldn’t have jumped. maybe her mother hits her and she has a shit boyfriend or something and if he knew… what would he even do? pretend he never saw it like every other message about eva’s life.
he turns his head when he hears the rustle of clothes. there’s a boy there. he’s about eva’s age, dressed in big baggy clothes with two piercings in his lip and hair that’s dark at the roots and light at the tips. “were you ‘er mate? when she was alive, i mean. or are you just here to be a dick about seein’ a dead girl’s corpse?”
the boy doesn’t answer.
“kids these days…” Eva’s father mutters. “she was my daughter! not some… circus elephant that you can come to gawp at!” he’s not sure why he’s angry. it’s not like he’s any different. he’s never known the girl but he’s making a show of being guilty.
“she was… my friend.” the boy mutters. he’s soft spoken. even more than Eva’s father. that’s… unexpected.
“what’s your name?”
“JC… most people call me that, Mr Turner.”
“how’d you know my name?” JC doesn’t say anything again. he just stares. “fuckin’…creepy child…” Mr Turner mutters.
JC doesn’t answer. he stares at the ground before speaking. “she was nice. she cared about me.” there’s no ‘you raised her well’. they both know he didn’t do shit.
“call me Alex, kid.” Alex grabs a cigarette from his pocket and lights it. he’s already smoked too many. “what was she like…?”
“smart. really smart.” JC answers. it’s surface level.
“everyone knows she is… fuck!” Alex’s hands tremble as he takes a drag “was smart. she had a STEM scholarship. tell me something fuckin’ real!” the words let me pretend to be a good dad hang unspoken in the air like the noose hangs from the bridge.
JC doesn’t flinch. his face stays even. “she liked birds a lot.” he looks towards the bridge. “she wrote with quills of feathers she’d find.” Alex likes that image a lot. his little girl, making something. if he wasn’t a shit dad, would she have given him one?
Alex inhales before he speaks. it’s shaky. “tell me more.”
“she wasn’t very good with tech.” JC stays calm. what the hell kind of friend doesn’t waver when… shit, Alex has no right to question the poor kid. he’s only here so he can felt like he did something for Eva.
“she knew lots about history.” JC continues. “used to tell me lots of facts. i liked it.” Alex feels that pang in his chest again.
“she sounds a lot smar’er than me.” Alex takes another drag. he watches the smoke curl up and float into the sky. “why are you here anyway, JC?”
that one gets a reaction out of JC. “i wanted to see her again…” Alex isn’t sure if he’s telling the truth. it’s not his place to pry.
“this is the only time i’ve seen her, y’know.” Alex pauses. JC doesn’t ask for an explanation but Alex keeps going anyway. “erm… i saw photos. but errr… fuck…” he lets out a sardonic chuckle and shakes his head. “didn’t even come to the birth.”
JC doesn’t offer any comfort. “she didn’t talk about you much.”
“i know… doubted she even knew my name.” JC’s silence confirms it. Alex needs to shift the conversation away from his shortcomings to his daughter. he can beat himself up later. “did she have lots of friends?”
“no… she didn’t…” JC glances at a magpie briefly. “she was quiet. a wallflower.”
Alex can feel the bile in his throat. “her mum’s loud from what i remember. i was the quiet one.” he pauses and inhales. he hopes his voice doesn’t crack. “she got that from me.”
a thick silence falls over the both of them. Alex glances at Eva’s body. the unanswered question of why jump hangs in the air. is it his place to ask why? JC doesn’t speak either.
“class starts soon.” JC mutters. he walks away. there’s no goodbye. Alex doesn’t blame him. he’s a piece of shit dad.
he watches JC leave. Alex looks around. the noose hangs from the bridge limply. unused. good. he doesn’t have to imagine his daughter’s pale body swinging in the wind like a flag for everyone to see.
Alex takes out a single wilted rose from his coat pocket and places it on Eva’s chest. he stares at her one last time before leaving. she would have been a beautiful girl if she was alive. the first and last meeting with his daughter is over.
food for thought: i was not planning on writing this at all. was very fun to write because alex turner as some random french girl’s dad is hilarious. sorry to my arctic monkeys mutuals who are probably very confused as to what an eva love and jc is.
