#I left the theater after the first time I saw Saltburn!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

overleftdown · 4 months

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angsty farleigh start blurb

hello hi fanfiction! mostly character study with a lot of sad hehehah. what else would one expect from me!

There are things that Farliegh took for granted. 3 months after leaving Saltburn, he realizes that money isn't really one of them.

Instead, he finds himself folded over a mug of lukewarm coffee at 2am, staring down a collection of postcards mounted on the far wall of his local diner. He had just finished working a double, unwilling to decline an offer that would bump both his pay and reputation. Farleigh has 8 hours until his next shift. He's staring at a postcard from Greece, a name hastily penned onto the front; the edges are worn, and the corners bent. He's wondering what's written on the side pressed to the yellowing popcorn walls. Almost absentmindedly, he lifts the rim of his mug to his lips and thinks, I wish I told them how much I wanted to see Mykonos. The coffee is bitter.

It becomes a constant, after that. Walking through the American snack isle and passing his favorite cereal brand, thinking I wish I had told them how good Reece's Puffs were. Catching the eye of a boy around his age with a piercing through his left nostril, thinking I wish I told Felix to get that one. Going, alone, to a movie theater and thinking I wish I told Venetia that I loved Rocky Horror Picture Show. On and on it went.

I wish I told them I saw the Grand Canyon, and that it was so gorgeous I lost my breath. I wish I told them that I always preferred white wine over red. I wish I told them that my silk bedding was so my hair wouldn't dry out, tangle, or tear. I wish I told them about the friendship bracelets I once made for us; that I kept all three in a box under my bed. I wish I told them I was scared of being insignificant. I wish I told them that I missed my mom and dad, that I'm farther from myself every day, that I might hate myself despite my arrogance.

Farleigh has spent his life hiding. There were dinner party invites that didn't extend to his father, yet somehow included him. Farleigh remembers sitting secluded, for once wishing he kept his hair short. Older women who wanted so badly to be young, gravitating towards him with greetings like "You're Frederica's son! I always wondered what you'd look like. I never expected a handsome young man like yourself." And the men; rough yet unworn hands that sometimes gripped the nape of his neck. "You're unique, Farleigh. It's hard to find someone who looks quite like you. You're maturing quickly." On and on it went. Despite the itching, Farleigh never cut his hair short. The Cattons would ask him why he insisted on such messiness, contrary his otherwise sharp fashion. Silk pillowcases. Five shampoo bottles, an array of hair creams--all kept out of eyesight. Better to let them believe his hair was a casual affair, and intentionally so.

The cocaine had been the least of his hidings (and look where that landed him). People are always sequestering the sunburnt, raw-rubbed, defective pieces of themselves. The things they so desperately clung to, bad habits like a bright red blemish on a ledger, or a lifeline. The first time Farleigh saw the inside of a teacher's lounge had been 30 minutes past the final bell, with a head of tangled hair that he had styled perfectly just 7 hours ago. He remembers accepting the offered cup of tea and thinking Felix won't notice I'm gone. He had told Felix what he did that evening, anyways. This, Farleigh had never thought to hide. Better not to. Better to tell Felix, who was so prone to flippancy, that he would do anything for a good grade.

"What, you're that shit at school, mate? Jesus. You better not tell anyone; you'd get ousted in days." Felix had said, a painful looking blush to his face. They had only been 16, after all. "I mean, seriously! I never took you for a pillock." At that, Farleigh had raised his eyebrows skeptically. There are some things that were abundantly clear. Uncle James had insisted that Farleigh required a higher education than whatever American dumpster he would be learning his times tables in, and the rest of the Cattons had quickly glued themselves to the idea. They liked to think that they were saving him from stupidity.

In the end, it had been Felix who told someone Farleigh's secret. Namely, his new friend that had been sitting in Farleigh's seat for the last 2 weeks. After countless meetings and scoldings, and significant attempts to publicly humiliate him, Farleigh was sent back to Saltburn before his transfer. When Elspeth and James asked, frantically, what Farleigh had been thinking, he had told them that he needed a better grade. They'd just have to try harder to save him. In truth, there were some things that never really went away, like a teachers lounge and a fresh cup of tea. Something secret, something just for him.

The things that Farleigh insisted on hiding were good things, already half-stained by the bad. A family photo album inside of a shoebox inside of a pillowcase inside of a duffel bag under his bed, next to the ornate little chest where he obviously kept his drugs. Photo strips, polaroids from New York City, his mom's peach scented powder blush, his dad's discarded tie clip. If you keep what really matters just far enough to the side of what people consider a secret, they'll never look any harder. Farleigh has always believed that your worst mistakes only marginally define your humanity. Really, it's what someone loves, isn't it? It's who they would change for. It's who they would make bracelets for.

Back to the diner, back to the present, back to a time and place where nobody really cared to distinguish a secret from a statement. Back to the postcard from Greece that Farleigh wants to rip off the wall, just to read what is obscured. Saltburn was so large of a life that it was impossibly surreal, too many millions of dollars past tangibility. Whatever was written on that postcard was touchable. A small piece of an even smaller existence. Farleigh was terrified of what it meant to be alive. To stash pieces of himself in dark places like stowaways on the Titanic. To carry what was left after the rest capsized.

I wish I'd given them those bracelets. I made them so they'd think of me, even when I wasn't there.

#farleigh start #character study #saltburn #op is losing it #farleigh omonomnomnomnom

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