Find all your ugly meanings
Um, who wants a random collection of stuff I've started writing at some point and have never really continued?
Awesome
1. Bandslam
Patrick really doesn’t understand why his mom is so excited about this move. Chicago is hardly going to be any different than anywhere else. New area code, new house, new school. Same old shit.
Oh well, he’s a sophomore. Only three more years of this crap, right? Then it’s on to a larger crap shoot. That’s life.
So far, nothing he’s seen here has disproved his ‘same old shit’ theory.
He’s expecting the same old cliquey bullshit that makes up every high school. Already, he can see the clear divides that make it obvious where he won’t be welcomed. There’s a collection of sports jerseys over there, a circle of blonde pony-tailed girls that must be cheerleaders hanging around in the center. The av geek squad is easily identifiable as the kids huddled around a computer screen on the far side of the quad, as out of the way as possible. Patrick fully expects to be joining them soon.
Yup, the same old bullshit as ever. Can’t wait for the thoughtless jock interactions. What would high school be without a bunch of arrogant over-muscled, too much adrenaline and serotonin in their brains athletes running around, knocking people over and not caring?
Case in point, Patrick thinks bitterly from his sprawled position on the ground. The boy who’d just knocked him over sits up and quickly grabs his stuff. “Oh, man. Oh shit, I’m going to be so late.”
The guy hurriedly stands up, brushing himself off. Patrick gingerly pushes himself up off the ground, expecting the other guy to rush off in a second without so much as an apology, like jocks always do.
This guy looks a little abnormal for a jock though. Patrick’s sure that even he’s taller than this kid, which is saying something. As he collects his stuff from the ground, sliding his backpack back onto his shoulder, he sneaks a glance at the guy’s jersey. Oh. Soccer player. It all makes sense now.
Patrick’s a little stunned that the guy’s still here, actually. Not that he’s apologized for barreling Patrick over, but still.
“Argyle? Seriously?” The guy stares at Patrick’s socks appraisingly. Patrick immediately bristles. Where the fuck does this guy think he gets off?
The guy just shakes his head. “Oh well, it can’t be helped. Hey, you’re new here, aren’t you? Want to help me out with something?”
Patrick’s immediate ‘Fuck, no.’ dies on his lips as the guy grabs his arm and drags him down a hall. “Sweet, awesome. You’re totally my savior, you’ve no idea. Ryan’s up and disappeared again, and left me alone with the monsters.”
Patrick blinks; he’s obviously being kidnapped by a crazy person. “What?” he asks dumbly. The guy (and, man is Patrick sick of referring to him like that. Seriously, you barrel someone over; don’t have the decency to apologize, or the manners to introduce yourself. Classic jock, alright.) smiles at Patrick over his shoulder and announces, “We’re here. Okay, just, smile and continue looking all soft and adorable. They’ll love you. Just don’t let them get near you with tape, glue, or glitter.”
He throws open the door with a flourish and a massive grin in place. “Hey, monsters. I’m back!”
Patrick stands frozen in the doorway, taking in the chaos. The room is a mess, there’s a gaggle of screaming, laughing, crying, squealing children running around in circles, and there’s a teacher tied to a chair. Oh wow.
The man pipes up from his bound position, “Pete! Thank god, can you come untie me?”
Patrick immediately revises his initial assessment of the school. This is crazier shit than he’s ever seen before. Fan-fucking-tastic.
2. Telepathy/superpowers/something
Brendon maybe raved at Spencer for a few days about the MTV interview. It was a subtle raving, in his opinion. Spencer rolls his eyes whenever he says that, but it so was. Seriously, how dare Ryan just-- say that. Have the gall to say that? And, what's worse, be right about it?
Brendon grumbled, "Ryan's not allowed to be right. he never is, he can't start now."
Spencer sighed, "Uh-huh."
When "The Other Girl" leaked, Brendon wanted to drive out to LA and punch Ryan in the face. He didn't, of course, but he thought about it, loudly. If the bastard was still going to check into Brendon's mind whenever it fucking pleased him, he could deal with a mental headache from the screaming.
Spencer shook his head and headed out to hang with Shane. Brendon still needed to work on yelling only in his head.
|XXX|
Brendon thought that Ryan might be baiting him. He was pretty sure of it.
Fucking typical.
Months of them mutually ignoring that the other existed, and now Ryan kept intruding into his head. It was subtle, at first. As subtle as Ryan could ever be. So the song lyrics were one. The soft sort of humming in the back of his mind when he couldn't sleep was two. When he couldn't decide what to eat for lunch, but he really wanted tuna and couldn't remember if they had any, there was a nudge to look behind the milk in the fridge. that was three. And Brendon almost made himself some fricking soup instead, he was so mad. But he really wanted that tuna sandwich, so he didn't. He thought some really stong 'fuck off' vibes while he slathered the bread with mayo.
Seriously, having a telepathic ex-bandmate might actually be more annoying than having a telepathic bandmate had been in the first place. At least then, there was a certain expectation of no privacy.
Because, Ryan didn't attempt to stay subtle for long.
He kept trying to talk to Brendon, connect. He'd do the stupid equivelent of mental hand holding whenever Brendon was stressed, a thing he used to find reassuring, but now? It just pissed him off.
"Make him stop!" Brendon hissed at Spencer one night, actually hissed, too. Since this whole Ryan trying to turn Brendon into a nutcase via telepathy thing started, Brendon's been spending more time in cat form, just for some relief. He'd always found it odd that Ryan couldn't connect with his cat-self, since it was still Brendon and Brendon's brain, for the most part, now he happily exploited the fact.
Spencer scratched behind Brendon's ears absently. "Like he'd listen to me."
"You could make him," Brendon purred, against his will. Spencer was a little too good at this petting thing. He always calmed Brendon down when Brendon didn't want to be calmed down. It was a downside to the whole cat thing.
The scratching stopped and Brendon mewled a little.Spencer pinched the scruff behind his neck. "You know I won't do that."
Brendon just hissed again, batting Spencer's hand away and hopping off the sofa to go curl up on his bed.
|XXX|
Whenever Brendon stopped to think about it, Ryan's freaky telepathy business always made his skin itch. Not the whole bizarre power aspect, considering Brendon's own shape shifting ability, how he talked to the family parakeet growing up to the concerned faces of his family whenever he acted like it talked back (it was a very talkative bird, Brendon felt bad for her. He knew how it felt to want to talk all the time and no one would listen, the traites of a youngest child.)
It wasn't even the invasion of privacy, since Ryan tried pretty hard to ignore anything that he shouldn't know. There was always lapses, obviously, times he'd stumble into landmines in other people's heads that no one could really ignore, but still. He tried. Besides, Spencer's persuasion powers should trigger that violated feeling more than anything. But it's Spencer, so Brendon's never really worried about it.
Jon's sort of empathy thing, they've never really determined the best name for it, has always been pretty awesome to Brendon. It's not that Jon so much sensed their feelings or whatever, but his pictures did. And he just exuded his happy little aura and all was right with the world. Brendon appreciated it, most times.
But Ryan had always freaked him out the most. Probably because his power always seemed to be growing, stretching beyond the limits Brendon had grown used to. It used to take so much effort for Ryan to reach inside anyone's head, to read thoughts they weren't projecting. He used to have to be in the same room. Maybe it was the prolonged exposure, maybe Ryan just got so used to slipping in and out of Brendon's head that it became second nature. Because Brendon doesn't even notice when Ryan does it anymore, like he's grown so used to it himself. It freaked the hell out of him.
|XXX|
He wasn't sure if Ryan was being purposefully antagonistic or what. This all could very easily have just been a game, and Brendon wouldn't have put it past Ryan. As easily as Ryan still slipped into Brendon's head, Brendon's lost any and all ability to fathom what goes on in Ryan's.
All Brendon really knew was that, he had coughed up a furball yesterday, so he really didn't want to spend that much more time in cat form. Besides, he missed cuddling with Bogart without feeling the fur on the back of his neck stand on end. As much as he loved Bogart, his cat self wasn't as into snuggling with a dog. Nature's funny that way.
Maybe he'll just test the limits of Ryan's apparently expanded telepathy, head back to Vegas, hang out with Ian or something. Yeah, that's what he'll do. They could use another re-match at Wii bowling.
Pleased with himself, Brendon hummed and abruptly has to choke down another fur ball
He'll buy the tickets in the morning.
|XXX|
It was a fairly pleasant, and completely Ryan-less, trip. Brendon hung out with Ian, caught a few local shows, and even saw Cash for a few awkward minutes. It was good. Brendon didn't have to go feline once. .
Ian sent him a strange look one night, asked if he was alright if he was homesick already. Brendon quirked an eyeborw back at him; it'd only been a few days, what was there to miss?
There wasn't the feeling of someone poking around inside his head. It was relaxing
Brendon was a little reluctant to get on the plane and head back home. Really, he was. And when he felt that first nudge at mental hand holding, Brendon didn't feel anything other than annoyance. Ryan's continued invasion of Brendon's mental space did not make him feel at home.
|XXX|
Really, the odds of joining a band where everyone else had some sort of freaky power too was practically non-existent. Not to mention the odds of having said band actually become famous, lose a member, and gain another with freaky powers. Brendon never really paid much attention to statistics, but he was sure that the odds were way beyond a million to one.
Initially, Brendon had been terrified about letting his power slip. Who wanted a creepy cat-person to be their lead singer, after all?
But, one day, after practice, when they were just lounging around in Spencer's grandmother's basement, Ryan had turned to him and snapped that no one cared that he could turn into a cat, for fuck's sake, now would he please stop freaking out about it. Brendon had understandably been dumbfounded by the exchange. Spencer took pity on him and explained about his and Ryan's own powers, and Brendon learned that he'd been broadcasting all his fears right into Ryan's head. It was a very embarrassing moment for him, to say the least.
Brendon felt himself relax, he even started to smile. No one was weirded out, they didn't want to kick him out of the band, and, best of all, Spencer and Ryan were weird just like him!
Ryan snorted, "No one is weird like you, Bren. Hate to disappoint you."
Wincing, Brendon guessed he'd been broadcasting again and immediately made a mental note to work on controlling that, if possible.
Spencer asked if Brendon would be willing to show them, since he'd never seen anything like this. The only people they really new with these poweres was each other. Brendon reluctantly obliged, letting his limbs shift and contort. Transformation completed, he sat back on his haunches and gave them an expectant look. What he was expecting, he still wasn't sure. Spencer's eyes were wider than usual as he crouched down on the floor and extended a careful hand towards Brendon. Brendon let him scratch behind his ears for a few seconds before he hopped up on the couch next to Ryan and pawed at his leg.
Ryan began petting him absentmindedly and said, "Always the attention whore." Brendon scratched him before jumping up on the back of the couch and settling there. His tail flicked back and forth angrily, hitting Ryan's head with each trip. Of course, a few minutes later, he climbed back down into Ryan's lap and let Ryan pet him again, purring under his touch. Ryan smirked. He dropped it once Brendon began kneading his thigh with sharp claws.
3. Druken!marriage
Somewhere between Seattle and Portland, in oddly sunny skies for what Brendon’s used to seeing as gloomy and wet, he feels the urge to turn to Spencer and ask him if he remembers that night when Ryan and Brendon called him, giggling and nearly inarticulate, to pick them up from the Waffle Hut.
Wants to ask if he ever knew that they had just gotten married before that.
It was back in 2006. They were on a break from touring, the first in so long, and they’d been hanging out, sharing a joint and drinking a little, when Brendon just felt the need to get out. To feel the swiftly cooling Vegas air on his face, to wander around without caring where he’s going. He lured Ryan out of the house and to the bus station, arm wrapped loosely around Ryan’s waist, humming in his ear the whole way, little snatches of this and that, the Beatles and Peter Gabriel.
They climbed off at a random stop. Brendon confidently led them in a random direction, decided by finger point. Ryan had let out one those low, breathless chuckles he’s always full of when high, and reached his hand out to tangle his spindly fingers with Brendon’s own as they meandered through the city. They’d walked in circles, in zigzags, admired lampposts and window art, laughing and hopelessly tangled together.
When they’d stumbled upon the building, bright sign and cheesy name, just like all the others in Vegas, scattered like freckles around the city, Brendon turned to Ryan with a grin on his face and dropped to one knee.
In the morning, Ryan freaked out, which Brendon thought was understandable. He was a little freaked himself, since he didn’t really remember most of last night. But he wasn’t as freaked as Ryan, didn’t immediately call up their lawyers.
It didn’t count, though. One, the place wasn’t really licensed to marry anyway, and two, gay marriage wasn’t legal at the time. The drunken Elvis presiding over the ceremony had mistaken Ryan for a girl, and Ryan had forgotten to scribble the George at the start of his name, muscle memory from signing autographs. Nothing about it was legal. But Brendon still had the paper, carefully folded up and stained with maple syrup from the Waffle Hut, tucked inside his wallet all these years later.
Watching Spencer argue with Zach about where to stop for lunch, Brendon wonders if Ryan ever told Spencer about everything that happened that night. He doesn’t think so because Ryan really flipped his lid about the whole thing, and when they found out that it didn't count, he just looked at Brendon and swore that it never happened and that they would never speak off it again.
Brendon noticed that, after Ryan took off the cheap little ring they bought in the chapel, he stuck it in his shirt pocket. Ryan developed an unconscious habit of running his fingers along that pocket briefly whenever he was stressing. Brendon never mentioned it, though. He wasn't sure if Ryan was aware that he even did it. But Brendon could see the small circular outline and guessed it was that ring.
Brendon wonders if Ryan still keeps it there. He scrutinized the new pictures Ryan and Jon had done for the new band, put up on their MySpace, but it wasn't the greatest angle.
He doesn’t ask Spencer if he knows, doesn’t want to know what he’d say about it if he didn’t-or even worse, if he did. It’s just another in the list of things they don’t talk about.
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The problem is, once he’s started thinking about it, he can’t really stop. Every time he sits down and his wallet pokes him, he thinks of the paper inside it. Every time he sees a bus, every time he sees a Waffle Hut, or, hell, even just a breakfast place that likely serves waffles; he thinks about it.
That’s the thing about ignoring events. It doesn’t make them un-happen. Doesn’t erase the thoughts and feeling that led up to them, it just makes that all lurk in the back of your mind until it can pop out at an inconvenient time.
Brendon’s spent years not thinking about this too much, except for a few times. Like after Ryan proposed to Keltie. When Pete and Ashlee got married. Every time he was channel surfing and passed anything wedding related. But that kind of made sense, just a trigger in Brendon’s mind reminding him that ‘hey, I kind of did that once. With Ryan’, like a fact more than a memory. More than it is now, a memory poking at him in a strange sort of nostalgia, a wistful air around it, like ‘remember when you both were so happy around each other that you even got fake married?’ Not that they knew it was fake at the time. But, it’s a reminder of that kind of faith. When Brendon could sign his name next to Ryan’s and mean forever in a very legal sense. He misses having that kind of faith.
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Brendon got a call from Ryan, somewhere around 2am, and he wouldn’t have even heard it, would have slept through it, except for how he hadn’t really been sleeping lately too trapped in his own head. He clicked ‘accept call’ and pressed the phone to his ear with shaky fingers, “Ryan?”
All he heard on the other side is some muffled voices, what sounded like fabric, and honking cars in the background.
He tried again, “Ryan? Hello, you there?”
Then he heard someone, Jon, saying that Ryan’s pocket is talking.
“Hello?” Ryan’s confused voice came through the speaker. “Brendon?”
“I’m here,” Brendon answered.
“Yeah, I uh. Sorry about that. Guess I pocket-dialed you or something.”
Brendon bit back a bitter laugh; he’d thought as much. Ryan never seemed to remember to lock his phone so the touch screen wouldn’t spazz out. “Figured."
Ryan breathed into the phone, “So, um. Now that I’ve got you, though. How are you?”
“Fine. I’m-fine. You?” Brendon wondered when they were reduced to such pleasantries. Seriously, small talk- at 2am from someone he practically lived with for six years-just another way to spell awkward.
“Good, everything’s…good. We’re just fueling up before heading…wherever we’re heading next. I didn’t wake you up did I? That’d suck. Freak pocket-dialing wake-up call in the middle of the night,” Ryan tacked an unsure laugh at the end.
Brendon cleared his throat, “Nah, I was just. You know. Up for no real reason, up to no good.”
And then he remembered what he was thinking about earlier. Well, what he’d been thinking about a lot. In a strange moment of bravado, Brendon said, “Actually, I was thinking about that time we got, like, fake married in Vegas.”
There was a second of silence on the other end before Brendon heard a hacking noises, like Ryan had choked on his own spit. Whoops. “Um,” Ryan coughed, “Why were-why were you thinking about that?”
“I dunno. It just popped into my head.” Leaning back in his chair, Brendon felt his wallet digging into his backside. Remembered the slightly crumpled paper inside it.
“Yeah, that was-it was something all right,” Ryan’s voice sounded a little tight. “Hey, um. So we’re all ready to head out. My turn to drive. And uh, I think that using cell phones while driving is illegal here. Pretty sure. So I’ll, uh… I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Right,” Brendon said, hollowly. Empty words to meet empty promises, since he was sure that there will not be a later, unless Ryan leaned on his phone again. Which is actually statistically very likely to happen, but there’ll be no decided later’s. There never is.
“No, seriously. I-it’d be nice, if we-“ Ryan stumbled over his words. Speaking never was his strong suit, too fond of thinking first, measuring the weight of each word before he let it come into existence.
Brendon interceded with a rough, “Okay, alright. I’ll hold you to that.”
And at some point, he had started grinning into the phone, couldn’t seem to stop even after he had realized it, during their goodbyes and even after he hangs up. Pocket-dialed and he’s fucking beaming. Jesus.
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There’s a time and a place. Brendon believed that. There is a time and a place for everything, but he didn’t believe that anything can be permanently displaced. Sometimes it happens too early, but there isn’t really a too late. There’s a too tired to make it work. There’s the bone-deep exhaustion that prohibits you from thinking it’s possible. There is the fear. But it’s never really too late. Until it is.
There’s a long list of things Brendon and Ryan never talk about, including their sort of fling that summer, before the almost-marriage.
Sometimes, this forced Brendon to script their conversations just as much as they’d scripted their stage show. Each word perfected in the art of Not Talking About It. With the ‘It’ being any number from that list.
That’s the way it worked, and exhaustive dance, but that’s the way Ryan and Brendon worked. That’s how Brendon continued on whenever Ryan pulled a 180 and charged into his new reality, the only way Brendon could still fit into it.
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Ryan did actually call him again, without the aid of his pocket this time. The surprise settled in Brendon’s stomach, a warm pit. Ryan said he thinks that they’re somewhere like Nebraska, or maybe Arizona, and Brendon laughs, because there’s kind of a big difference, especially in mid-spring.
They don’t talk long, but it wasn’t as awkward. Of course, Brendon also refrained from mentioning any items on The List, and Ryan mainly prattled on about the terrible selection of this convenience store.
“Seriously, 7-11 kicks this place’s ass.”
Brendon scoffed into the phone, “That’s sheer elitism, Ross. Can’t you just appreciate a generic convenient store without a rhyming number name?”
Ryan paused, “Can you really be elitist about convenience stores? Because, I don’t really think that’s possible.”
“Anything’s possible,” Brendon said solemnly, “if you put your mind to it.”
“Wow, corny. That was-really corny. Here, for that, I am buying these corn nuts and mailing them to you. That’s how corny that was.” There was a crinkling sound over the phone, like Ryan was brandishing the bag at Brendon. He could imagine it.
“As long as they’re Cool Ranch corn nuts.”
Of course, then there's the start to three different Disney!Au spin-offs, one that actually got completed but was just wrong and never got fixed. Two other post-split things were my brain tried to reconcile it all, and even some more stuff. :D? *le sigh*
Awesome
1. Bandslam
Patrick really doesn’t understand why his mom is so excited about this move. Chicago is hardly going to be any different than anywhere else. New area code, new house, new school. Same old shit.
Oh well, he’s a sophomore. Only three more years of this crap, right? Then it’s on to a larger crap shoot. That’s life.
So far, nothing he’s seen here has disproved his ‘same old shit’ theory.
He’s expecting the same old cliquey bullshit that makes up every high school. Already, he can see the clear divides that make it obvious where he won’t be welcomed. There’s a collection of sports jerseys over there, a circle of blonde pony-tailed girls that must be cheerleaders hanging around in the center. The av geek squad is easily identifiable as the kids huddled around a computer screen on the far side of the quad, as out of the way as possible. Patrick fully expects to be joining them soon.
Yup, the same old bullshit as ever. Can’t wait for the thoughtless jock interactions. What would high school be without a bunch of arrogant over-muscled, too much adrenaline and serotonin in their brains athletes running around, knocking people over and not caring?
Case in point, Patrick thinks bitterly from his sprawled position on the ground. The boy who’d just knocked him over sits up and quickly grabs his stuff. “Oh, man. Oh shit, I’m going to be so late.”
The guy hurriedly stands up, brushing himself off. Patrick gingerly pushes himself up off the ground, expecting the other guy to rush off in a second without so much as an apology, like jocks always do.
This guy looks a little abnormal for a jock though. Patrick’s sure that even he’s taller than this kid, which is saying something. As he collects his stuff from the ground, sliding his backpack back onto his shoulder, he sneaks a glance at the guy’s jersey. Oh. Soccer player. It all makes sense now.
Patrick’s a little stunned that the guy’s still here, actually. Not that he’s apologized for barreling Patrick over, but still.
“Argyle? Seriously?” The guy stares at Patrick’s socks appraisingly. Patrick immediately bristles. Where the fuck does this guy think he gets off?
The guy just shakes his head. “Oh well, it can’t be helped. Hey, you’re new here, aren’t you? Want to help me out with something?”
Patrick’s immediate ‘Fuck, no.’ dies on his lips as the guy grabs his arm and drags him down a hall. “Sweet, awesome. You’re totally my savior, you’ve no idea. Ryan’s up and disappeared again, and left me alone with the monsters.”
Patrick blinks; he’s obviously being kidnapped by a crazy person. “What?” he asks dumbly. The guy (and, man is Patrick sick of referring to him like that. Seriously, you barrel someone over; don’t have the decency to apologize, or the manners to introduce yourself. Classic jock, alright.) smiles at Patrick over his shoulder and announces, “We’re here. Okay, just, smile and continue looking all soft and adorable. They’ll love you. Just don’t let them get near you with tape, glue, or glitter.”
He throws open the door with a flourish and a massive grin in place. “Hey, monsters. I’m back!”
Patrick stands frozen in the doorway, taking in the chaos. The room is a mess, there’s a gaggle of screaming, laughing, crying, squealing children running around in circles, and there’s a teacher tied to a chair. Oh wow.
The man pipes up from his bound position, “Pete! Thank god, can you come untie me?”
Patrick immediately revises his initial assessment of the school. This is crazier shit than he’s ever seen before. Fan-fucking-tastic.
2. Telepathy/superpowers/something
Brendon maybe raved at Spencer for a few days about the MTV interview. It was a subtle raving, in his opinion. Spencer rolls his eyes whenever he says that, but it so was. Seriously, how dare Ryan just-- say that. Have the gall to say that? And, what's worse, be right about it?
Brendon grumbled, "Ryan's not allowed to be right. he never is, he can't start now."
Spencer sighed, "Uh-huh."
When "The Other Girl" leaked, Brendon wanted to drive out to LA and punch Ryan in the face. He didn't, of course, but he thought about it, loudly. If the bastard was still going to check into Brendon's mind whenever it fucking pleased him, he could deal with a mental headache from the screaming.
Spencer shook his head and headed out to hang with Shane. Brendon still needed to work on yelling only in his head.
|XXX|
Brendon thought that Ryan might be baiting him. He was pretty sure of it.
Fucking typical.
Months of them mutually ignoring that the other existed, and now Ryan kept intruding into his head. It was subtle, at first. As subtle as Ryan could ever be. So the song lyrics were one. The soft sort of humming in the back of his mind when he couldn't sleep was two. When he couldn't decide what to eat for lunch, but he really wanted tuna and couldn't remember if they had any, there was a nudge to look behind the milk in the fridge. that was three. And Brendon almost made himself some fricking soup instead, he was so mad. But he really wanted that tuna sandwich, so he didn't. He thought some really stong 'fuck off' vibes while he slathered the bread with mayo.
Seriously, having a telepathic ex-bandmate might actually be more annoying than having a telepathic bandmate had been in the first place. At least then, there was a certain expectation of no privacy.
Because, Ryan didn't attempt to stay subtle for long.
He kept trying to talk to Brendon, connect. He'd do the stupid equivelent of mental hand holding whenever Brendon was stressed, a thing he used to find reassuring, but now? It just pissed him off.
"Make him stop!" Brendon hissed at Spencer one night, actually hissed, too. Since this whole Ryan trying to turn Brendon into a nutcase via telepathy thing started, Brendon's been spending more time in cat form, just for some relief. He'd always found it odd that Ryan couldn't connect with his cat-self, since it was still Brendon and Brendon's brain, for the most part, now he happily exploited the fact.
Spencer scratched behind Brendon's ears absently. "Like he'd listen to me."
"You could make him," Brendon purred, against his will. Spencer was a little too good at this petting thing. He always calmed Brendon down when Brendon didn't want to be calmed down. It was a downside to the whole cat thing.
The scratching stopped and Brendon mewled a little.Spencer pinched the scruff behind his neck. "You know I won't do that."
Brendon just hissed again, batting Spencer's hand away and hopping off the sofa to go curl up on his bed.
|XXX|
Whenever Brendon stopped to think about it, Ryan's freaky telepathy business always made his skin itch. Not the whole bizarre power aspect, considering Brendon's own shape shifting ability, how he talked to the family parakeet growing up to the concerned faces of his family whenever he acted like it talked back (it was a very talkative bird, Brendon felt bad for her. He knew how it felt to want to talk all the time and no one would listen, the traites of a youngest child.)
It wasn't even the invasion of privacy, since Ryan tried pretty hard to ignore anything that he shouldn't know. There was always lapses, obviously, times he'd stumble into landmines in other people's heads that no one could really ignore, but still. He tried. Besides, Spencer's persuasion powers should trigger that violated feeling more than anything. But it's Spencer, so Brendon's never really worried about it.
Jon's sort of empathy thing, they've never really determined the best name for it, has always been pretty awesome to Brendon. It's not that Jon so much sensed their feelings or whatever, but his pictures did. And he just exuded his happy little aura and all was right with the world. Brendon appreciated it, most times.
But Ryan had always freaked him out the most. Probably because his power always seemed to be growing, stretching beyond the limits Brendon had grown used to. It used to take so much effort for Ryan to reach inside anyone's head, to read thoughts they weren't projecting. He used to have to be in the same room. Maybe it was the prolonged exposure, maybe Ryan just got so used to slipping in and out of Brendon's head that it became second nature. Because Brendon doesn't even notice when Ryan does it anymore, like he's grown so used to it himself. It freaked the hell out of him.
|XXX|
He wasn't sure if Ryan was being purposefully antagonistic or what. This all could very easily have just been a game, and Brendon wouldn't have put it past Ryan. As easily as Ryan still slipped into Brendon's head, Brendon's lost any and all ability to fathom what goes on in Ryan's.
All Brendon really knew was that, he had coughed up a furball yesterday, so he really didn't want to spend that much more time in cat form. Besides, he missed cuddling with Bogart without feeling the fur on the back of his neck stand on end. As much as he loved Bogart, his cat self wasn't as into snuggling with a dog. Nature's funny that way.
Maybe he'll just test the limits of Ryan's apparently expanded telepathy, head back to Vegas, hang out with Ian or something. Yeah, that's what he'll do. They could use another re-match at Wii bowling.
Pleased with himself, Brendon hummed and abruptly has to choke down another fur ball
He'll buy the tickets in the morning.
|XXX|
It was a fairly pleasant, and completely Ryan-less, trip. Brendon hung out with Ian, caught a few local shows, and even saw Cash for a few awkward minutes. It was good. Brendon didn't have to go feline once. .
Ian sent him a strange look one night, asked if he was alright if he was homesick already. Brendon quirked an eyeborw back at him; it'd only been a few days, what was there to miss?
There wasn't the feeling of someone poking around inside his head. It was relaxing
Brendon was a little reluctant to get on the plane and head back home. Really, he was. And when he felt that first nudge at mental hand holding, Brendon didn't feel anything other than annoyance. Ryan's continued invasion of Brendon's mental space did not make him feel at home.
|XXX|
Really, the odds of joining a band where everyone else had some sort of freaky power too was practically non-existent. Not to mention the odds of having said band actually become famous, lose a member, and gain another with freaky powers. Brendon never really paid much attention to statistics, but he was sure that the odds were way beyond a million to one.
Initially, Brendon had been terrified about letting his power slip. Who wanted a creepy cat-person to be their lead singer, after all?
But, one day, after practice, when they were just lounging around in Spencer's grandmother's basement, Ryan had turned to him and snapped that no one cared that he could turn into a cat, for fuck's sake, now would he please stop freaking out about it. Brendon had understandably been dumbfounded by the exchange. Spencer took pity on him and explained about his and Ryan's own powers, and Brendon learned that he'd been broadcasting all his fears right into Ryan's head. It was a very embarrassing moment for him, to say the least.
Brendon felt himself relax, he even started to smile. No one was weirded out, they didn't want to kick him out of the band, and, best of all, Spencer and Ryan were weird just like him!
Ryan snorted, "No one is weird like you, Bren. Hate to disappoint you."
Wincing, Brendon guessed he'd been broadcasting again and immediately made a mental note to work on controlling that, if possible.
Spencer asked if Brendon would be willing to show them, since he'd never seen anything like this. The only people they really new with these poweres was each other. Brendon reluctantly obliged, letting his limbs shift and contort. Transformation completed, he sat back on his haunches and gave them an expectant look. What he was expecting, he still wasn't sure. Spencer's eyes were wider than usual as he crouched down on the floor and extended a careful hand towards Brendon. Brendon let him scratch behind his ears for a few seconds before he hopped up on the couch next to Ryan and pawed at his leg.
Ryan began petting him absentmindedly and said, "Always the attention whore." Brendon scratched him before jumping up on the back of the couch and settling there. His tail flicked back and forth angrily, hitting Ryan's head with each trip. Of course, a few minutes later, he climbed back down into Ryan's lap and let Ryan pet him again, purring under his touch. Ryan smirked. He dropped it once Brendon began kneading his thigh with sharp claws.
3. Druken!marriage
Somewhere between Seattle and Portland, in oddly sunny skies for what Brendon’s used to seeing as gloomy and wet, he feels the urge to turn to Spencer and ask him if he remembers that night when Ryan and Brendon called him, giggling and nearly inarticulate, to pick them up from the Waffle Hut.
Wants to ask if he ever knew that they had just gotten married before that.
It was back in 2006. They were on a break from touring, the first in so long, and they’d been hanging out, sharing a joint and drinking a little, when Brendon just felt the need to get out. To feel the swiftly cooling Vegas air on his face, to wander around without caring where he’s going. He lured Ryan out of the house and to the bus station, arm wrapped loosely around Ryan’s waist, humming in his ear the whole way, little snatches of this and that, the Beatles and Peter Gabriel.
They climbed off at a random stop. Brendon confidently led them in a random direction, decided by finger point. Ryan had let out one those low, breathless chuckles he’s always full of when high, and reached his hand out to tangle his spindly fingers with Brendon’s own as they meandered through the city. They’d walked in circles, in zigzags, admired lampposts and window art, laughing and hopelessly tangled together.
When they’d stumbled upon the building, bright sign and cheesy name, just like all the others in Vegas, scattered like freckles around the city, Brendon turned to Ryan with a grin on his face and dropped to one knee.
In the morning, Ryan freaked out, which Brendon thought was understandable. He was a little freaked himself, since he didn’t really remember most of last night. But he wasn’t as freaked as Ryan, didn’t immediately call up their lawyers.
It didn’t count, though. One, the place wasn’t really licensed to marry anyway, and two, gay marriage wasn’t legal at the time. The drunken Elvis presiding over the ceremony had mistaken Ryan for a girl, and Ryan had forgotten to scribble the George at the start of his name, muscle memory from signing autographs. Nothing about it was legal. But Brendon still had the paper, carefully folded up and stained with maple syrup from the Waffle Hut, tucked inside his wallet all these years later.
Watching Spencer argue with Zach about where to stop for lunch, Brendon wonders if Ryan ever told Spencer about everything that happened that night. He doesn’t think so because Ryan really flipped his lid about the whole thing, and when they found out that it didn't count, he just looked at Brendon and swore that it never happened and that they would never speak off it again.
Brendon noticed that, after Ryan took off the cheap little ring they bought in the chapel, he stuck it in his shirt pocket. Ryan developed an unconscious habit of running his fingers along that pocket briefly whenever he was stressing. Brendon never mentioned it, though. He wasn't sure if Ryan was aware that he even did it. But Brendon could see the small circular outline and guessed it was that ring.
Brendon wonders if Ryan still keeps it there. He scrutinized the new pictures Ryan and Jon had done for the new band, put up on their MySpace, but it wasn't the greatest angle.
He doesn’t ask Spencer if he knows, doesn’t want to know what he’d say about it if he didn’t-or even worse, if he did. It’s just another in the list of things they don’t talk about.
|+++|
The problem is, once he’s started thinking about it, he can’t really stop. Every time he sits down and his wallet pokes him, he thinks of the paper inside it. Every time he sees a bus, every time he sees a Waffle Hut, or, hell, even just a breakfast place that likely serves waffles; he thinks about it.
That’s the thing about ignoring events. It doesn’t make them un-happen. Doesn’t erase the thoughts and feeling that led up to them, it just makes that all lurk in the back of your mind until it can pop out at an inconvenient time.
Brendon’s spent years not thinking about this too much, except for a few times. Like after Ryan proposed to Keltie. When Pete and Ashlee got married. Every time he was channel surfing and passed anything wedding related. But that kind of made sense, just a trigger in Brendon’s mind reminding him that ‘hey, I kind of did that once. With Ryan’, like a fact more than a memory. More than it is now, a memory poking at him in a strange sort of nostalgia, a wistful air around it, like ‘remember when you both were so happy around each other that you even got fake married?’ Not that they knew it was fake at the time. But, it’s a reminder of that kind of faith. When Brendon could sign his name next to Ryan’s and mean forever in a very legal sense. He misses having that kind of faith.
|+++|
Brendon got a call from Ryan, somewhere around 2am, and he wouldn’t have even heard it, would have slept through it, except for how he hadn’t really been sleeping lately too trapped in his own head. He clicked ‘accept call’ and pressed the phone to his ear with shaky fingers, “Ryan?”
All he heard on the other side is some muffled voices, what sounded like fabric, and honking cars in the background.
He tried again, “Ryan? Hello, you there?”
Then he heard someone, Jon, saying that Ryan’s pocket is talking.
“Hello?” Ryan’s confused voice came through the speaker. “Brendon?”
“I’m here,” Brendon answered.
“Yeah, I uh. Sorry about that. Guess I pocket-dialed you or something.”
Brendon bit back a bitter laugh; he’d thought as much. Ryan never seemed to remember to lock his phone so the touch screen wouldn’t spazz out. “Figured."
Ryan breathed into the phone, “So, um. Now that I’ve got you, though. How are you?”
“Fine. I’m-fine. You?” Brendon wondered when they were reduced to such pleasantries. Seriously, small talk- at 2am from someone he practically lived with for six years-just another way to spell awkward.
“Good, everything’s…good. We’re just fueling up before heading…wherever we’re heading next. I didn’t wake you up did I? That’d suck. Freak pocket-dialing wake-up call in the middle of the night,” Ryan tacked an unsure laugh at the end.
Brendon cleared his throat, “Nah, I was just. You know. Up for no real reason, up to no good.”
And then he remembered what he was thinking about earlier. Well, what he’d been thinking about a lot. In a strange moment of bravado, Brendon said, “Actually, I was thinking about that time we got, like, fake married in Vegas.”
There was a second of silence on the other end before Brendon heard a hacking noises, like Ryan had choked on his own spit. Whoops. “Um,” Ryan coughed, “Why were-why were you thinking about that?”
“I dunno. It just popped into my head.” Leaning back in his chair, Brendon felt his wallet digging into his backside. Remembered the slightly crumpled paper inside it.
“Yeah, that was-it was something all right,” Ryan’s voice sounded a little tight. “Hey, um. So we’re all ready to head out. My turn to drive. And uh, I think that using cell phones while driving is illegal here. Pretty sure. So I’ll, uh… I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Right,” Brendon said, hollowly. Empty words to meet empty promises, since he was sure that there will not be a later, unless Ryan leaned on his phone again. Which is actually statistically very likely to happen, but there’ll be no decided later’s. There never is.
“No, seriously. I-it’d be nice, if we-“ Ryan stumbled over his words. Speaking never was his strong suit, too fond of thinking first, measuring the weight of each word before he let it come into existence.
Brendon interceded with a rough, “Okay, alright. I’ll hold you to that.”
And at some point, he had started grinning into the phone, couldn’t seem to stop even after he had realized it, during their goodbyes and even after he hangs up. Pocket-dialed and he’s fucking beaming. Jesus.
|+++|
There’s a time and a place. Brendon believed that. There is a time and a place for everything, but he didn’t believe that anything can be permanently displaced. Sometimes it happens too early, but there isn’t really a too late. There’s a too tired to make it work. There’s the bone-deep exhaustion that prohibits you from thinking it’s possible. There is the fear. But it’s never really too late. Until it is.
There’s a long list of things Brendon and Ryan never talk about, including their sort of fling that summer, before the almost-marriage.
Sometimes, this forced Brendon to script their conversations just as much as they’d scripted their stage show. Each word perfected in the art of Not Talking About It. With the ‘It’ being any number from that list.
That’s the way it worked, and exhaustive dance, but that’s the way Ryan and Brendon worked. That’s how Brendon continued on whenever Ryan pulled a 180 and charged into his new reality, the only way Brendon could still fit into it.
|+++|
Ryan did actually call him again, without the aid of his pocket this time. The surprise settled in Brendon’s stomach, a warm pit. Ryan said he thinks that they’re somewhere like Nebraska, or maybe Arizona, and Brendon laughs, because there’s kind of a big difference, especially in mid-spring.
They don’t talk long, but it wasn’t as awkward. Of course, Brendon also refrained from mentioning any items on The List, and Ryan mainly prattled on about the terrible selection of this convenience store.
“Seriously, 7-11 kicks this place’s ass.”
Brendon scoffed into the phone, “That’s sheer elitism, Ross. Can’t you just appreciate a generic convenient store without a rhyming number name?”
Ryan paused, “Can you really be elitist about convenience stores? Because, I don’t really think that’s possible.”
“Anything’s possible,” Brendon said solemnly, “if you put your mind to it.”
“Wow, corny. That was-really corny. Here, for that, I am buying these corn nuts and mailing them to you. That’s how corny that was.” There was a crinkling sound over the phone, like Ryan was brandishing the bag at Brendon. He could imagine it.
“As long as they’re Cool Ranch corn nuts.”
Of course, then there's the start to three different Disney!Au spin-offs, one that actually got completed but was just wrong and never got fixed. Two other post-split things were my brain tried to reconcile it all, and even some more stuff. :D? *le sigh*