Fic: Grace - Chapter 17
Title: Grace - Chapter 17 (part 1)
Rating: M
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Chapter 17
There’s this splice in the curtains where the sun grazes through like a monster, like a cockroach, a clawed, ugly thing, and those tiny rays that peak through, they’re someone’s nails, talon-fingers. That, it’s enough to rouse me from my sleep, appeal to my sixth sense, that thing inside you that rattles around in your ribcage, around your skull to get you to wake the fuck up.
Of course, mine isn’t so much a monster, nor is it an instinct, more that it’s Loretta who sits on the edge of my bed eating a bowl of cereal and staring down with an air of almost blatant disinterest.
“Ngh,” I say, and the monster has crept up one of my nostrils, gotten caught in the nerve endings and brain juices of my skull and it’s banging around like it can’t get out (and it can’t, not without coffee and a few days of r’n’r).
“You, Brendon Urie,” she says, and then she scoops another spoonful of bran flakes into her mouth, is munching away like a donkey on cud. She swallows, blinks, stares back at me with this smug little smirk that tugs tight at the corners of her mouth. “You fascinate me.”
“Really?” I manage to mumble out, and the monster, it’s crying now, moaning and clawing at the space behind my eyes.
“Yeah,” she says, “for someone so fucking stupid, so fucking stubborn and persistent, you sure are without a fucking roadmap.”
“Too early, Lor.” And I pull the blanket over my head, coz maybe, maybe when I tug it back down she’ll be gone. Just like magic.
“It’s ten-thirty, Bren.”
“It’s fucking daylight.”
She pauses, but then her fingers, they jerk at the head of my blanket and pull it back down. Loretta, she stares with half-lidded eyes that are really more intense than they should be.
“My point is, Brendon, that you have no fucking direction, and I don’t know what you’ve got planned with this latest endeavor, if you have anything planned at all, but-“
“What fucking endeavor?”
Loretta sighs, purses her lips at me, before nodding to the doorway, and Ryan, he stands there too tall and too thin and too beautiful, especially when I’m pretty sure I look like all hell.
“I’m an endeavor now?” he says, and he pulls at his messenger bag, rolls his eyes, and Loretta, she grins back at him.
“Aren’t you?” she says. “You’re a fucking handful at least.”
“Don’t deny that.”
I roll over some more, leave them to their banter. Everything hurts, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this hung over. It’s not just the booze, and I know this, it’s the whole emotional rollercoaster that’s been stuck upside down on one of the loop-de-loops since two days ago when Catherine fucking drowned herself.
I hear a sigh behind me, a whirlwind of thought that ruffles my hair, and Ryan, he’s sitting beside me. His eyes are closed and his hands are fingering the cuff of his jacket.
“You asked for a day together,” he says, and he looks at his watch. “In all technicalities you’ve already lost ten of your twenty-four hours.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so instead I just groan, press my face into the pillow and ask, “Can we do this tomorrow?”
Even the monster that sits in my skull stops for a moment, stares down at my mouth with a distinct ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ expression on his ugly little face.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Ryan says, and he’s quirking a brow now, staring at me with pursed lips. “I do not change my schedule to cater to your fuck-ups. You want your fourteen hours, then they are going, going, fucking gone unless you place your bid now.”
“Dude,” I say, “too fucking hung-over for that sort of analogy.” And I’ve said it around the same Loretta’s cackled in her corner, wrapped an arm around Ryan’s thin shoulders and let loose an, “I love this kid.”
Ryan just grins a little, ducks his head and stares at me through his bangs, eyebrows still quirked ever-questioningly.
I hear myself sigh, hear myself say, “Gimme an hour to like, wake up and become un-hung-over and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Ryan leans close, breathes into my hair, onto my forehead. “Sold,” he whispers, and fuck, this is just…this is something and maybe it was never supposed to be.
Then again, maybe it was always going to be.
*
My shower’s over too quickly and I don’t dry myself properly because my shirt, it catches on me, on this dampness that trails down my back.
The monster, it must be shitting, its only form of vengeance, coz this bile, this vomit, it builds in the back of my throat, claws at my trachea. But I’m still moving, pulling on a pair of designer jeans and shoes that probably cost more than they should. Shoes that maybe, had that money gone to charity, could have fed several African villages for a few years.
I’m not an activist, not now, not ever. I leave the social conscience to Ryan. The same Ryan who’s sitting on my bed, hands in lap, eyes rolled to the ceiling and like this, right now, he looks like he’s appealing to some higher force.
“You have thirty-four cracks in your ceiling,” he says, “and if you look hard enough, you’ll be able to make out twelve rabbits and quite possibly the silhouette of Woody Allen.”
I collapse back onto the bed beside me, and Ryan, he doesn’t look at me, but I can tell he’s smiling, can see the quirk of full lips.
“Should I be at all concerned about this?”
Ryan, his eyes close and he eases himself onto his back, smile still painted too perfectly across a picture-perfect face. “Only if they start to move.”
“Move,” I say, “or come to life?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
I purse my lips, roll onto my side and let my fingers trail over the sheets beneath us both. “Maybe,” I say, “or maybe it’s just too early for philosophical life questions. All this will get us is me quoting Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and quite possibly requiring coffee even more than I did ten minutes ago.”
“Forty-two?” Ryan says, but his grin is even wider, stretching across his face and leaving crinkles at the corners of his eyelids.
“Starbucks?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” And Ryan, now he’s just taking the piss. “Come on, then,” he says, and he grips my hand too tight, pulls me off the bed and out of the room, out of the apartment. He doesn’t let go until we leave the complex.
“Really Starbucks?” he says when we’re out on the street, and I can’t quite stifle a grin, opting instead to bury my cold fingers deep inside the pockets of my jacket.
“Starbucks,” I say, coz yeah, Starbucks. I like the fucking place and the monster, he’s typed up his list of demands and a decent cup of coffee has topped the list.
“You’re so romantic,” Ryan replies, and he’s eye rolls and sarcasm today, even if maybe it’s all soft around the edges. “Seriously.”
“Fuck off,” I mumble, but again, soft. This is gentle today, all smiles and sighs that are breathed out onto the air like the most natural thing in the world. Ryan, he’s so tangible here, so rightbymyside and I can’t, don’t have the heart to let him go.
We slip through the door too quietly, too discretely maybe, coz I’m never one to draw attention to myself when, well, when I don’t want it.
“Drink?” I ask, and Ryan nods, runs his fingers through his hair and waits at the doorway.
“Anything,” he replies, grins and nods and I wander up to the counter by myself.
I take a quick glance up at the menu-board above the front desk and lean against the countertop just enough to draw attention to myself from the pile of exhausted girls in white t-shirts and crinkled green aprons.
The woman, girl who wanders over is tiny, skinny, petite, with boobs that look like they could topple her over. She has too many freckles, and bright red hair that spills beneath her cap like daylight, like sunset-sky. There’s this sharp intake of breath when she reaches me, and her eyes, they’re too wide, too brown and too clear.
“Hi,” I mumble, “two vanilla chai lattes please.”
“Hi,” she whispers back, and her voice, it’s an earthquake in itself, trembling with every change of weather, every change of atmosphere, tone, people. “You…you’re-“
“Yeah,” I say, and I lean close over the top of the counter. Her nametag, it reads Alice, and this girl, the tiny thing, she can’t be much older than sixteen. Ryan’s casting amused stares from the doorway, shoulders leaning hard against the wall. “Alice,” I say, “Alice, can you keep a secret?”
She nods rather adamantly, head bopping hard and those eyes, they’re too honest, too yesyesyes.
“Ryan,” I say, and it slips out through the space between my teeth. “Ryan over there, he thinks I’m not worth it.”
Alice leans closer, whispers, “And what do you think?”
I breathe out too quickly, and the girl keeps flashing me startled looks, like she can’t quite believe this is happening. “I think maybe he’s right.”
She rocks on her heels a little, forehead furrowed and her big white teeth start to gnaw at a plump bottom lip. “I don’t,” she says. “I think you’re very, very handsome, and I think that maybe you could be a gentlemen.”
I laugh a little, plant my hands flat on the counter and stare back with a quirked brow. “What makes you say that?”
“Well,” she says, and she’s blushing, deep down to the roots of her hair. “I watched this interview with you on youtube after…after that movie, you know, The Most Tempting Thing was released, and you seemed real, like, like polite, you know?”
“Right,” I say, and right, this little girl, she has no idea about the real world, and I was baiting her, I knew I was baiting her. I don’t know why I was expecting a more in-depth response.
“Order?” I ask, and she flushes again.
“What size?”
“Large,” I say, and I gesture with my hands, my fingers miming out my coffee S.O.S. - the monster’s getting tetchy.
Alice scurries off and makes the drinks too quickly, a flurry of emotion and nervousness, and her hands, they’re still shaking a bit, like she can’t quite wait to get back to the laptop in her parent’s house to post this on livejournal.
She comes back and she’s still red from the base of her neck to the ends of her hair. “Here,” she says, and she hands over two coffees that smell like nirvana to the monster in me.
I nod my head, and start to wander back to Ryan, but Alice, I hear her fingers tap on the counter before she yells out a, “You said please.”
Everyone in the café is staring at her, and she blushes all over again - someone must be injecting all this red, all this fusciamagentapinkorange just beneath her skin.
I laugh, and wander back over. Ryan, I can feel him shoot a questioning glance behind me. “What?”
“You…” Her fingers are spread-eagle on the counter, and her eyes are wide and her lips pursed, like she can’t believe what she’s doing. “You said please. When you asked for the drinks, you said please.”
I quirk a brow. “So?”
“So,” she says, “I’ve lived here for like, my entire life, I mean-“and she stumbles over the words, “not like, in Starbucks, but, you know, in LA.” She sighs. “What I mean is I’ve worked here for two years, and…and I could count the people who’ve said ‘please’ on one hand.”
“You serve a lot of assholes?”
“I serve a lot of people who are more interested in looking at my tits than in ordering coffee.” And fuck, that was the first thing I noticed about her. Maybe she sees me flush a little, coz she looks at the floor and grins, a sad little thing.
“I’m used to it,” she says, “I mean…yeah.”
“Most girls draw attention to it deliberately though.” And maybe that’s sorta my only defence. Alice doesn’t say much, just tucks loose strands of fiery-red hair behind her ear
“Yeah,” she says, “but a lot of girls don’t too.”
The silence here is all consuming, and it extends from Alice’s toes to my throbbing head. I can hear footsteps and the dull slide of sandals, stilettos and designer sand-shoes on the tiled floor.
“Life,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else. “It gets better.”
“Of course you can say that,” she says, “you’re a celebrity.”
Alice, she grins now, something that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. There’s a cotton thread that has fallen out of my chest, gotten caught on her fingernails, and she’s tugging ever so softly, ever so unintentionally at them, at my heartstrings.
“Not all of us are made for that,” she murmurs, and yeah, that’s it.
This doesn’t so much hit close to home as it does bash the door down, storm up the stairs and breathe too coarsely down the back of my neck, because, in all harsh reality, that’s what my mother said. On the phone, when I called her, ‘not all of us are destined for the life you’ve managed to set up for yourself’.
Fuck, I think, and this is when I say that people are in charge of their own future. This is when she says to an extent. This is when she tells me that everyone else decides your future; this is when she tells me that she didn’t love Dad.
“I guess not,” I say instead, and Alice huffs out a little sigh, pulls off her cap and all that red hair spills over her face.
“Can you keep a secret?” she asks, and now, right here, she’s all wry smiles and coy eyes. She’s an imitation of me five minutes ago, a carbon copy of some top secret agenda and the real letter was sent off an hour ago.
“Probably not,” I reply, but I lean close anyway, and Alice, she breathes into my ear.
“I don’t like to talk about the future,” she murmurs.
“Alice.” And I laugh under my breath, down into her neck and I can’t imagine what we look like. “Neither do I.”
I grab the two coffees and nod a goodbye, spinning on my heel to see Ryan staring at the ceiling, blowing wayward clumps of hair off his face.
I head over, but I don’t get too far before a voice calls me back.
“Hey, Mr. Urie!” Alice yells, and she’s leaning over the counter, smiling too hard and those eyes, fuck, she’s young. “I’ve just given your ego a bit of lovin’, the least you can do is give me an autograph.”
I laugh, pull out one of the napkins from the holder, and I write too quickly, swirl a little signature at the bottom and drop it onto the counter. Alice just smiles again, giggles and puts it into the pocket of her apron.
*
Continue to part 2.