Lead Us to Dead Ends
Title: Lead Us to Dead Ends
Author: longerthanwedo
Beta: melody_so_sweet <3
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, Ryan/Alex (but it’s not specified)
Rating: PG-13
POV: 1st, “I” is Brendon, “You” is Ryan, and “Him” is Alex.
Summary: Because without you I’d be homeless. Because, even if the roof has holes and the walls are caving in, you’re the only home I have.
Disclaimer: This is based off the song “If I Die” by Something Corporate. I don’t own any characters, but I do own the plot. And I really, really hope this doesn’t come completely true.
Author’s Notes: I did not mean for this to come out this way. I meant for it to be a short emo story (which it is), but halfway though I realized what I was really writing about. Anyway, I hope you like it, and comments if you read would be lovely J
You come home again.
You come home like you do every night, just like I know you will. You come upstairs to me waiting in our bed, awake, always awake. I let you think I’m asleep. I lay with my back to the door and my eyes squeezed shut against the dark. I lay with my eyes shut and my ears open as your footsteps fall across the floor.
You lie next to me, measured space between and I listen to the rustle of the sheets until you still. Only when your breathing is beginning to even, do I shift. I roll over, like always, and make a sound, something to show that I’m not dreaming, not yet.
I wait there, like always, wait for your touch. I wait for something that might indicate that things are changing. I think, again, that maybe this night won’t have to be the same as the others.
Just like always, I wait there with my fingers crossed but you never say goodnight.
***
You go out again.
You get dressed in your jeans and one of your slick vests and you go out. Your hair is combed perfectly, shining in a way that looks almost unnatural. And your eyes. Your eyes always have an edge to them. Something bright and sharp, excitement and something else. There’s something lurking there that always seems to grow more pronounced when you walk by me, when you raise your hand in farewell, when you maybe kiss my cheek before you shut the door.
Your face is always tense before you leave. You smile and laugh but it’s tight, it’s not real.
Any words we exchange are sharp and brief. They’re harmless words, really, but as soon as the first syllable leaves my mouth you’re glancing towards the door and back again like you have better things to do.
And it’s true. You think it’s true.
***
You think lots of things. You think I don’t know where you go. You think I don’t notice the way that you come back with your red cheeks and your hair slightly less than perfect. You believe that just because I don’t tell you off makes what you do okay. You think, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. But you’re wrong.
Because I don’t know everything. I know you leave, but I don’t know where you go. I know you see someone, but I don’t know who. I only know a little, there’s a whole world of you that I can only guess about.
And you’re wrong, because what I don’t know hurts me more than what I do.
That nameless person you’re with every night. That nameless, faceless person. He isn’t me. I don’t know who he is, but it hurts to know he isn’t me. And this faceless, nameless person, he’s replacing me. You’re with him every night, every night for weeks, months; I know the exact day that it started.
You used to spend your days laughing and talking with me. I couldn’t take my eyes off you; you were perfect and you wanted me. And you never took your eyes off me.
Not until he came along.
He came along, this blank stranger, and he stole your eyes away from me. Now he’s the one you see, even when I’m standing right in front of you. He’s taken over your mind and I’m barely present in your life, even though we live together.
You chose him, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what he has for you that I don’t. I don’t know what I don’t have that you need. I don’t know what’s running through your mind every night when you walk away from me.
What I don’t know, it hurts. It fucking hurts and the worst part is that I know exactly why.
***
You don’t want me, but you don’t want me to leave.
And I’m not you and I can’t read your mind, but I think I know why. I think you picked me for this purpose. I think you’ve done this before. You’ve done this before, and you picked me. You fell in love with me because you knew you could cheat and I wouldn’t leave. You knew you could do whatever you wanted and I would stay. You knew I wouldn’t let you down.
And you were right.
As much as I hate this, as much as it tears me apart, I stay. I stay because even though I hate you at times, even though what you do eats me slowly from the inside, I love you. I love the idea of you, even if I no longer love you as a person.
When I met you I loved the idea of having someone to take care of me, hold me and whisper things that I’d only ever dreamt about hearing. I wanted so much to have a home that wasn’t so much a building but a person and the feelings surrounding them. When I met you I found that. When I met you I loved you. You let me have everything I’d wanted. You let me find my home.
And that’s why I can’t leave.
Because without you I’d be homeless. Because, even if the roof has holes and the walls are caving in, you’re the only home I have.
***
There’s a painting on the wall.
It’s on the wall of our bedroom and it’s so familiar now. It’s a train, red and grey; smoke puffing out and blending into the tentatively storming sky. The train’s running alongside a steep and jagged cliff. It’s the kind of cliff you see in movies; the kind that tumble down into a rocky sea, the kind that would send you tumbling to your death with one wrong step.
It’s this painting that I stare at every night while I wait for you to return. I stare at it until the dark casts it completely in shadow and the lines and colors are imprinted in my brain.
Every night that I sit up alone I imagine, as the minutes pass, that the train is inching slowly towards the edge. Every second that the room remains empty, every second on every night that you’re not here, the fate of the passengers becomes clear.
And every night that you’re not here I realize I’m inching along myself. Clinging precariously to the rock and just waiting and hoping it doesn’t crumble.
Hoping we don’t fall.
***
Maybe, while you’ve been lying to me, I’ve been lying to myself.
Because I always thought you’d come around. There’s always been a stubborn section of my mind that believes in you. Believes that you’ll see the mistake you made in choosing him. There’s still a part of me that thinks you’ll come back, come back all the way. Come back to being my rock, my shelter, my love.
There’s still a part of me that thinks we never will fall.
But that edge, that defiant edge in me that pushed back the truth for so long is dulling. I sit awake like so many nights before and I start to think, what if you don’t come? What if someday you decide not to come back for the night? What if you stay away till morning and I’m up waiting for something that isn’t coming? If, when, that happens will I have the strength to leave?
***
I said I couldn’t leave because you are my home.
But I never thought about what would happen if my home left me.
Because on that night, the night I’ve been dreading, the night you never return, I’m left just as homeless as I would have been if I’d left. That night, the hands on the clock move just ten minutes past the hour when you’d come sneaking in the room. You’re late, but you’re never late, and that’s how I know.
The day’s finally come. The day when you decided you didn’t care enough about me to worry about me knowing your secret.
And it feels a million times worse than I ever thought it would. I almost thought it would be easier for me, if you left. Because then you wouldn’t be there, lying beside me. You wouldn’t be there, physically, to remind me of what you did. I thought maybe if you weren’t so close the pain would fade.
But I lay there on my back and stare at the poor doomed train on the wall and I realize that no matter how far you go you’re still impossibly, stiflingly close. It seems inevitable, somehow. The fact that as long as you’re close to me you’re able to hurt me. As long as I remain close to you, you will hurt me. And I’m sick of hurting.
I look up at the painting of the train and my mind is tempted to push it straight off the edge of that cliff. I want to tip the careful balance and tumble over with it. I want to crash against the rocks and the water and end up somewhere far, far away.
Because maybe if I spiraled down, down, and away I’d finally be free. Maybe if I went over the cliff I’d be far enough from you that you wouldn’t be able to cheat, you wouldn’t be able to keep me like this. You wouldn’t be able to hurt me.
For once, I’d be asleep when you came home. For once I wouldn’t be the one to stick around.
For once I would be the one to let you down.