when all else fails (i'll be here) | part one
when all else fails (i'll be here)
ryan ross/brendon urie (ryan ross/alex greenwald, past ryan ross/keltie colleen) | nc-17 | 24,114 words
it was calming, refreshing, like taking your first breath after years of comatose. i felt okay. better than okay. for the first time in my life, i felt what normal must feel like. for the first time, that empty space, somewhere lodged between my chest and my ribcage, was filled.
this involves very serious drug use and addiction (and is very non-au), if you're sensitive to this matter please do not read. i think it's also important to point out that i do not believe or wish this to ever happen. it's merely a plot made up in my mind. and while i did my fair share of research, i have still never done these drugs or experienced the high, so i'm aware my accuracy might not be 100% on, but please bare with me. and, if you're interested, you can listen to songs that helped me along with this story here.
big thanks to panic_smile and watchingthe_sky for reading this over and fixing my mistakes, and for anyone else who has listened to me whine and cheered me on from my original idea of this, to what it is now (ssuukkii & panic_smile i'm looking at you) ♥ ♥
Jon leaves.
He says, “I’m sorry, Ryan, but I just can’t do this anymore.”
He says, “I don’t know who I am.”
I nod, tell him I understand. Everyone always leaves.
At security, Jon places both hands on my shoulders, looks me in the eye, hold strong and relentless. I still feel woozy, a bit on edge, and it’s hard for me to focus on the brown ones staring back at me. They used to be warm, soft and comforting, and now they only serve as a reminder from a time before, faded by the distance.
He says, “Be careful, okay man?”
He says, “I worry about you sometimes.”
I bite the tip of my tongue until I taste metal. “Yeah, yeah,” I say, off-hand, shrugging his hand off my shoulder. I jiggle my foot, and tap a familiar melody against my thigh. The airport lights are bright, rays of pain sparking up beneath my eyelids. “I will, man. You take care.”
He gives me another long stare, studying, as if uncovering a thin layer. I don’t know how many layers I have left, but I’m sure it can’t be many.
Tightening the worn, beige strap on his shoulder, he turns to look at the security gates. His plane is waiting on the other side of those walls, waiting to bring him back home, to Chicago, away from me. “Alright. Well, I guess I better get going now.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, bud.” His hand finds my shoulder once again, but this time, he pulls me in for a hug. Reluctantly, I return the gesture, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face into his solid shoulder. It feels familiar, but off, like it’s been bumped off the surface and never put back where it’s meant to. There’s a faint scent to him, like maybe once I would’ve smelt rich coffee and warm spices, but now all I smell is disappointment. Defeat. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” I agree, voice muffled into his sweater, “we did.”
He pulls away, giving me one last, solid pat on the back. “See ya around, kid.”
Raising my hand mid-air, I give a small flick of my paper wrist. “Bye, Jon.”
I wait until he’s made it through the maze of grey security tape. He doesn’t look back, and neither do I as my feet pick up and lead me to what I know. My hands start to shake, there’s a dull buzzing in my ears; I know this feeling too well. I can never get there fast enough, tripping over my own feet, the plastic burning through the denim.
By the time I reach the bathroom, I can feel it begin to creep up, preparing for attack; the hold, the strangle, pulling me under, down to a place I never want to be. It’s dark, and it’s ugly, but it’s the life that I’ve come to know, love, and simultaneously hate.
I ignore the man washing his hands at the sink, and push into an empty stall. If I think back hard enough, I can vaguely recall a time where I could go hours, days even, before I was thrown into this state of delirium; this craving so deep that it burns back holes deep beneath my skin. The thought almost seems foreign to me as I dump a white, crystal-like rock out onto the toilet lid; another life even.
Jon’s gone. Of course he is.
Everyone always leaves.
I pull my wallet from my pocket, retrieving a long since expired credit card and dollar bill, already curling up at the ends from previous use. The man’s still in the washroom; I can hear the low trickle of the tap running and the rough cackle as he clears his throat. I don’t care, and it’s a strange concept to me that I might have once. When the thought of snorting a drug off a public toilet sounded preposterous, something I would only witness on television. But now, here I am, the leading role. The fucking star.
The first line doesn’t do much; it’s not the same anymore. It no longer hits me in the way it once did. It takes more and lasts less, only costing me money that is rapidly disappearing from the mangled folds in my wallet. I take two more, and sit back on my haunches. Head tilted towards the ceiling, I squeeze my eyes shut and let the euphoria flow through me in mild waves. Somewhere in the back of my mind I can hear Spencer and Brendon saying, If only.
It’s a nice feeling. The despair, the loss, that gaping hole in my chest, quickly beginning to fade, to fill and be replaced with something that I can only imagine heaven might feel like. At least, a place better than this; white and gauntly, fading into the bathroom tiles on the airport floor, white powder staining my hands and face.
Brendon and Spencer would say, if only we would’ve stopped you before it was too late.
But what they didn’t understand was that the moment my lips first touched the cold rim of the glass, the strong scent of alcohol burning my nostrils, it was already too late.
summer 2006
“You’re so fucking cruel,” Brendon growled, voice muffled against my neck, skin hot on touch. Tightening his grip on my hips, he pushed me until my back hit the wall of the dressing room. “Such a tease.”
I laughed, breathless. Tipping my head back against the painted brick, I pushed my fingers through his hair. “You love it,” I replied, cheeky.
“Maybe.” Brendon smirked against my skin, lips finding their way back to mine. Popping open the top button of my pants, he tucked his hands into the waistband of my underwear. I gasped, head slamming against the wall as his fingers wrapped around me.
I pushed my hands up the front of his shirt, bottom three buttons undone, sliding my fingers along velvety skin. His fingers held around me, full and coveting. We had been doing this for close to a month, after years of trying to ignore it, and already, I found his skin to be my new addiction. His skin, his mouth, his wrists, his ass; he was my drug, and I could never seem to get enough.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he murmured into my mouth, the fingers not tucked inside my jeans, splaying across my neck. He ran a thumb along my skin as I blushed. “And you’re all mine,” he added, huskily, nipping at my bottom lip.
I smiled, something in my chest constricting and then expanding. Expanding, until I was sure it couldn’t hold.
“You’re perfect,” he said, whisper flooding my mouth.
And in that moment, pressed between the wall and Brendon, I felt that I could’ve been.
*
And then, my dad died.
My father died, and all these emotions, these thoughts and beliefs that I had kept hidden, tucked deep inside veiled crevices and nooks, came flying out from inside and hurdled into me at top speed.
Growing up, all I had ever heard from my dad, my school, church, was that everything I had ever felt was wrong. Wanting to make a career as a guitarist in a rockband? Not going to happen. Thos jeans? Too tight, change. The way I felt about that boy two rows up at Sunday morning mass? Don’t even start on that one.
That party, that movie, that song. All wrong.
It had taken two years of long looks, touches and words laced with longing before I had finally given into Brendon that late night in June. It had been incredible and electrifying and everything in between; everything I had been itching for since I was seventeen, but could never quite reach. For once, I was able to ignore that voice inside my head, my father’s slurred voice calling me a faggot, a failure. To erase the image of my fourteen year-old self getting thrown against the floor in a heap after he had caught me in my bedroom with a boy from school.
Maybe his death should’ve set me free - unlocked me from his grip that had been reigning over me like a dark cloud for so many years. But, of course, it did nothing like that. I should’ve known; after all, nothing ever turned out the way I wanted it to. Why did I expect any different this time?
I should’ve known that night, with the salty water and Brendon against my skin, that it was all too good, all too easy, for it not to come crashing down.
*
At the funeral, people cried. They wished me their condolences, telling me their stories of what a brave, wonderful man my father was. All the while, I could only think of the empty whiskey bottles scattered around our house, the long, eerie halls of the hospital, or the way his sour breath smelt when he knocked me against the wall for coming home five minutes past curfew.
All these neighbours, his co-workers, former Navy Marines, only saw the cover; what they chose to. Sometimes, I wondered what they would’ve thought had they only known what went on behind closed doors; once the sun went down, and the curtains were drawn. If only they could see the scars that covered my insides like bad decorations.
Only Spencer and Brendon really knew of the truth, only ones that ever would. And as I sat stony-eyed in the front row, Brendon on one side with his hand covering my own, he had to have known then.
*
Keltie was blonde and gorgeous, and a little bit quirky. When she came up to introduce herself at rehearsal, bubbly and energetic, batting her doe-eyes that looked all too familiar, the same thought from when I was a teenager trickled through my mind. “He’d approve of her….” it said.
It was stupid. It didn’t make sense when I was seventeen, and it certainly didn’t make sense now; that I’d try so hard and so long to get the approval from a man who spent most of my life, drunk in front of the television, spewing verses from the Bible.
But, it’s what I did. What I always did. In high school I dated girl after girl, in hopes that if I kissed her, slept with her, that maybe one day I’d become what everyone always talked about, but I could never quite see for myself: normal.
I figured that if I played pretend for long enough, maybe, eventually, it would become reality. Like the little girl who played dress-up, hoping one day she’d become a princess.
It never did, but I never stopped trying, either.
Brendon watched as I shook her hand, that all too familiar smile tugging on my lips. And if he didn’t know before, he certainly did then.
spring 2011
I arrive home to an empty house, and a message waiting for me on my answering machine. I don’t think twice as I press play, expecting to hear Alex’s voice flood in through the small speaker. But, as the message rolls back and starts, the voice hits me like hot knives, hot and penetrating into the swollen flesh.
“Hey,” it starts, an uncomfortable edge hidden in his usual cheer. “Haven’t talked to you in awhile, so I thought I’d call to see what’s up. Your cell said it’s been disconnected, I guess you still have that habit of leaving your phone in places.” That, or not bothering to pay my phone bill. From the small box, Brendon laughs, so forced that it makes me cringe. “So… yeah, anyway. I just wanted to see how you were doing, what was up. I was thinking that maybe we could get together sometime, catch up - ”
I press a button, and Brendon’s voice is instantly cut short, replaced with dull, more robotic one, informing me that the message has been deleted. Forever.
It’s been close to two years since the band split, and I don’t understand why he’s still trying. Doesn’t he get it? Hasn’t he given up? Everyone else certainly has; even Spencer. It’s bad enough that I can’t seem to turn on the radio or the television without hearing his voice or seeing his goddamn face.
Picking up the phone, I dial the only person that comes to mind. Alex picks up on the third ring, voice rough and cracking, as if drug through hell and back. Whatever it was that he did, I doubt it’s far off. “You woke me up, ass-wipe.”
When I met Alex back during The Honda Civic Tour, my drug habits were hardly anything to bat an eyelash over. I drank and smoked as much weed as any other twenty-two year-old would, and indulged in a line or two whenever it was offered. Spencer didn’t even mind that much, at least not enough to get on my case about it. But then came Alex, with his dishevelled, brown hair and distinguishing looks, his lifestyle to his I-don’t-give-a-fuck, I’m-young-and-rich attitude, and I was instantly hooked. I looked at Alex and felt things I never had before; it was new and exciting and exhilarating, like the first time I had ever tried cocaine.
I thought it was love, but now I know it was nothing more than infatuation. Just another part of the never-ending obsession to rid of who I was, and become something better, something cooler. Something normal. At least, as close that I could ever come to it.
“Can you come over? Please? And bring some shit too. I tossed it out the window last night,” I mumble the last part, cheeks heating in shame, bracing myself for Alex’s inevitable jeers.
There’s a pause on the other line, and Alex lets out a choked laugh. I pace over to the door, looking out over the long wooden stretch of my balcony, the canyon of trees and flowers that sit below. “Again?” he asks. “Why now?”
“How about I tell you when I get here,” I suggest, tracing my finger along the cool glass. It’s raining outside now, and the tiny raindrops slide down the other side, racing towards the bottom, a thin trail remaining behind them; a reminder of their existence.
It was nothing. Just another one of my random fits of paranoia in which I swore the cops were following me. I had even heard sirens, saw the lights. In panic, I threw my stash out my car window and over the highway barrier, a hundred foot drop into a forested canyon, only to realize it was only in my head. This wasn’t the first time. There’s been many instances over the past year where I’ve flushed hundreds of dollars worth of drugs down the toilet, or thrown it over my balcony.
Alex pauses once more, letting out a long, over-dramatized yawn. “Fine. Fine. Give me a half an hour,” he says, and promptly hangs up.
I wait for him on the couch, knees pulled tight to my chest like a child. I keep my lights off, and stare ahead at the black television screen. The early morning sun, trapped behind the dark clouds, trickles in quietly through the glass. My house is dark and lonely, mostly empty except for a few of Jon’s trinkets that he left behind. It’s no wonder he left.
Alex lets himself in, large sunglasses perched on his nose. He has coffee in one hand, and his hair looks as if it hasn’t been washed, never mind brushed, in over a week. I doubt it has. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked in a mirror myself. My appearance ceased to be one of my priorities a long time ago - in fact, I can’t remember the last time something mattered to me that didn’t involve my next fix, and maybe, sometimes, Alex too.
My buzz is starting to wear thin, and the crash is harsh, the hole inside me growing larger, and so much deeper. All these things I don’t want to think about, don’t want to remember, come charging back out, wrapping their angry fists around my neck.
“Do you have it?” I ask before he has a chance to greet me, desperation leaking from my voice, thick as the rain outside my walls.
Alex chuckles, and sits down next to me, thigh rubbing against mine. Faintly, I remember a time when that was enough to cause sparks shooting up my spine, running through my veins. We’re not in a relationship, not really, but it’s the closest thing I have. “Hey to you too.”
I shoot him a look, an I’m-not-in-the-mood.
He laughs, mockingly, but digs into his pocket and pulls out a full bag, still packed tight with white rocks. I watch in hunger as he lays it out on the coffee table, and reaches for a razorblade sitting in the ceramic bowl that Keltie had once made for me, sometime in a distant life ago. He asks what happened, and I half-heartedly tell him the story of tossing my stash out the window.
He shakes his head, humorous. “As always.”
I could argue with him, tell him it doesn’t always happen, but I know it’s no use. I watch as he cuts the crystals up instead, mouth watering.
I’m not feeling much better, that place locked inside my brain beginning to pry itself out, become more vivid now. I can feel my chest beginning to constrict, press painfully into my ribcage, but with Alex here and the comfort of knowing the cure is coming soon, I can manage, at least.
“Here, take this before you go bat-shit on me again,” Alex orders, motioning towards the perfectly cut line.
I roll my eyes, but greedily oblige, taking the plastic tube from Alex’s hand. I lean over his lap to get closer, skin buzzing with anticipation.
It’s not that I go crazy all the time, like throw my stash away in a fit of paranoia, go through extreme rages where I wreck everything within reach, or have anxiety attacks so bad that I feel that I might die when I don’t get my fix in time. But Alex sure likes making it seem so, reminding me every chance that’s handed to him. It’s not like he doesn’t have stories of his own, like that one time he barred all his windows, convinced little people were stalking him.
In the end, no matter how many times we turn it inside out, contrive it or tuck it in a corner, we know we’re nothing more than victims of ourselves.
The lines help, but like at the airport, they don’t do much, even less. That desperate feeling is faded, chalked down to a dull throbbing, but it’s not what I’m looking for. It’s not that state of bliss, those few minutes in my life where I can sit back and feel okay for once.
I do line after line until there’s nothing left. Alex, on the other hand, is sprawled out next to me, a dopey smile on his face, boneless as if a part of the couch.
Curling my knees into my chest, I press the pads of my heels into my eyes, and try to calm the anxiety heating in my veins. The high has been a slow but steady downfall, never able to compare to that first time it struck my veins. I noticed all along, but it never stopped me from trying, regardless. “I can’t feel it,” I murmur into my knees, quiet and vulnerable, small as a sick child. “Why can’t I feel it? I just want to - I need to feel it, Alex.”
He opens an eye to see me shaking, rocking back and forth on the couch. I’m so small now, my body barely takes up a square cushion. “What are you - Shit, Ryan. Calm down.”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together and swallowing. Thoughts are racing through my head, blood bouncing off my capillaries. Alex’s hand is on my waist, my shoulder, my face. I don’t understand how this could’ve happened. I don’t know who this person is anymore, this person I’ve become. All along it’s like I’ve been floating somewhere above, looking down at myself, the people around me, but never really seeing. I didn’t want to see.
Alex’s beard rubs against my skin, and he kisses me, as if hoping it will make me stop thinking. And it does, for a bit. He tastes bitter, like myself. I can’t remember the last time I tasted something that wasn’t; something that didn’t leave a strong sense of bile sitting at the back of my throat.
Brendon always tasted sweet, like Redbull and liquorice.
When my hand slides up Alex’s shirt, I can feel ribs, count every one. His chest feels concave, and paper-thin against my fingers. I know mine aren’t far off.
I let him fuck me over the couch, my face pushed into the cushion as he grunts loudly from above. I come all over the fabric, adding to prior stains that are forever marked.
It’s only after we’ve finished that I notice my nose has started to bleed, the dark red mixing with the painting of other colours, stained into the paisley fabric. It happens so often that it doesn’t even faze me anymore.
Alex kisses my jaw, and I watch as a single ruby drop lands on my thigh, skin translucent and pulled over the bone.
winter 2007
At the strike of the new year, Dave, our manager, pushed a drink into my hands. “It’s New Years!” he said, grinning wildly, tie loose around his neck. “Let loose!”
Keltie stood next to me, smelling of strong perfume and hairspray. I could still taste her Cappucino lip gloss, sticky and stained onto my mouth.
Across the room, Brendon caught my eye and held it. The entire time I was kissing Keltie, the room around us erupting in cheers and applause, the only thing I could think about was how badly I wanted it to be him. I always wanted it to be him, but it was always her, too soft and too delicate underneath me.
In one, simple movement he raised his own glass, eyes telling a toast that only I could decipher. I did the same with my own, and with a last breath of air, I pressed the cool glass to my lips.
One drink, I thought. It’s nothing.
The alcohol stung all the way down my throat and oesophagus as I spluttered. Keltie and Dave laughed next to me. Spencer and Jon were nowhere in sight. Brendon smiled, the line of his throat pale and inviting in the dim light.
I hated the taste, strong but bitter, lingering on the back of my tongue for hours afterward. I didn’t know it then - or, maybe, I did - but in that one moment, that one drink, I was already falling so hard.
*
We made it ten, successful days trapped inside the cabin together before Brendon had me pinned to his bedroom wall, teeth nipping at my bottom lip and nimble fingers scraping my belly. I mewled into his mouth, kissing him back just as desperately, our mouth’s faintly tasting of orange juice and vodka. It had been a long time since August, and I wanted every inch of him beneath me, warm and pliant and beautiful, ready to be shaped.
“Fuck. Fuck,” Brendon cursed, words broken between heated kisses, “missed you - so much.”
I nodded fervently, pulling his t-shirt over his chest and tossing it onto the ground. “Want - ” I panted, “need to fuck you.”
Moaning, he backed towards the bed, hands starting on his belt as I pulled my own shirt over my head. The music from Guitar Hero was blasting from downstairs, where Jon and Spencer sat, drunk and high and probably not the least bit oblivious to what was going on just above.
Spencer’s glazed eyes had watched us as we left, all knowing and condemning. I expected a lecture from him bright and early the following morning, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was Brendon, and his captivating skin beneath my fingers.
We settled with undressing ourselves, the fastest route before we met on the bed, Brendon already sprawled out and breathless against the dark sheets. I bent down to meet his lips, wet and needy, wondering how I had lasted nearly a year without being able to do this.
“Ry. Ryan,” he pleaded, desperately, pupils blown and blunt nails digging into my shoulder blades, “come on. Please. The stuff is in the nightstand.”
I nodded, crawling on my knees across the bed to dig inside the top drawer, retrieving a condom from the full box and a tube of lube. Clearly, he had been expecting this, but then again, so had I.
Crawling back over, I hooked Brendon’s leg onto my hip, and squirted the cool liquid into the palm of my hand, rubbing it into my fingers. “How long as it been?” I asked, hoarsely, circling a finger around his entrance. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, or if I really wanted to know, scared I might hate the answer, but I searched his eyes, anyway, waiting.
“Awhile,” he replied, curled toes brushing against the cleft of my ass.
I nodded, kissing him once more pushing a single digit in through the tight ring of muscle. He let out a muted, strangled noise, and I kissed it away, the small sound disappearing into the depths of my mouth.
By the time I pushed in two, Brendon was already rocking against my fingers, head tilted back. “Missed your fingers,” he said, breathless, through parted lips, like I hadn’t already guessed myself. He had always loved my fingers almost as much as he loved my cock, and never failed on telling me so. Over these past few months he hardly tried to hide the way his eyes lingered on them - while I strummed my guitar, chewed on my nails when writing, his eyes dripping with want. I had been cruel enough to wrap them around his wrist one day in passing, pressing the tip of them into his pulse point. He had looked at me, eyes round and startled, as if trying to decide whether it really was my doing or all in his head. He lasted a moment before he slipped away from me, muttering a feeble excuse, and disappeared into the washroom, the clear outline of his erection through his jeans.
When I finally pushed inside, way too many months over-due, we gasped into each other’s mouths, Brendon’s body falling tense underneath mine.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, cautiously, forcing my hips still.
He shook his head, eyes blinking open. “No.” He smiled, and slowly began to relax against me. Turning his head, his lips brushed against the wrist anchoring myself above him. “I just forgot how good you feel.”
Groaning into his neck, I jerked my hips, pushing in as far as I could go. He didn’t make a sound, only continued to smile, blissful. His eyes slipped shut, the dark curtain of eyelashes falling over his lightly freckled skin. I loved those freckles, the ones only noticeable when close, or after too many hours in the sun. I spent one morning outlining each with the sharp tip of my tongue, him smiling and laughing underneath me, whole and breathless.
“Fuck,” Brendon cursed after a steady pace between us had been set. He slid a leg up, tucking it underneath my armpit. “This reminds me of Myrtle Beach.” He laughs, eyes opening to look at me. I had already been watching him this entire time. “Except, remarkably less painful.” He doesn’t ask me if I remember, doesn’t need to, because it’s something that’s already been burned into the pages of my memory. Every detail, every breath.
I could remember the feeling of the sand against our bare feet, the warm waves against our skin. Even when I thought about it then, knowing I was the first to mark his skin or press into places that no one had before, it left me with a heavy thrumming in my chest and a heat that spread underneath my skin like a rash. I was the first, and while the chances were slim, I hoped I was the only. The thought of someone else inside of him, running their mouths over his untarnished skin filled me with an unfathomable wash of nausea and disgust. I didn’t want to know, so I never asked.
I let my forehead fall against his, mouth’s close and sharing breath.
After we came, only seconds apart, Brendon ran his hands over my body, any inch of skin he could reach, feverously, as if needing to burn it into his memory and carry it with him. I wanted to tell him that I wouldn’t leave him again, not this time, but I didn’t know the words. I kissed him instead, fingers against his jaw, feeling the air leave his chest.
It wasn’t until later, Brendon asleep with his back to my chest, that Keltie had crossed my mind.
*
The next morning, Spencer caught me in the kitchen, coffee machine whirring on the counter in front of me. I had woken up to Brendon, still sound asleep and tangled in the sheets, pillow creases streaking his cheek. He was turned onto his back, breathing heavily into the early morning breeze trickling in through the open window. It smelt of pine and second chances. I always knew I loved him, but there was something in that moment that made me more certain that I had ever been before.
I slipped out of bed without causing him to stir, deciding to wake him with coffee instead. I figured we could spend the day in bed, making up for months of lost time; making out and making love.
Naturally, Spencer did not agree. “What are you doing, Ryan? I thought you stopped this.”
He said, “You have a girlfriend.”
He said, “You’re both going to end up hurt again.”
I poured two cups of coffee, and said noting.
“Ryan,” he sighed, “don’t let it mess up the band.”
It was the same lecture he given me the last time. It hadn’t worked then, and he knew just as well as I did that it wouldn’t work now. I could admire him for trying, though.
Taking both mugs into my hand, still black, I looked at him. “I won’t.”
I loved him. I loved Brendon, and for the first time in my life, the thought didn’t scare me. I wondered if he could that as clearly as I felt it.
Turning back towards the staircase, I said in an afterthought, smiling wickedly, “You and Jon might want to spend the day outside. Just a suggestion.” I didn’t stick around to see his expression.
Brendon was up when I returned, on his side and staring out the window, out at the mountains painting the horizon. When he turned to see me, he smiled, sinking back into the pillow. “I was scared you left.”
“I couldn’t have gone far,” I pointed out as he scooted over to make room for me on the edge of the bed. I could hardly blame him for thinking it, but it hurt nonetheless.
He smiled again, shrugged, and graciously took the mug of hot coffee from my hand, white threads of steam blowing into the air. I bent down to kiss him, murmuring a ‘good morning’ into his moist lips.
As if he could taste it on my mouth, the tip of my tongue, he pulled back and ducked his face into my neck, breathing deep. “Love you,” he whispered into my skin, so faint it was nearly silent. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it was the first time he meant it in that way.
I couldn’t say it, didn’t know how, but when I pulled his lips back to mine, I took the words frozen inside my throat, and pushed them into his mouth, silent as a promise. He smiled at me, the hand not grasping his mug sliding around mine, and I knew he had caught it.
*
Maybe it was the solitary, the boredom, or the relief of ending a long tour, the excitement of staring a new album, but none of us thought twice as an abundance of alcohol and weed moved into the cabin along with us.
A week in, Jon showed up after a trip to the grocery store with ‘shrooms.
The next week, Spencer showed up with acid.
It wasn’t until the third week, when I was rummaging through the top drawer of Brendon’s bedside table - I had spent so much time in his room, that I was sure it could’ve been considered my own, as well - for a condom, when my fingers grazed across the baggy. I didn’t know why he had it, why it wasn’t downstairs stashed along with the rest of it, but I flashed it across his face, held up like a question mark. He blinked back at me, hair wild and naked across the covers, but I hardly noticed. My eyes remained on the bag, half full of crushed, white powder, curiosity brimming.
I didn’t mind ‘shrooms, or even the acid, but it didn’t leave anything resounding, anything that made me want to go out and try it again. It only made me feel dizzy and confused in a way that I’d never been before.
“It’s not mine,” is what Brendon said.
I shot him a look, dubious.
He sighed, and sat up on his elbows, cock still hard and curving along his flat stomach. “I found it downstairs. I took it because - ” He stopped short, and shook his head, as if not sure why he had himself. “I was drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I chickened out.”
I stared at it, still dangling between my fingers, wondering why Jon or Spencer had it. Mushrooms and acid were one thing, but coke? There was a possibility that Brendon was lying to me, that it was his all along, but I couldn’t see that either.
“I want to do it.” I licked my lips, and dropped the small bag into the palm of my hand, eyeing it.
“What?” Brendon tilted his head to meet my gaze, eyes widened and an incredulous expression pulled tight across his features, not quite sure he heard me right. I wasn’t even sure I had heard myself right. “What are you even talking about, Ryan? This is coke we’re talking about here.”
“Well, you were going to do it,” I pointed out, stubborn. I could feel the powder burning through the plastic, into my skin.
“Yeah, because I was drunk and stupid.”
I looked away, down to the bag lying still in my open palm. “It’s one time,” I said, cogently. Closing my palm, trapping it between my fingers, I rolled onto my stomach next to him. I ran a persuading hand across his warm belly, fingers brushing into coarse hair. “Aren’t you curious?” I asked, feathering a row of kisses along his neck.
“That shit’s fucked, Ryan,” he said, but I could hear the waver in his voice.
“It’s one time, that’s it. We won’t do it again,” I pressed. “I just want to see.”
Brendon shook his head, an uneasy edge to it, but I could see the wheels turning in his head as the crack I was creating slowly began to widen. I waited for a moment, and after no reply, I picked myself up and sat cross-legged in the middle of the comforter, naked skin a sharp contrast against the deep burgundy. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m doing it.”
“Ry, come on, are you serious?” he asked, voice lowered, eyes flicking across mine. “This is fucking coke we’re talking about here. It fucks with people’s lives.”
I didn’t care. In my brain, at that moment, I was invincible. I had spent my entire life convinced alcohol was going to ruin me; one sip and I’d be done, just like my father, an abusive drunk who pushed away everyone who ever loved him. But now, I knew that wasn’t the case. I drank, and I was fine. I could stop myself, and I didn’t hurt anyone. It was just fun, and it made me feel better. Why would drugs be any different?
“I’m doing it once,” I insisted, reaching over to grab a notebook of mine on the bedside table, setting it down in front of me. “It’s not going to fuck with my life.” Before he had the chance to protest, I opened the baggy and began to pour the white crystals onto the flattened, black surface. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I had been around people doing it a few times before, but never stuck around long enough to see the mechanics of it. “I need a credit card or something.”
Brendon was sitting all the way up now, elbows brushing against mine. I could feel his warm breath trickle down my neck and shoulder as he stared at me, torn. I turned to meet his gaze, chin brushing against my shoulder blade. “Please,” I murmured, his mouth close to mine. “Just this one time. That’s all. I promise.”
Groaning, Brendon’s forehead knocked against mine. I kept my eyes open, and stared at his eyelids. I knew I had won. I had from the beginning. I always did when it came to him. “Shit. Spencer’s going to fucking kill me,” he said, but got off the bed anyway.
I ignored him, fingers digging into my thigh. That’s how it always was with them. I was never my own person, I was always this child, a six year-old that you always had to have a watchful kept on, in case I wandered off in the supermarket and never came back.
I watched as Brendon bent down to retrieve his jeans, discarded in our fit of passion that had been since forgotten and put on hold. I was too absorbed in the mysterious, but inviting powder, laid out in front of me to even fully appreciate the view of Brendon’s ass as he did so, naked and full and perfect.
When he returned, he had an old American Outfitters gift card in one hand and a bill in the other. The expression on his face was somewhere between horror, guilt and shock, torn between whether he should stop this while he still had the chance. Well, what he thought was a chance, anyway.
Brendon watched next to me as I cut up the coke, pushing it into lines like I had seen done before. Once I was done, Brendon looked over me worriedly, teeth gnawing into his bottom lip. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded. I was positive.
Shimmying around, careful not to cause the bed to shake and the lines to break, I knelt over the book, elbow holding myself up. Brendon laughed, hand smoothing along my back, and lips mouthing at my shoulder. “This position is very inviting,” he growled, husky.
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. My heart was racing, blood pumping with adrenaline. Tightening the rolled bill in between my fingers, I bent down the rest of the way, paper to powder. Brendon kept his hand on my back as I inhaled, the faintest sound escaping the back of his throat.
When I pulled back, I could taste it. Bitter and strong and nasty. I sat up on my haunches, and looked at Brendon, attempting to snort back the excess and swallow the taste. Brendon’s expression was only worried now, terrified even, like he already knew he’d be regretting this decision for the rest of his life.
It hit quick. Quicker than I had expected. It was a blast all at once, but it wasn’t numbing like alcohol, and when I looked out the window, the trees hadn’t turned into snakes like they had when I was on acid. It was calming, refreshing, like taking your first breath after years of comatose. I felt okay. Better than okay. For the first time in my life, I felt what normal must feel like. For the first time, that empty space, somewhere lodged between my chest and my ribcage, was filled.
I managed to move out of the way, flopping into the side of the mattress where Brendon was laying. The sheets suddenly felt like silk to me, the mattress like feathers. I felt like I could do anything - write the entire album, hike up the mountain towering above us, the one that once felt so big.
Through the haze, I watched as Brendon took his lines, the small notches of his spin that poked through milky skin. For once, I felt the way he must have seen me; beautiful, complete.
Knocking the notebook off the bed once he was finished, Brendon collapsed onto his back next to me. He stared up at the ceiling with me, waiting for it to kick in. “How do you feel?”
“Perfect.” I smiled, and quietly began to laugh.
Brendon rolled onto his side, hooking himself underneath my chin, his hand reaching out to curl along my hip. I could’ve lied like that forever, staring up at the ceiling, letting this new, blissful feeling run through me. But Brendon was kissing my neck, hand trailing lower, and that was okay with me too.
Whether or not I wanted to admit it at the time, sex with Brendon was always the best I ever had. The feeling of him against me, around me, in me; but this was something entirely different. So much more intense, extraordinary, than even our best. It felt as if there was a constant shock of electricity that shot up and down my body, into the air, into Brendon. When I finally did come, it was as if it would never end, my vision turning white and my brain black.
Brendon was drenched in sweat, and even myself, with skin that rarely sheds a drop in even the muggiest of temperatures, had a thin layer of it. “Holy fuck.”
I smiled, kissed his shoulder, cock now limp and still inside him.
The comedown, on the other hand, was awful. Although, it was Brendon who spent twenty minute son his knees in front of the toilet, throwing up the remaining contents of his stomach. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach, but I felt horrible, shitty, like I hated my skin even more than I had before. I couldn’t comprehend how one moment I was everything, and nothing the next.
“I’m never doing that shit again,” Brendon vowed, moaning as he sprawled out against the white porcelain. I rubbed a comforting hand along his back, calloused fingers against smooth skin, and thought the exact opposite. I was thinking about how to get it, and how soon. “That high was too fucking short, and that drug is too fucking dangerous, and the comedown is too fucking shitty.”
I mumbled a half-hearted agreement.
“I’ll stick to my weed and alcohol, thanks.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
Pulling himself from the toilet, Brendon shifted to face me, dropping his head against my chest. “You promise you won’t do it again either?” he murmured, lips ghosting over my neck.
I hesitated, then nodded, carefully wrapping an arm around Brendon’s waist and pulled him close. “Yeah,” I said, kissing his hair, “I promise.”
summer 2011
Pete calls me on a rainy, June afternoon. It’s been a year since we’ve last talked, at least. If I hadn’t have been anxiously waiting for my dealer and thought twice about checking the ID, I doubt I would’ve picked up.
Over these past few years, the friends in my life have went from many, to few, to barely existent. Now that Jon has left, all I really have is Alex. Sure, there are the people I associate with at parties, people I buy drugs from, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that friends and the people you share drugs with do not fall into the same category. Even with Alex, the closest thing I have now, I have my doubts. It’s an unspoken understanding between us that without the drugs holding us together like glue, we’d fall apart. We’ve gone days without speaking or seeing one another, weeks even, and hardly noticed until one of us had shown up on each other’s door step, exhausted and strung-out in day old clothes.
The worst thing is that this is what my definition of normal has come down to. It’s a strange concept to me to think that it would’ve ever been different; better.
Pete’s voice is too cheerful on the other line, all too high, and I have to hold the phone away to slow the ache that sparks beneath my eyelids. I feel awful. I’d nearly done a whole eight ball to myself this morning, and it didn’t do much but cause a nosebleed and even worse sense of disparity. Cocaine was the one thing I had, the one thing I was sure would never leave me until I left it first, but even that’s slowly slipping from between the cracks of my fingers.
“How are you doing? It’s been so long. Too long.” Even though Pete isn’t far, only a trip down Highway 1, I feel as if the distance between us is too far to mark on a map. “An old Fever song came on my iPod today. I couldn’t help but think of you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m good.”
There’s a sharp pain shooting into my brain, probably from the bottle of Johnnie Walker I had started late last night and drank until morning. Somewhere in there, my thoughts have sunk to the bottom. “Long time,” I repeat, my tongue feeling thick inside my mouth. I wonder if it’s too late to hang up now, whether it’ll even matter if I do.
I want to ask about Spencer, about Brendon. The words are clawing their way up my throat, but in the end, I manage to swallow them back down again. They leave gashes, thick as black wire. Spencer and Brendon are in different lives now, they’re different people with thriving music careers. And if the videos I’ve searched late at night, vision tainted and blurred, are anything to go by, they’re happy. Really happy. More than they had ever been with me.
Maybe my life hadn’t turned out for the best when I walked out that door and out of their lives, but theirs had, and that’s really all I had hoped for. What they didn’t understand, was that I loved them more than some drug, and that was the problem. They didn’t understand, but I didn’t want them to. I wanted them to hate me, to cut me from their lives like you would a wilting plant. It was something they should’ve done long before, but were frozen by the guilt that never belonged with them in the first place.
“I heard Jon’s back in Chicago. Are you doing okay?”
In other words, he wants to know if it’s just me now. Me, my coke and my misery. They probably have bets on me; how long it’ll take for me to land in jail, rehab. Dead. I bet they sit around, over expensive food and wine, and say, “Poor Ryan. He never stood a chance.”
“Good,” I repeat, and wish that even a fraction of that was true. I pick at a scab, the only remainder of a night that I have no recollection of.
“Still with Greenwald?”
I’m not sure ‘with’ was ever the right word when it comes to Alex and I, but I say yes, anyway. I consider asking him about Ashlee, about Bronx, or Ashlee’s baby bump that covers the newsstands, just to shift the focus from me, but I don’t, not wanting to drag out this conversation anymore than it needs to be.
“Have you been - ” He’s interrupted by a beep, a signal from my other line.
“Oh, um. Actually, I’m sorry, Pete, but there’s someone important calling on the other line.” Anticipation swirls in my veins, knowing it’s my dealer. I don’t bother trying to make up a lie who it might be. I don’t think it matters, anyway.
“Oh, I - ”
“It was nice talking to you,” I rush out, finger itching for the button. “Bye!”
“Ry - ”
I press down, Pete’s voice coming to an abrupt end. It’s instantly replaced with my dealers, rough and scratchy, like you’d expect a carton of cigarettes to sound if they could talk.
I hate how it soothes me.
*
Emily shows up at my door with two eight balls and a bottle of Jack’s. It’s a recipe for one thing: a binge. That, and disaster.
I couldn’t tell you when or where Emily came into my life, and while we often partied together, or even went on daylong binges, she was not my friend. I used to trust Brendon and Spencer, even Jon, with my life, but I could hardly trust these people to go to the washroom a few doors down, and return. I wasn’t sure trust was even a part of my vocabulary anymore.
Emily looks like she might have been pretty once, in another lifetime when her eyes weren’t sunken into her skull, her skin so white it looks blue. Her hair is thick and grainy, the texture of straw. She reminds me of a sad, broken version of Keltie.
We spend the next twenty-three hours in my living room, not eating, not drinking, sleeping or pissing. Instead, we snort lines that I can hardly feel, and watch a TV that Is never on. I fuck her, but I couldn’t tell you why.
By the time the nineteenth hour hit, our nostrils were so raw and blistering, practically caving into our faces. She suggested we smoked it, and I shook my head. “The last time I tried it felt like I had the worst heartburn of my life. I couldn’t even enjoy the high.”
“We could inject it.”
That was something I had never done before. Snorting was one thing, but injecting seemed like something entirely different. Taboo. I felt dirty after I smoked it that one night in the bathroom of some seedy bar, like it was just another checkpoint in my inevitable downfall. But there was already hours of flaking blood sitting above my lip, and I could feel the beginning of yet another nosebleed.
“I don’t have any needles.”
She shrugged. “I have a few extras in my car.”
Of course she did.
She looked at me, waiting. Coke is coke, no matter what form or what way you’re taking it, but it was a promise I had made to myself. But then again, when was the last time my promises meant anything? “Okay,” I said, mouth feeling foreign to the rest of my body. If I had anything left of a conscious, I knew what it would be saying to me, but it had left awhile ago, packed up and moved onto someone actually worth saving.
She told me to get her a glass of water and a large spoon while she ran to her car. When she returned, a package of needles and a large rubber band in her hand, they were waiting on the coffee table in front of me. Knees pulled to my gaunt chest, I watched as she filled a syringe with water, tapping out enough coke for an average line onto the metal spoon.
“Have you ever injected before?” she asked. With careful precision, she released the water from the syringe and onto the spoon.
“No.”
She waited a moment longer as the water dissolved before filling the tube once again, the liquid now a murky white. “It’s okay. You might like it. The highs quicker and stronger, but it lasts shorter.” She shrugged, needle dancing between her fingers. I perked. A stronger a high? I wondered if that meant I’d be able to feel something again.
She turned to look at me. “Do you want me to go first? Just to see?”
I nodded, mouth dry.
She set it down onto the table, tightening the rubber band around her forearm, clenching and unclenching her small fists. The band was so tight that the purple veins rose to the surface of her ivory skin, close enough that it looked as if they might burst through. I couldn’t see any proof of former use, scars or bruises, and I breathed a sigh of relief. If I did this, I didn’t want reminders.
I watched in awe as the needle poked through her skin, the liquid flowing into her veins in a matter of seconds. When she pulled out, there was a tiny bit of pink that floated around the bottom.
The high hit her almost instantly, and she sunk back into the couch, pressing the balls of her hands into her eyes. Envious, I grabbed a clean needle from the pack, and followed her steps. She didn’t appear dead, the furthest thing from, and I took that as a good sign.
I was shaking, so I forced myself to slow down, careful not to waste.
Once the needle was in my arm, the tip pressed into a thick, blue vein, the high came crashing into me almost at once. It wasn’t quite like the first time, but it was the closest I’ve been since.
Dropping the needle next to me, I let my head sink back against the couch. I pressed my hands against my face, and grinned manically into my fingers. Maybe the needles, the marks, would be worth it, for this.
I closed my eyes, imagining I was back at the cabin, Brendon next to me, his breath soaking into my skin. When it was only the beginning, and the ending seemed so far.
“How do you feel?” The voice didn’t belong to him though, not even close, and when I opened my eyes, Emily was the one looking back at me, the blue in her eyes only thin slits from where her pupils took over the rest.
I closed my eyes, pressed my fingers between my eyes. “Okay,” I said.
Not perfect, but okay, and that was enough.
part two
ryan ross/brendon urie (ryan ross/alex greenwald, past ryan ross/keltie colleen) | nc-17 | 24,114 words
it was calming, refreshing, like taking your first breath after years of comatose. i felt okay. better than okay. for the first time in my life, i felt what normal must feel like. for the first time, that empty space, somewhere lodged between my chest and my ribcage, was filled.
this involves very serious drug use and addiction (and is very non-au), if you're sensitive to this matter please do not read. i think it's also important to point out that i do not believe or wish this to ever happen. it's merely a plot made up in my mind. and while i did my fair share of research, i have still never done these drugs or experienced the high, so i'm aware my accuracy might not be 100% on, but please bare with me. and, if you're interested, you can listen to songs that helped me along with this story here.
big thanks to panic_smile and watchingthe_sky for reading this over and fixing my mistakes, and for anyone else who has listened to me whine and cheered me on from my original idea of this, to what it is now (ssuukkii & panic_smile i'm looking at you) ♥ ♥
Jon leaves.
He says, “I’m sorry, Ryan, but I just can’t do this anymore.”
He says, “I don’t know who I am.”
I nod, tell him I understand. Everyone always leaves.
At security, Jon places both hands on my shoulders, looks me in the eye, hold strong and relentless. I still feel woozy, a bit on edge, and it’s hard for me to focus on the brown ones staring back at me. They used to be warm, soft and comforting, and now they only serve as a reminder from a time before, faded by the distance.
He says, “Be careful, okay man?”
He says, “I worry about you sometimes.”
I bite the tip of my tongue until I taste metal. “Yeah, yeah,” I say, off-hand, shrugging his hand off my shoulder. I jiggle my foot, and tap a familiar melody against my thigh. The airport lights are bright, rays of pain sparking up beneath my eyelids. “I will, man. You take care.”
He gives me another long stare, studying, as if uncovering a thin layer. I don’t know how many layers I have left, but I’m sure it can’t be many.
Tightening the worn, beige strap on his shoulder, he turns to look at the security gates. His plane is waiting on the other side of those walls, waiting to bring him back home, to Chicago, away from me. “Alright. Well, I guess I better get going now.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, bud.” His hand finds my shoulder once again, but this time, he pulls me in for a hug. Reluctantly, I return the gesture, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face into his solid shoulder. It feels familiar, but off, like it’s been bumped off the surface and never put back where it’s meant to. There’s a faint scent to him, like maybe once I would’ve smelt rich coffee and warm spices, but now all I smell is disappointment. Defeat. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” I agree, voice muffled into his sweater, “we did.”
He pulls away, giving me one last, solid pat on the back. “See ya around, kid.”
Raising my hand mid-air, I give a small flick of my paper wrist. “Bye, Jon.”
I wait until he’s made it through the maze of grey security tape. He doesn’t look back, and neither do I as my feet pick up and lead me to what I know. My hands start to shake, there’s a dull buzzing in my ears; I know this feeling too well. I can never get there fast enough, tripping over my own feet, the plastic burning through the denim.
By the time I reach the bathroom, I can feel it begin to creep up, preparing for attack; the hold, the strangle, pulling me under, down to a place I never want to be. It’s dark, and it’s ugly, but it’s the life that I’ve come to know, love, and simultaneously hate.
I ignore the man washing his hands at the sink, and push into an empty stall. If I think back hard enough, I can vaguely recall a time where I could go hours, days even, before I was thrown into this state of delirium; this craving so deep that it burns back holes deep beneath my skin. The thought almost seems foreign to me as I dump a white, crystal-like rock out onto the toilet lid; another life even.
Jon’s gone. Of course he is.
Everyone always leaves.
I pull my wallet from my pocket, retrieving a long since expired credit card and dollar bill, already curling up at the ends from previous use. The man’s still in the washroom; I can hear the low trickle of the tap running and the rough cackle as he clears his throat. I don’t care, and it’s a strange concept to me that I might have once. When the thought of snorting a drug off a public toilet sounded preposterous, something I would only witness on television. But now, here I am, the leading role. The fucking star.
The first line doesn’t do much; it’s not the same anymore. It no longer hits me in the way it once did. It takes more and lasts less, only costing me money that is rapidly disappearing from the mangled folds in my wallet. I take two more, and sit back on my haunches. Head tilted towards the ceiling, I squeeze my eyes shut and let the euphoria flow through me in mild waves. Somewhere in the back of my mind I can hear Spencer and Brendon saying, If only.
It’s a nice feeling. The despair, the loss, that gaping hole in my chest, quickly beginning to fade, to fill and be replaced with something that I can only imagine heaven might feel like. At least, a place better than this; white and gauntly, fading into the bathroom tiles on the airport floor, white powder staining my hands and face.
Brendon and Spencer would say, if only we would’ve stopped you before it was too late.
But what they didn’t understand was that the moment my lips first touched the cold rim of the glass, the strong scent of alcohol burning my nostrils, it was already too late.
summer 2006
“You’re so fucking cruel,” Brendon growled, voice muffled against my neck, skin hot on touch. Tightening his grip on my hips, he pushed me until my back hit the wall of the dressing room. “Such a tease.”
I laughed, breathless. Tipping my head back against the painted brick, I pushed my fingers through his hair. “You love it,” I replied, cheeky.
“Maybe.” Brendon smirked against my skin, lips finding their way back to mine. Popping open the top button of my pants, he tucked his hands into the waistband of my underwear. I gasped, head slamming against the wall as his fingers wrapped around me.
I pushed my hands up the front of his shirt, bottom three buttons undone, sliding my fingers along velvety skin. His fingers held around me, full and coveting. We had been doing this for close to a month, after years of trying to ignore it, and already, I found his skin to be my new addiction. His skin, his mouth, his wrists, his ass; he was my drug, and I could never seem to get enough.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he murmured into my mouth, the fingers not tucked inside my jeans, splaying across my neck. He ran a thumb along my skin as I blushed. “And you’re all mine,” he added, huskily, nipping at my bottom lip.
I smiled, something in my chest constricting and then expanding. Expanding, until I was sure it couldn’t hold.
“You’re perfect,” he said, whisper flooding my mouth.
And in that moment, pressed between the wall and Brendon, I felt that I could’ve been.
*
And then, my dad died.
My father died, and all these emotions, these thoughts and beliefs that I had kept hidden, tucked deep inside veiled crevices and nooks, came flying out from inside and hurdled into me at top speed.
Growing up, all I had ever heard from my dad, my school, church, was that everything I had ever felt was wrong. Wanting to make a career as a guitarist in a rockband? Not going to happen. Thos jeans? Too tight, change. The way I felt about that boy two rows up at Sunday morning mass? Don’t even start on that one.
That party, that movie, that song. All wrong.
It had taken two years of long looks, touches and words laced with longing before I had finally given into Brendon that late night in June. It had been incredible and electrifying and everything in between; everything I had been itching for since I was seventeen, but could never quite reach. For once, I was able to ignore that voice inside my head, my father’s slurred voice calling me a faggot, a failure. To erase the image of my fourteen year-old self getting thrown against the floor in a heap after he had caught me in my bedroom with a boy from school.
Maybe his death should’ve set me free - unlocked me from his grip that had been reigning over me like a dark cloud for so many years. But, of course, it did nothing like that. I should’ve known; after all, nothing ever turned out the way I wanted it to. Why did I expect any different this time?
I should’ve known that night, with the salty water and Brendon against my skin, that it was all too good, all too easy, for it not to come crashing down.
*
At the funeral, people cried. They wished me their condolences, telling me their stories of what a brave, wonderful man my father was. All the while, I could only think of the empty whiskey bottles scattered around our house, the long, eerie halls of the hospital, or the way his sour breath smelt when he knocked me against the wall for coming home five minutes past curfew.
All these neighbours, his co-workers, former Navy Marines, only saw the cover; what they chose to. Sometimes, I wondered what they would’ve thought had they only known what went on behind closed doors; once the sun went down, and the curtains were drawn. If only they could see the scars that covered my insides like bad decorations.
Only Spencer and Brendon really knew of the truth, only ones that ever would. And as I sat stony-eyed in the front row, Brendon on one side with his hand covering my own, he had to have known then.
*
Keltie was blonde and gorgeous, and a little bit quirky. When she came up to introduce herself at rehearsal, bubbly and energetic, batting her doe-eyes that looked all too familiar, the same thought from when I was a teenager trickled through my mind. “He’d approve of her….” it said.
It was stupid. It didn’t make sense when I was seventeen, and it certainly didn’t make sense now; that I’d try so hard and so long to get the approval from a man who spent most of my life, drunk in front of the television, spewing verses from the Bible.
But, it’s what I did. What I always did. In high school I dated girl after girl, in hopes that if I kissed her, slept with her, that maybe one day I’d become what everyone always talked about, but I could never quite see for myself: normal.
I figured that if I played pretend for long enough, maybe, eventually, it would become reality. Like the little girl who played dress-up, hoping one day she’d become a princess.
It never did, but I never stopped trying, either.
Brendon watched as I shook her hand, that all too familiar smile tugging on my lips. And if he didn’t know before, he certainly did then.
spring 2011
I arrive home to an empty house, and a message waiting for me on my answering machine. I don’t think twice as I press play, expecting to hear Alex’s voice flood in through the small speaker. But, as the message rolls back and starts, the voice hits me like hot knives, hot and penetrating into the swollen flesh.
“Hey,” it starts, an uncomfortable edge hidden in his usual cheer. “Haven’t talked to you in awhile, so I thought I’d call to see what’s up. Your cell said it’s been disconnected, I guess you still have that habit of leaving your phone in places.” That, or not bothering to pay my phone bill. From the small box, Brendon laughs, so forced that it makes me cringe. “So… yeah, anyway. I just wanted to see how you were doing, what was up. I was thinking that maybe we could get together sometime, catch up - ”
I press a button, and Brendon’s voice is instantly cut short, replaced with dull, more robotic one, informing me that the message has been deleted. Forever.
It’s been close to two years since the band split, and I don’t understand why he’s still trying. Doesn’t he get it? Hasn’t he given up? Everyone else certainly has; even Spencer. It’s bad enough that I can’t seem to turn on the radio or the television without hearing his voice or seeing his goddamn face.
Picking up the phone, I dial the only person that comes to mind. Alex picks up on the third ring, voice rough and cracking, as if drug through hell and back. Whatever it was that he did, I doubt it’s far off. “You woke me up, ass-wipe.”
When I met Alex back during The Honda Civic Tour, my drug habits were hardly anything to bat an eyelash over. I drank and smoked as much weed as any other twenty-two year-old would, and indulged in a line or two whenever it was offered. Spencer didn’t even mind that much, at least not enough to get on my case about it. But then came Alex, with his dishevelled, brown hair and distinguishing looks, his lifestyle to his I-don’t-give-a-fuck, I’m-young-and-rich attitude, and I was instantly hooked. I looked at Alex and felt things I never had before; it was new and exciting and exhilarating, like the first time I had ever tried cocaine.
I thought it was love, but now I know it was nothing more than infatuation. Just another part of the never-ending obsession to rid of who I was, and become something better, something cooler. Something normal. At least, as close that I could ever come to it.
“Can you come over? Please? And bring some shit too. I tossed it out the window last night,” I mumble the last part, cheeks heating in shame, bracing myself for Alex’s inevitable jeers.
There’s a pause on the other line, and Alex lets out a choked laugh. I pace over to the door, looking out over the long wooden stretch of my balcony, the canyon of trees and flowers that sit below. “Again?” he asks. “Why now?”
“How about I tell you when I get here,” I suggest, tracing my finger along the cool glass. It’s raining outside now, and the tiny raindrops slide down the other side, racing towards the bottom, a thin trail remaining behind them; a reminder of their existence.
It was nothing. Just another one of my random fits of paranoia in which I swore the cops were following me. I had even heard sirens, saw the lights. In panic, I threw my stash out my car window and over the highway barrier, a hundred foot drop into a forested canyon, only to realize it was only in my head. This wasn’t the first time. There’s been many instances over the past year where I’ve flushed hundreds of dollars worth of drugs down the toilet, or thrown it over my balcony.
Alex pauses once more, letting out a long, over-dramatized yawn. “Fine. Fine. Give me a half an hour,” he says, and promptly hangs up.
I wait for him on the couch, knees pulled tight to my chest like a child. I keep my lights off, and stare ahead at the black television screen. The early morning sun, trapped behind the dark clouds, trickles in quietly through the glass. My house is dark and lonely, mostly empty except for a few of Jon’s trinkets that he left behind. It’s no wonder he left.
Alex lets himself in, large sunglasses perched on his nose. He has coffee in one hand, and his hair looks as if it hasn’t been washed, never mind brushed, in over a week. I doubt it has. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked in a mirror myself. My appearance ceased to be one of my priorities a long time ago - in fact, I can’t remember the last time something mattered to me that didn’t involve my next fix, and maybe, sometimes, Alex too.
My buzz is starting to wear thin, and the crash is harsh, the hole inside me growing larger, and so much deeper. All these things I don’t want to think about, don’t want to remember, come charging back out, wrapping their angry fists around my neck.
“Do you have it?” I ask before he has a chance to greet me, desperation leaking from my voice, thick as the rain outside my walls.
Alex chuckles, and sits down next to me, thigh rubbing against mine. Faintly, I remember a time when that was enough to cause sparks shooting up my spine, running through my veins. We’re not in a relationship, not really, but it’s the closest thing I have. “Hey to you too.”
I shoot him a look, an I’m-not-in-the-mood.
He laughs, mockingly, but digs into his pocket and pulls out a full bag, still packed tight with white rocks. I watch in hunger as he lays it out on the coffee table, and reaches for a razorblade sitting in the ceramic bowl that Keltie had once made for me, sometime in a distant life ago. He asks what happened, and I half-heartedly tell him the story of tossing my stash out the window.
He shakes his head, humorous. “As always.”
I could argue with him, tell him it doesn’t always happen, but I know it’s no use. I watch as he cuts the crystals up instead, mouth watering.
I’m not feeling much better, that place locked inside my brain beginning to pry itself out, become more vivid now. I can feel my chest beginning to constrict, press painfully into my ribcage, but with Alex here and the comfort of knowing the cure is coming soon, I can manage, at least.
“Here, take this before you go bat-shit on me again,” Alex orders, motioning towards the perfectly cut line.
I roll my eyes, but greedily oblige, taking the plastic tube from Alex’s hand. I lean over his lap to get closer, skin buzzing with anticipation.
It’s not that I go crazy all the time, like throw my stash away in a fit of paranoia, go through extreme rages where I wreck everything within reach, or have anxiety attacks so bad that I feel that I might die when I don’t get my fix in time. But Alex sure likes making it seem so, reminding me every chance that’s handed to him. It’s not like he doesn’t have stories of his own, like that one time he barred all his windows, convinced little people were stalking him.
In the end, no matter how many times we turn it inside out, contrive it or tuck it in a corner, we know we’re nothing more than victims of ourselves.
The lines help, but like at the airport, they don’t do much, even less. That desperate feeling is faded, chalked down to a dull throbbing, but it’s not what I’m looking for. It’s not that state of bliss, those few minutes in my life where I can sit back and feel okay for once.
I do line after line until there’s nothing left. Alex, on the other hand, is sprawled out next to me, a dopey smile on his face, boneless as if a part of the couch.
Curling my knees into my chest, I press the pads of my heels into my eyes, and try to calm the anxiety heating in my veins. The high has been a slow but steady downfall, never able to compare to that first time it struck my veins. I noticed all along, but it never stopped me from trying, regardless. “I can’t feel it,” I murmur into my knees, quiet and vulnerable, small as a sick child. “Why can’t I feel it? I just want to - I need to feel it, Alex.”
He opens an eye to see me shaking, rocking back and forth on the couch. I’m so small now, my body barely takes up a square cushion. “What are you - Shit, Ryan. Calm down.”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together and swallowing. Thoughts are racing through my head, blood bouncing off my capillaries. Alex’s hand is on my waist, my shoulder, my face. I don’t understand how this could’ve happened. I don’t know who this person is anymore, this person I’ve become. All along it’s like I’ve been floating somewhere above, looking down at myself, the people around me, but never really seeing. I didn’t want to see.
Alex’s beard rubs against my skin, and he kisses me, as if hoping it will make me stop thinking. And it does, for a bit. He tastes bitter, like myself. I can’t remember the last time I tasted something that wasn’t; something that didn’t leave a strong sense of bile sitting at the back of my throat.
Brendon always tasted sweet, like Redbull and liquorice.
When my hand slides up Alex’s shirt, I can feel ribs, count every one. His chest feels concave, and paper-thin against my fingers. I know mine aren’t far off.
I let him fuck me over the couch, my face pushed into the cushion as he grunts loudly from above. I come all over the fabric, adding to prior stains that are forever marked.
It’s only after we’ve finished that I notice my nose has started to bleed, the dark red mixing with the painting of other colours, stained into the paisley fabric. It happens so often that it doesn’t even faze me anymore.
Alex kisses my jaw, and I watch as a single ruby drop lands on my thigh, skin translucent and pulled over the bone.
winter 2007
At the strike of the new year, Dave, our manager, pushed a drink into my hands. “It’s New Years!” he said, grinning wildly, tie loose around his neck. “Let loose!”
Keltie stood next to me, smelling of strong perfume and hairspray. I could still taste her Cappucino lip gloss, sticky and stained onto my mouth.
Across the room, Brendon caught my eye and held it. The entire time I was kissing Keltie, the room around us erupting in cheers and applause, the only thing I could think about was how badly I wanted it to be him. I always wanted it to be him, but it was always her, too soft and too delicate underneath me.
In one, simple movement he raised his own glass, eyes telling a toast that only I could decipher. I did the same with my own, and with a last breath of air, I pressed the cool glass to my lips.
One drink, I thought. It’s nothing.
The alcohol stung all the way down my throat and oesophagus as I spluttered. Keltie and Dave laughed next to me. Spencer and Jon were nowhere in sight. Brendon smiled, the line of his throat pale and inviting in the dim light.
I hated the taste, strong but bitter, lingering on the back of my tongue for hours afterward. I didn’t know it then - or, maybe, I did - but in that one moment, that one drink, I was already falling so hard.
*
We made it ten, successful days trapped inside the cabin together before Brendon had me pinned to his bedroom wall, teeth nipping at my bottom lip and nimble fingers scraping my belly. I mewled into his mouth, kissing him back just as desperately, our mouth’s faintly tasting of orange juice and vodka. It had been a long time since August, and I wanted every inch of him beneath me, warm and pliant and beautiful, ready to be shaped.
“Fuck. Fuck,” Brendon cursed, words broken between heated kisses, “missed you - so much.”
I nodded fervently, pulling his t-shirt over his chest and tossing it onto the ground. “Want - ” I panted, “need to fuck you.”
Moaning, he backed towards the bed, hands starting on his belt as I pulled my own shirt over my head. The music from Guitar Hero was blasting from downstairs, where Jon and Spencer sat, drunk and high and probably not the least bit oblivious to what was going on just above.
Spencer’s glazed eyes had watched us as we left, all knowing and condemning. I expected a lecture from him bright and early the following morning, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was Brendon, and his captivating skin beneath my fingers.
We settled with undressing ourselves, the fastest route before we met on the bed, Brendon already sprawled out and breathless against the dark sheets. I bent down to meet his lips, wet and needy, wondering how I had lasted nearly a year without being able to do this.
“Ry. Ryan,” he pleaded, desperately, pupils blown and blunt nails digging into my shoulder blades, “come on. Please. The stuff is in the nightstand.”
I nodded, crawling on my knees across the bed to dig inside the top drawer, retrieving a condom from the full box and a tube of lube. Clearly, he had been expecting this, but then again, so had I.
Crawling back over, I hooked Brendon’s leg onto my hip, and squirted the cool liquid into the palm of my hand, rubbing it into my fingers. “How long as it been?” I asked, hoarsely, circling a finger around his entrance. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, or if I really wanted to know, scared I might hate the answer, but I searched his eyes, anyway, waiting.
“Awhile,” he replied, curled toes brushing against the cleft of my ass.
I nodded, kissing him once more pushing a single digit in through the tight ring of muscle. He let out a muted, strangled noise, and I kissed it away, the small sound disappearing into the depths of my mouth.
By the time I pushed in two, Brendon was already rocking against my fingers, head tilted back. “Missed your fingers,” he said, breathless, through parted lips, like I hadn’t already guessed myself. He had always loved my fingers almost as much as he loved my cock, and never failed on telling me so. Over these past few months he hardly tried to hide the way his eyes lingered on them - while I strummed my guitar, chewed on my nails when writing, his eyes dripping with want. I had been cruel enough to wrap them around his wrist one day in passing, pressing the tip of them into his pulse point. He had looked at me, eyes round and startled, as if trying to decide whether it really was my doing or all in his head. He lasted a moment before he slipped away from me, muttering a feeble excuse, and disappeared into the washroom, the clear outline of his erection through his jeans.
When I finally pushed inside, way too many months over-due, we gasped into each other’s mouths, Brendon’s body falling tense underneath mine.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, cautiously, forcing my hips still.
He shook his head, eyes blinking open. “No.” He smiled, and slowly began to relax against me. Turning his head, his lips brushed against the wrist anchoring myself above him. “I just forgot how good you feel.”
Groaning into his neck, I jerked my hips, pushing in as far as I could go. He didn’t make a sound, only continued to smile, blissful. His eyes slipped shut, the dark curtain of eyelashes falling over his lightly freckled skin. I loved those freckles, the ones only noticeable when close, or after too many hours in the sun. I spent one morning outlining each with the sharp tip of my tongue, him smiling and laughing underneath me, whole and breathless.
“Fuck,” Brendon cursed after a steady pace between us had been set. He slid a leg up, tucking it underneath my armpit. “This reminds me of Myrtle Beach.” He laughs, eyes opening to look at me. I had already been watching him this entire time. “Except, remarkably less painful.” He doesn’t ask me if I remember, doesn’t need to, because it’s something that’s already been burned into the pages of my memory. Every detail, every breath.
I could remember the feeling of the sand against our bare feet, the warm waves against our skin. Even when I thought about it then, knowing I was the first to mark his skin or press into places that no one had before, it left me with a heavy thrumming in my chest and a heat that spread underneath my skin like a rash. I was the first, and while the chances were slim, I hoped I was the only. The thought of someone else inside of him, running their mouths over his untarnished skin filled me with an unfathomable wash of nausea and disgust. I didn’t want to know, so I never asked.
I let my forehead fall against his, mouth’s close and sharing breath.
After we came, only seconds apart, Brendon ran his hands over my body, any inch of skin he could reach, feverously, as if needing to burn it into his memory and carry it with him. I wanted to tell him that I wouldn’t leave him again, not this time, but I didn’t know the words. I kissed him instead, fingers against his jaw, feeling the air leave his chest.
It wasn’t until later, Brendon asleep with his back to my chest, that Keltie had crossed my mind.
*
The next morning, Spencer caught me in the kitchen, coffee machine whirring on the counter in front of me. I had woken up to Brendon, still sound asleep and tangled in the sheets, pillow creases streaking his cheek. He was turned onto his back, breathing heavily into the early morning breeze trickling in through the open window. It smelt of pine and second chances. I always knew I loved him, but there was something in that moment that made me more certain that I had ever been before.
I slipped out of bed without causing him to stir, deciding to wake him with coffee instead. I figured we could spend the day in bed, making up for months of lost time; making out and making love.
Naturally, Spencer did not agree. “What are you doing, Ryan? I thought you stopped this.”
He said, “You have a girlfriend.”
He said, “You’re both going to end up hurt again.”
I poured two cups of coffee, and said noting.
“Ryan,” he sighed, “don’t let it mess up the band.”
It was the same lecture he given me the last time. It hadn’t worked then, and he knew just as well as I did that it wouldn’t work now. I could admire him for trying, though.
Taking both mugs into my hand, still black, I looked at him. “I won’t.”
I loved him. I loved Brendon, and for the first time in my life, the thought didn’t scare me. I wondered if he could that as clearly as I felt it.
Turning back towards the staircase, I said in an afterthought, smiling wickedly, “You and Jon might want to spend the day outside. Just a suggestion.” I didn’t stick around to see his expression.
Brendon was up when I returned, on his side and staring out the window, out at the mountains painting the horizon. When he turned to see me, he smiled, sinking back into the pillow. “I was scared you left.”
“I couldn’t have gone far,” I pointed out as he scooted over to make room for me on the edge of the bed. I could hardly blame him for thinking it, but it hurt nonetheless.
He smiled again, shrugged, and graciously took the mug of hot coffee from my hand, white threads of steam blowing into the air. I bent down to kiss him, murmuring a ‘good morning’ into his moist lips.
As if he could taste it on my mouth, the tip of my tongue, he pulled back and ducked his face into my neck, breathing deep. “Love you,” he whispered into my skin, so faint it was nearly silent. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it was the first time he meant it in that way.
I couldn’t say it, didn’t know how, but when I pulled his lips back to mine, I took the words frozen inside my throat, and pushed them into his mouth, silent as a promise. He smiled at me, the hand not grasping his mug sliding around mine, and I knew he had caught it.
*
Maybe it was the solitary, the boredom, or the relief of ending a long tour, the excitement of staring a new album, but none of us thought twice as an abundance of alcohol and weed moved into the cabin along with us.
A week in, Jon showed up after a trip to the grocery store with ‘shrooms.
The next week, Spencer showed up with acid.
It wasn’t until the third week, when I was rummaging through the top drawer of Brendon’s bedside table - I had spent so much time in his room, that I was sure it could’ve been considered my own, as well - for a condom, when my fingers grazed across the baggy. I didn’t know why he had it, why it wasn’t downstairs stashed along with the rest of it, but I flashed it across his face, held up like a question mark. He blinked back at me, hair wild and naked across the covers, but I hardly noticed. My eyes remained on the bag, half full of crushed, white powder, curiosity brimming.
I didn’t mind ‘shrooms, or even the acid, but it didn’t leave anything resounding, anything that made me want to go out and try it again. It only made me feel dizzy and confused in a way that I’d never been before.
“It’s not mine,” is what Brendon said.
I shot him a look, dubious.
He sighed, and sat up on his elbows, cock still hard and curving along his flat stomach. “I found it downstairs. I took it because - ” He stopped short, and shook his head, as if not sure why he had himself. “I was drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I chickened out.”
I stared at it, still dangling between my fingers, wondering why Jon or Spencer had it. Mushrooms and acid were one thing, but coke? There was a possibility that Brendon was lying to me, that it was his all along, but I couldn’t see that either.
“I want to do it.” I licked my lips, and dropped the small bag into the palm of my hand, eyeing it.
“What?” Brendon tilted his head to meet my gaze, eyes widened and an incredulous expression pulled tight across his features, not quite sure he heard me right. I wasn’t even sure I had heard myself right. “What are you even talking about, Ryan? This is coke we’re talking about here.”
“Well, you were going to do it,” I pointed out, stubborn. I could feel the powder burning through the plastic, into my skin.
“Yeah, because I was drunk and stupid.”
I looked away, down to the bag lying still in my open palm. “It’s one time,” I said, cogently. Closing my palm, trapping it between my fingers, I rolled onto my stomach next to him. I ran a persuading hand across his warm belly, fingers brushing into coarse hair. “Aren’t you curious?” I asked, feathering a row of kisses along his neck.
“That shit’s fucked, Ryan,” he said, but I could hear the waver in his voice.
“It’s one time, that’s it. We won’t do it again,” I pressed. “I just want to see.”
Brendon shook his head, an uneasy edge to it, but I could see the wheels turning in his head as the crack I was creating slowly began to widen. I waited for a moment, and after no reply, I picked myself up and sat cross-legged in the middle of the comforter, naked skin a sharp contrast against the deep burgundy. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m doing it.”
“Ry, come on, are you serious?” he asked, voice lowered, eyes flicking across mine. “This is fucking coke we’re talking about here. It fucks with people’s lives.”
I didn’t care. In my brain, at that moment, I was invincible. I had spent my entire life convinced alcohol was going to ruin me; one sip and I’d be done, just like my father, an abusive drunk who pushed away everyone who ever loved him. But now, I knew that wasn’t the case. I drank, and I was fine. I could stop myself, and I didn’t hurt anyone. It was just fun, and it made me feel better. Why would drugs be any different?
“I’m doing it once,” I insisted, reaching over to grab a notebook of mine on the bedside table, setting it down in front of me. “It’s not going to fuck with my life.” Before he had the chance to protest, I opened the baggy and began to pour the white crystals onto the flattened, black surface. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I had been around people doing it a few times before, but never stuck around long enough to see the mechanics of it. “I need a credit card or something.”
Brendon was sitting all the way up now, elbows brushing against mine. I could feel his warm breath trickle down my neck and shoulder as he stared at me, torn. I turned to meet his gaze, chin brushing against my shoulder blade. “Please,” I murmured, his mouth close to mine. “Just this one time. That’s all. I promise.”
Groaning, Brendon’s forehead knocked against mine. I kept my eyes open, and stared at his eyelids. I knew I had won. I had from the beginning. I always did when it came to him. “Shit. Spencer’s going to fucking kill me,” he said, but got off the bed anyway.
I ignored him, fingers digging into my thigh. That’s how it always was with them. I was never my own person, I was always this child, a six year-old that you always had to have a watchful kept on, in case I wandered off in the supermarket and never came back.
I watched as Brendon bent down to retrieve his jeans, discarded in our fit of passion that had been since forgotten and put on hold. I was too absorbed in the mysterious, but inviting powder, laid out in front of me to even fully appreciate the view of Brendon’s ass as he did so, naked and full and perfect.
When he returned, he had an old American Outfitters gift card in one hand and a bill in the other. The expression on his face was somewhere between horror, guilt and shock, torn between whether he should stop this while he still had the chance. Well, what he thought was a chance, anyway.
Brendon watched next to me as I cut up the coke, pushing it into lines like I had seen done before. Once I was done, Brendon looked over me worriedly, teeth gnawing into his bottom lip. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded. I was positive.
Shimmying around, careful not to cause the bed to shake and the lines to break, I knelt over the book, elbow holding myself up. Brendon laughed, hand smoothing along my back, and lips mouthing at my shoulder. “This position is very inviting,” he growled, husky.
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. My heart was racing, blood pumping with adrenaline. Tightening the rolled bill in between my fingers, I bent down the rest of the way, paper to powder. Brendon kept his hand on my back as I inhaled, the faintest sound escaping the back of his throat.
When I pulled back, I could taste it. Bitter and strong and nasty. I sat up on my haunches, and looked at Brendon, attempting to snort back the excess and swallow the taste. Brendon’s expression was only worried now, terrified even, like he already knew he’d be regretting this decision for the rest of his life.
It hit quick. Quicker than I had expected. It was a blast all at once, but it wasn’t numbing like alcohol, and when I looked out the window, the trees hadn’t turned into snakes like they had when I was on acid. It was calming, refreshing, like taking your first breath after years of comatose. I felt okay. Better than okay. For the first time in my life, I felt what normal must feel like. For the first time, that empty space, somewhere lodged between my chest and my ribcage, was filled.
I managed to move out of the way, flopping into the side of the mattress where Brendon was laying. The sheets suddenly felt like silk to me, the mattress like feathers. I felt like I could do anything - write the entire album, hike up the mountain towering above us, the one that once felt so big.
Through the haze, I watched as Brendon took his lines, the small notches of his spin that poked through milky skin. For once, I felt the way he must have seen me; beautiful, complete.
Knocking the notebook off the bed once he was finished, Brendon collapsed onto his back next to me. He stared up at the ceiling with me, waiting for it to kick in. “How do you feel?”
“Perfect.” I smiled, and quietly began to laugh.
Brendon rolled onto his side, hooking himself underneath my chin, his hand reaching out to curl along my hip. I could’ve lied like that forever, staring up at the ceiling, letting this new, blissful feeling run through me. But Brendon was kissing my neck, hand trailing lower, and that was okay with me too.
Whether or not I wanted to admit it at the time, sex with Brendon was always the best I ever had. The feeling of him against me, around me, in me; but this was something entirely different. So much more intense, extraordinary, than even our best. It felt as if there was a constant shock of electricity that shot up and down my body, into the air, into Brendon. When I finally did come, it was as if it would never end, my vision turning white and my brain black.
Brendon was drenched in sweat, and even myself, with skin that rarely sheds a drop in even the muggiest of temperatures, had a thin layer of it. “Holy fuck.”
I smiled, kissed his shoulder, cock now limp and still inside him.
The comedown, on the other hand, was awful. Although, it was Brendon who spent twenty minute son his knees in front of the toilet, throwing up the remaining contents of his stomach. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach, but I felt horrible, shitty, like I hated my skin even more than I had before. I couldn’t comprehend how one moment I was everything, and nothing the next.
“I’m never doing that shit again,” Brendon vowed, moaning as he sprawled out against the white porcelain. I rubbed a comforting hand along his back, calloused fingers against smooth skin, and thought the exact opposite. I was thinking about how to get it, and how soon. “That high was too fucking short, and that drug is too fucking dangerous, and the comedown is too fucking shitty.”
I mumbled a half-hearted agreement.
“I’ll stick to my weed and alcohol, thanks.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
Pulling himself from the toilet, Brendon shifted to face me, dropping his head against my chest. “You promise you won’t do it again either?” he murmured, lips ghosting over my neck.
I hesitated, then nodded, carefully wrapping an arm around Brendon’s waist and pulled him close. “Yeah,” I said, kissing his hair, “I promise.”
summer 2011
Pete calls me on a rainy, June afternoon. It’s been a year since we’ve last talked, at least. If I hadn’t have been anxiously waiting for my dealer and thought twice about checking the ID, I doubt I would’ve picked up.
Over these past few years, the friends in my life have went from many, to few, to barely existent. Now that Jon has left, all I really have is Alex. Sure, there are the people I associate with at parties, people I buy drugs from, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that friends and the people you share drugs with do not fall into the same category. Even with Alex, the closest thing I have now, I have my doubts. It’s an unspoken understanding between us that without the drugs holding us together like glue, we’d fall apart. We’ve gone days without speaking or seeing one another, weeks even, and hardly noticed until one of us had shown up on each other’s door step, exhausted and strung-out in day old clothes.
The worst thing is that this is what my definition of normal has come down to. It’s a strange concept to me to think that it would’ve ever been different; better.
Pete’s voice is too cheerful on the other line, all too high, and I have to hold the phone away to slow the ache that sparks beneath my eyelids. I feel awful. I’d nearly done a whole eight ball to myself this morning, and it didn’t do much but cause a nosebleed and even worse sense of disparity. Cocaine was the one thing I had, the one thing I was sure would never leave me until I left it first, but even that’s slowly slipping from between the cracks of my fingers.
“How are you doing? It’s been so long. Too long.” Even though Pete isn’t far, only a trip down Highway 1, I feel as if the distance between us is too far to mark on a map. “An old Fever song came on my iPod today. I couldn’t help but think of you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m good.”
There’s a sharp pain shooting into my brain, probably from the bottle of Johnnie Walker I had started late last night and drank until morning. Somewhere in there, my thoughts have sunk to the bottom. “Long time,” I repeat, my tongue feeling thick inside my mouth. I wonder if it’s too late to hang up now, whether it’ll even matter if I do.
I want to ask about Spencer, about Brendon. The words are clawing their way up my throat, but in the end, I manage to swallow them back down again. They leave gashes, thick as black wire. Spencer and Brendon are in different lives now, they’re different people with thriving music careers. And if the videos I’ve searched late at night, vision tainted and blurred, are anything to go by, they’re happy. Really happy. More than they had ever been with me.
Maybe my life hadn’t turned out for the best when I walked out that door and out of their lives, but theirs had, and that’s really all I had hoped for. What they didn’t understand, was that I loved them more than some drug, and that was the problem. They didn’t understand, but I didn’t want them to. I wanted them to hate me, to cut me from their lives like you would a wilting plant. It was something they should’ve done long before, but were frozen by the guilt that never belonged with them in the first place.
“I heard Jon’s back in Chicago. Are you doing okay?”
In other words, he wants to know if it’s just me now. Me, my coke and my misery. They probably have bets on me; how long it’ll take for me to land in jail, rehab. Dead. I bet they sit around, over expensive food and wine, and say, “Poor Ryan. He never stood a chance.”
“Good,” I repeat, and wish that even a fraction of that was true. I pick at a scab, the only remainder of a night that I have no recollection of.
“Still with Greenwald?”
I’m not sure ‘with’ was ever the right word when it comes to Alex and I, but I say yes, anyway. I consider asking him about Ashlee, about Bronx, or Ashlee’s baby bump that covers the newsstands, just to shift the focus from me, but I don’t, not wanting to drag out this conversation anymore than it needs to be.
“Have you been - ” He’s interrupted by a beep, a signal from my other line.
“Oh, um. Actually, I’m sorry, Pete, but there’s someone important calling on the other line.” Anticipation swirls in my veins, knowing it’s my dealer. I don’t bother trying to make up a lie who it might be. I don’t think it matters, anyway.
“Oh, I - ”
“It was nice talking to you,” I rush out, finger itching for the button. “Bye!”
“Ry - ”
I press down, Pete’s voice coming to an abrupt end. It’s instantly replaced with my dealers, rough and scratchy, like you’d expect a carton of cigarettes to sound if they could talk.
I hate how it soothes me.
*
Emily shows up at my door with two eight balls and a bottle of Jack’s. It’s a recipe for one thing: a binge. That, and disaster.
I couldn’t tell you when or where Emily came into my life, and while we often partied together, or even went on daylong binges, she was not my friend. I used to trust Brendon and Spencer, even Jon, with my life, but I could hardly trust these people to go to the washroom a few doors down, and return. I wasn’t sure trust was even a part of my vocabulary anymore.
Emily looks like she might have been pretty once, in another lifetime when her eyes weren’t sunken into her skull, her skin so white it looks blue. Her hair is thick and grainy, the texture of straw. She reminds me of a sad, broken version of Keltie.
We spend the next twenty-three hours in my living room, not eating, not drinking, sleeping or pissing. Instead, we snort lines that I can hardly feel, and watch a TV that Is never on. I fuck her, but I couldn’t tell you why.
By the time the nineteenth hour hit, our nostrils were so raw and blistering, practically caving into our faces. She suggested we smoked it, and I shook my head. “The last time I tried it felt like I had the worst heartburn of my life. I couldn’t even enjoy the high.”
“We could inject it.”
That was something I had never done before. Snorting was one thing, but injecting seemed like something entirely different. Taboo. I felt dirty after I smoked it that one night in the bathroom of some seedy bar, like it was just another checkpoint in my inevitable downfall. But there was already hours of flaking blood sitting above my lip, and I could feel the beginning of yet another nosebleed.
“I don’t have any needles.”
She shrugged. “I have a few extras in my car.”
Of course she did.
She looked at me, waiting. Coke is coke, no matter what form or what way you’re taking it, but it was a promise I had made to myself. But then again, when was the last time my promises meant anything? “Okay,” I said, mouth feeling foreign to the rest of my body. If I had anything left of a conscious, I knew what it would be saying to me, but it had left awhile ago, packed up and moved onto someone actually worth saving.
She told me to get her a glass of water and a large spoon while she ran to her car. When she returned, a package of needles and a large rubber band in her hand, they were waiting on the coffee table in front of me. Knees pulled to my gaunt chest, I watched as she filled a syringe with water, tapping out enough coke for an average line onto the metal spoon.
“Have you ever injected before?” she asked. With careful precision, she released the water from the syringe and onto the spoon.
“No.”
She waited a moment longer as the water dissolved before filling the tube once again, the liquid now a murky white. “It’s okay. You might like it. The highs quicker and stronger, but it lasts shorter.” She shrugged, needle dancing between her fingers. I perked. A stronger a high? I wondered if that meant I’d be able to feel something again.
She turned to look at me. “Do you want me to go first? Just to see?”
I nodded, mouth dry.
She set it down onto the table, tightening the rubber band around her forearm, clenching and unclenching her small fists. The band was so tight that the purple veins rose to the surface of her ivory skin, close enough that it looked as if they might burst through. I couldn’t see any proof of former use, scars or bruises, and I breathed a sigh of relief. If I did this, I didn’t want reminders.
I watched in awe as the needle poked through her skin, the liquid flowing into her veins in a matter of seconds. When she pulled out, there was a tiny bit of pink that floated around the bottom.
The high hit her almost instantly, and she sunk back into the couch, pressing the balls of her hands into her eyes. Envious, I grabbed a clean needle from the pack, and followed her steps. She didn’t appear dead, the furthest thing from, and I took that as a good sign.
I was shaking, so I forced myself to slow down, careful not to waste.
Once the needle was in my arm, the tip pressed into a thick, blue vein, the high came crashing into me almost at once. It wasn’t quite like the first time, but it was the closest I’ve been since.
Dropping the needle next to me, I let my head sink back against the couch. I pressed my hands against my face, and grinned manically into my fingers. Maybe the needles, the marks, would be worth it, for this.
I closed my eyes, imagining I was back at the cabin, Brendon next to me, his breath soaking into my skin. When it was only the beginning, and the ending seemed so far.
“How do you feel?” The voice didn’t belong to him though, not even close, and when I opened my eyes, Emily was the one looking back at me, the blue in her eyes only thin slits from where her pupils took over the rest.
I closed my eyes, pressed my fingers between my eyes. “Okay,” I said.
Not perfect, but okay, and that was enough.
part two