but my heart- it don't beat, it don't beat the way it used to
Title: For Reasons Unknown
Author: mrs_weasley_xx
Rating: PG-13 to R for language
Pairing: Ryden
POV: third person
Summary: Ryan leaves. Brendon doesn't care. ...Much.
Disclaimer I don't own anything, etc etc, obviously.
Author Notes: my second try at bandfic :] This is a longer one (3,000+ words) and I think it's the longest oneshot I've written, ever. So hopefully it's good! Title from the song by the Killers and lyrics in the beginning of the chapter by The Academy Is... from "Seed".
nbsp;
For Reasons Unknown
Shaken and faint, it was the hardest
thing to swallow, pretending you don’t miss me.
-The Academy Is…
Ryan hates that he can’t imagine himself without Brendon. Sometimes, when Brendon has disappeared in the middle of the night to do something utterly Brendon-like (“Midnight Skittles run,” he’ll say, or, “went to go see if I could figure out the chords to ‘Part of Your World’ based on memory”) or when Brendon has decided that he’s officially annoyed at Ryan (“Well, fuck this,” he’ll declare, and simply walk out), Ryan gets that panicky feeling deep in his chest. The feeling pulses through his veins, rests in his heart, and quickens his heartbeat ever-so-slightly. Slow enough to pretend like it doesn’t matter, quick enough to know that it does.
When they’re at the mall and Brendon is with Spencer, because they both want to go shoe shopping and Ryan would rather check out the books and Jon doesn’t really need more than one pair of flip-flops, Ryan can’t help but miss him. And it’s pathetic, he tells himself, because he can see Brendon trying on shoes from where he stands in the Borders across the way, he can even see the fucking pink-and-green detailing on the side of his sneakers, that’s how close he is. And yet Ryan can’t help but think that if Brendon were closer, he’d have his arm around him.
From the sneaker store, Brendon looks up and glances at Ryan. He smiles - Cheshire-cat grins even - and winks at him. Ryan feels his heart quicken again, and he drops the book he was reading. When he looks back up, Brendon has gone back to looking at his sneakers, and for a second, Ryan is actually jealous. Infuriated at himself - how dare he act so pitiful, so spineless, so fucking pathetic when it comes to a boy who he never liked to begin with? - he leaves the store.
He wanders for a while, not sure where he’s headed, and then he sits at a strategically placed bench right outside Bloomingdales (for the husbands of shop-a-holic rich bombshells, he’s sure) and thinks about a lot of things. He thinks about the band, for one, and how it’s crazy that they’ve gotten so far and yet they can still wander around a mall in Middle America without being noticed. He debates buying a new scarf or whether he should just steal it from the next photoshoot. And then he thinks about Brendon, and his mind can’t switch to other topics.
He wonders when he’ll be back. He wonders how long it’ll take.
He wonders when he started to care.
--
Brendon is sitting in the living room, sidekick out, texting away, and Ryan sits on the arm of his chair. Ryan is quiet, which is not exactly uncharacteristic of him, to say the least, but Brendon can sense that not all is well. He texts “BRB” to Pete and turns to look at Ryan. He doesn’t say anything; he knows Ryan just needs the silence to gather his thoughts.
After a while, Ryan says, “I think I need to get away.”
And Brendon says, “okay.”
(And this isn’t shocking, because, really, what was Ryan expecting? “No, no, don’t go; please don’t leave me, please”?
As he packs his things, he tries not to think about how that’s exactly what he would have told Brendon. Please don’t leave me, please.)
Ryan leaves the room and Brendon closes his sidekick, unable to form the words that he wants to say. Ryan’s the writer, after all. Brendon’s just the front man.
--
Ryan wanders around New York for a while, doing nothing of importance - he writes a little, breathes a little, lives a little, pretends not to miss Brendon a little. And when he’s not doing that, he misses Brendon a lot. He tries to ignore the flashing green light of his sidekick, taunting him with lack of messages - lack of care, Ryan figures; no one’s worrying about him.
(Not that they have anything to worry about; he’s just living in a crappy motel room in New York, close enough to the city to be considering Manhattan but far enough to still be a crappy motel room minus the glamorized Manhattan ideal.)
But the point is: no one’s bothered calling him or texting him or emailing him, so he doesn’t bother with them. The only one he talks to is Pete. And while talking to him, it’s obvious that Pete’s in the middle of a conversation with Brendon at the same time, so eventually Ryan stops trying.
He starts going out at night, wandering around the streets. It’s a weird feeling, to be in the middle of a city that you’re not too familiar with, walking around like you know where you’re going and acting like the bars you stumble upon were places you meant to visit in the first place.
He meets a girl - Keltie - and there’s something about her smile that attracts him immediately, something about her face that makes him interested, something about her outgoing, bubbly personality that makes him feel like he’s at home. And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be - you’re supposed to be with someone who reminds you of where you’d like to be, if you could go there; who you’d like to be, if you could be them.
When he wakes up the next morning, he glances at her sleeping body and realizes that in the vaguest of ways, she reminds him of Brendon. Subconsciously he glances at his sidekick - and its green blinking light - and is tempted to throw it and himself out the window.
--
Being without Ryan is harder than Brendon previously imagined. Ryan packed his shit and Brendon was stoic - calm, removed, detached, void of emotions. So Ryan was leaving. That’s okay. He’d be back. And that was all that really mattered at the time.
But it’s been a few weeks now - way longer than Brendon previously imagined; he thought it’d be a few days, a week tops, but it’s been at least three weeks, and now he can’t avoid the almost indescribable feeling of Missing Ryan. Sometimes it felt like heartburn; the familiar yearning, the feeling of broken-ribs; heart racing, angry moths fighting deep in the middle of Brendon’s heart. Other times it feels like what he imagines the after-effects of being hit by a train would be like: bruised, fragile, numb. He’s taken to carrying his sidekick around with him - just in case he calls, just in case, he reasons, not that he’s expecting him to, or hoping he will, just - just, you know, in case.
Jon and Spencer are kind of sick of him - that much is obvious. He’s annoying enough as a bubbly, caffeine-addicted freak. The dejected, moody, and obnoxious version isn’t exactly a great trade-off. And what’s more infuriating is that he won’t even do anything about it.
(“Just fucking text him already, for god’s sakes - this is ridiculous,” Spencer says, attempting to steady his voice as possible after Brendon has whined about there not being anything on television.
“I wasn’t - I don’t - what the fuck? I was just saying, how many times can they show the same piece of shit episode of America’s Next Top Model? I was just - I don’t - this has nothing to do with - him,” Brendon stutters, tripping over his words. “And - and besides, he could have called me any time, you know? He left. I’m still here - he left.”
“Shut up,” Jon replies, changing the channel to America’s Next Top Model just to piss Brendon off, and then he walks away.)
Brendon’s sitting next to Spencer at the kitchen table when Spencer gets the call. It’s hard to distinguish what’s being said just by listening to Spencer’s side of the conversation (Hey, man! Yeah, how are you? Yeah. Wow. Uh-huh. Yeah. So that’s - shit. Well, you know, good for you, I guess. You’re allowed to - you know, and - yeah. Yeah, man) but five seconds into the conversation, Brendon knows who he’s talking to.
“Well, hey, listen - I bet you want to talk to…” He starts to reach for Brendon, and mouths out, It’s Ryan, and Brendon rolls his eyes and sinks further in his seat. “I bet you want to talk to one of the guys, hold on a sec,” and he holds the phone out for Brendon to take.
Brendon ignores it.
“Bren - stop being a baby, take the goddamn phone,” Spencer says, raising his voice.
(Ryan’s hearing all of this, by the way, and as he tap tap taps his foot against the bedframe of his cheap motel bed, his breath hitches as he hears Brendon.)
Brendon shrugs, and then speaks calmly and slowly: “I have nothing to - what do you want me to do? I have nothing to say.” Spencer is silent, glowering at him. He’s reached the point where his anger has rendered him incapable of speech. “Listen, there’s nothing he wants to hear from me, I have nothing to say. If he wanted to talk to me, he could have called me.” He picked up his sidekick from its spot on the table, where it was previously sitting next to Spencer’s. “I’ve been here.”
Brendon walks out, and from his room he can hear Spencer saying, “Yeah, hey, Brendon’s just a little - you know, he’s just kind of busy right now with some - uh, with some stuff. What?” A pause. “Oh. Okay, I’ll tell him. Um, okay, bye, Ryan.”
Spencer walks into his room a few minutes later.
“So what does Ryan say then, huh?”
He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “He just wanted to let you know he’s met a girl out there - Keltie or something - and that you’d like her.”
Brendon lets out a laugh - a growl, almost; a scary sort of half-laugh, half-war cry that Spencer didn’t think Bren was capable of - and says, “Well, ain’t that sweet. Anything else?”
He falters, and then says, “He also says fuck you.”
--
Keltie’s taken Ryan out to a club, someplace Ryan would have never gone on his own accord - blaring techno music, flashing lights, glitter. Girls dance on tables with their skirts hitched high, shirts baring their navels, looking like the harlequin girls who danced behind the band when they toured.
Keltie turns to him and grins and says something like ‘isn’t this great’ or ‘aren’t you having fun’ and Ryan grin-grimaces but she doesn’t notice, not really.
And as she dances with some guy (because Ryan didn’t want to dance, but she did, and he didn’t want to be the loser date who makes the girl sit at the table with him, so he smiled and nodded when the man came up to Keltie and she said ‘Ry - is it okay -?’) he can’t help but wonder, what the hell am I doing here?
He reaches for his sidekick and remembers it’s at the motel. He shrugs; it’s better off that way. He knows what color the flashing light will be when he gets home. Green, green, green. Green means go.
He glances at Keltie; she’s grinding against the nameless man, he’s touching her skin and pushing against her.
Vroom.
Later, when they’re both sweaty and heading home, Keltie calls a cab and starts to slide in, holding her hand out for Ryan to take it.
“No,” Ryan says, because he wants to be alone and he wants to wander someplace and he can’t imagine seeing this beautiful girl again. “No,” he clarifies, “I’m gonna walk.”
“But Ryan,” she says, “it’s like, thirty-something blocks.”
He sticks his hands in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled twenty and hands it to her. “Thanks for tonight,” he replies, starting to walk away.
“Ryan,” she calls out, and it’s almost a little desperate, now.
He turns to look at her, and she leans her hands against the open door of the taxi, choosing her words carefully. “We’re not gonna see each other again, are we? You’re kinda… dumping me, then. In a really shitty way,” she adds as an afterthought, laughing even though it’s not funny.
There’s nothing to say - he nods.
“Why?” she asks suddenly, even though she knows he doesn’t have an answer.
“Because,” he says, and it’s pathetic, but it’s all he’s got. And she twirls her hair around her finger and he notices that she’s gorgeous. He never really deserved her in the first place - he’s a crappy guy, a wannabe poet who’s in love with his band mate. She deserves a nicer guy whose heart belongs to her, even if she doesn’t want it. She shouldn’t have to be second-best.
“Bye, Ryan.” - And it’s not harsh, or bitter, it’s… understanding. They were never supposed to go anywhere, anyway - they were a doomed romance from the start.
He doesn’t say anything, and the taxi drives away. He turns and walks in the opposite direction, because that’s what deadbeats do.
He goes back to the motel room and turns the water on, some sort of pseudo-background music for him to write to. But the pipes suck, and it takes at least ten minutes to produce even a drizzle from the faucet, and as it slowly trickles down, the noise of the water beating on the tub sounds like Ry-an, Ry-an. Then the water starts up, gushing out more rapidly, and it sounds like Bren-don, Bren-don, Bren-don.
--
He’s not sure what he’s doing here, in the middle of a dirty motel hallway, and - shit, was that just a cockroach? He scrunches up his nose (“You’re such a girl,” Jon would say, if he were there, “That’s why you and Ryan would be so good together. You’re both such fucking girls.”) and knocks on the door, bravely, surely - even though he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do once it’s opened.
And after a whole minute, no one answers. And then he starts getting pissed. And when he gets pissed, he sort of, um. Overreacts. Kind of.
He slams on the door. “Open up, Ross!” Slam, slam, slam. “What’re you doing in there, anyway?” Slam, slam. Kick, slam. “Are you with that Kassie - Katie - whateverthefuck bitch?” Kick, kick, kick. Bodyslam. “If you don’t answer the door right now, I’m going to consider you banished from the band forever - and forever is a long time and you can’t ever come back from a forever-banishment, you asshole, and-”
The door opens, and Ryan is standing there in a t-shirt that’s far too tight to be legal and Brendon sort of loses it and punches him neatly on the jaw.
--
Now, the whole Punching-Ryan-Ross thing does not at all turn out how Brendon imagines it would. This is what Brendon thought what happened:
Brendon punches Ryan on the jaw, and immediately feels bad about it. Ryan doesn’t react at first, only says, “ow, fuck,” or something to that effect. Brendon says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and Ryan says something like, “you should be, asshole,” and then there’s an awkward moment of silence and then Ryan pushes Brendon against a wall and makes out with him - a lot - and then they go back into his motel room and make sweet, sweet love all night long and then they go back home and tell Jon and Spencer they’re getting married and that Ryan will now be known as Ryan Ross-Urie.
Or,
Brendon punches Ryan on the jaw, and Ryan says, “ow, why did you do that” and Brendon says “fuck you, too,” and then walks away all dramatic-like, a la teen dramas. Then Ryan chases after him and commences with the wall-pushing and the kissing and the love-making and marrying bit.
Instead, when Brendon punches Ryan, Ryan does react, and not with a kiss. No, instead, he says “what the fuck?” and punches him back, and then Brendon grabs Ryan’s shirt and pushes him against a wall and then Ryan kicks him (quite like a girl) and then somehow they end up on the floor, punching and biting and scratching and pulling hair like they’re three years old and getting involved in their first schoolyard scrap. And someone must’ve heard them cursing and banging into things and breaking things (i.e., the cheap vase that Ryan used to hit over Brendon’s head, but since it was plastic it didn’t do much damage and Brendon just laughed and said, “that was a really fucking retarded move” and then Ryan got even madder and broke off the fire sprinkler and caused a downpour of epic proportions), because out of nowhere security came upstairs and had to pull them apart and put them in a white room with bars and they’ve been there ever since, sitting on a tiny bench in silence, soaking wet, feeling like complete idiots.
“I feel like a complete idiot,” Brendon tells Ryan, hoping that maybe this will help break the silence.
“That’s because you are a complete idiot, you fucker,” Ryan replies, crossing his arms and turning to face him. “Why did you come here, anyway? You decided to come all the way over here just to accost me in the middle of a hallway and get us locked in the security room? This is probably going to be all over fucking TMZ in the morning, and we’ve been so good at avoiding getting on there.”
Brendon is suddenly defiant. “Oh, come on, being on TMZ would be awesome. That would be like, the highlight of our career - we’d be on one of those VH1 ‘top 100 bad-ass rock star moments’ or something.”
Ryan ignores this. “Shut up. Why did you come here?”
It’s a good question, and it deserves an equally good answer, which Brendon doesn’t have. “Be-cause,” he says, and that’s that.
--
They’re standing on the street, shifting their feet awkwardly. It’s like, five in the morning and they’ve just been kicked out of the motel and released from Motel Prison and Brendon looks very uneasy, kind of like he wants to go huddle up in a corner and die, and Ryan scratches his neck and says, “so,” and wonders if they should part ways and realizes he doesn’t want to.
And then Brendon says, “Ryan,” softly and gently, as if he’d been practicing that word for a very long time and he’s somewhat unsure about whether or not he’s saying it right. And then he does the unthinkable and leans in and kisses him, almost like a practice round - testing the waters, making sure it’s okay, hesitant yet forceful - and Ryan sighs and grabs a fistful of Brendon’s shirt and drags him closer, closer, closer, until there’s nothing but arms tangled in arms tangled in limbs against the side of a building.
They don’t break apart for a long time, and when they finally do, Ryan realizes he’s trembling.
“Why are you shaking?” Brendon asks, whispers, as he runs his hands up and down Ryan’s arms.
“Because,” Ryan says, pulling him closer. “Because.”
--
Comments are greatlyyy appreciated :)
Also, i'm hoping that the coding works now :\
Author: mrs_weasley_xx
Rating: PG-13 to R for language
Pairing: Ryden
POV: third person
Summary: Ryan leaves. Brendon doesn't care. ...Much.
Disclaimer I don't own anything, etc etc, obviously.
Author Notes: my second try at bandfic :] This is a longer one (3,000+ words) and I think it's the longest oneshot I've written, ever. So hopefully it's good! Title from the song by the Killers and lyrics in the beginning of the chapter by The Academy Is... from "Seed".
nbsp;
For Reasons Unknown
Shaken and faint, it was the hardest
thing to swallow, pretending you don’t miss me.
-The Academy Is…
Ryan hates that he can’t imagine himself without Brendon. Sometimes, when Brendon has disappeared in the middle of the night to do something utterly Brendon-like (“Midnight Skittles run,” he’ll say, or, “went to go see if I could figure out the chords to ‘Part of Your World’ based on memory”) or when Brendon has decided that he’s officially annoyed at Ryan (“Well, fuck this,” he’ll declare, and simply walk out), Ryan gets that panicky feeling deep in his chest. The feeling pulses through his veins, rests in his heart, and quickens his heartbeat ever-so-slightly. Slow enough to pretend like it doesn’t matter, quick enough to know that it does.
When they’re at the mall and Brendon is with Spencer, because they both want to go shoe shopping and Ryan would rather check out the books and Jon doesn’t really need more than one pair of flip-flops, Ryan can’t help but miss him. And it’s pathetic, he tells himself, because he can see Brendon trying on shoes from where he stands in the Borders across the way, he can even see the fucking pink-and-green detailing on the side of his sneakers, that’s how close he is. And yet Ryan can’t help but think that if Brendon were closer, he’d have his arm around him.
From the sneaker store, Brendon looks up and glances at Ryan. He smiles - Cheshire-cat grins even - and winks at him. Ryan feels his heart quicken again, and he drops the book he was reading. When he looks back up, Brendon has gone back to looking at his sneakers, and for a second, Ryan is actually jealous. Infuriated at himself - how dare he act so pitiful, so spineless, so fucking pathetic when it comes to a boy who he never liked to begin with? - he leaves the store.
He wanders for a while, not sure where he’s headed, and then he sits at a strategically placed bench right outside Bloomingdales (for the husbands of shop-a-holic rich bombshells, he’s sure) and thinks about a lot of things. He thinks about the band, for one, and how it’s crazy that they’ve gotten so far and yet they can still wander around a mall in Middle America without being noticed. He debates buying a new scarf or whether he should just steal it from the next photoshoot. And then he thinks about Brendon, and his mind can’t switch to other topics.
He wonders when he’ll be back. He wonders how long it’ll take.
He wonders when he started to care.
--
Brendon is sitting in the living room, sidekick out, texting away, and Ryan sits on the arm of his chair. Ryan is quiet, which is not exactly uncharacteristic of him, to say the least, but Brendon can sense that not all is well. He texts “BRB” to Pete and turns to look at Ryan. He doesn’t say anything; he knows Ryan just needs the silence to gather his thoughts.
After a while, Ryan says, “I think I need to get away.”
And Brendon says, “okay.”
(And this isn’t shocking, because, really, what was Ryan expecting? “No, no, don’t go; please don’t leave me, please”?
As he packs his things, he tries not to think about how that’s exactly what he would have told Brendon. Please don’t leave me, please.)
Ryan leaves the room and Brendon closes his sidekick, unable to form the words that he wants to say. Ryan’s the writer, after all. Brendon’s just the front man.
--
Ryan wanders around New York for a while, doing nothing of importance - he writes a little, breathes a little, lives a little, pretends not to miss Brendon a little. And when he’s not doing that, he misses Brendon a lot. He tries to ignore the flashing green light of his sidekick, taunting him with lack of messages - lack of care, Ryan figures; no one’s worrying about him.
(Not that they have anything to worry about; he’s just living in a crappy motel room in New York, close enough to the city to be considering Manhattan but far enough to still be a crappy motel room minus the glamorized Manhattan ideal.)
But the point is: no one’s bothered calling him or texting him or emailing him, so he doesn’t bother with them. The only one he talks to is Pete. And while talking to him, it’s obvious that Pete’s in the middle of a conversation with Brendon at the same time, so eventually Ryan stops trying.
He starts going out at night, wandering around the streets. It’s a weird feeling, to be in the middle of a city that you’re not too familiar with, walking around like you know where you’re going and acting like the bars you stumble upon were places you meant to visit in the first place.
He meets a girl - Keltie - and there’s something about her smile that attracts him immediately, something about her face that makes him interested, something about her outgoing, bubbly personality that makes him feel like he’s at home. And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be - you’re supposed to be with someone who reminds you of where you’d like to be, if you could go there; who you’d like to be, if you could be them.
When he wakes up the next morning, he glances at her sleeping body and realizes that in the vaguest of ways, she reminds him of Brendon. Subconsciously he glances at his sidekick - and its green blinking light - and is tempted to throw it and himself out the window.
--
Being without Ryan is harder than Brendon previously imagined. Ryan packed his shit and Brendon was stoic - calm, removed, detached, void of emotions. So Ryan was leaving. That’s okay. He’d be back. And that was all that really mattered at the time.
But it’s been a few weeks now - way longer than Brendon previously imagined; he thought it’d be a few days, a week tops, but it’s been at least three weeks, and now he can’t avoid the almost indescribable feeling of Missing Ryan. Sometimes it felt like heartburn; the familiar yearning, the feeling of broken-ribs; heart racing, angry moths fighting deep in the middle of Brendon’s heart. Other times it feels like what he imagines the after-effects of being hit by a train would be like: bruised, fragile, numb. He’s taken to carrying his sidekick around with him - just in case he calls, just in case, he reasons, not that he’s expecting him to, or hoping he will, just - just, you know, in case.
Jon and Spencer are kind of sick of him - that much is obvious. He’s annoying enough as a bubbly, caffeine-addicted freak. The dejected, moody, and obnoxious version isn’t exactly a great trade-off. And what’s more infuriating is that he won’t even do anything about it.
(“Just fucking text him already, for god’s sakes - this is ridiculous,” Spencer says, attempting to steady his voice as possible after Brendon has whined about there not being anything on television.
“I wasn’t - I don’t - what the fuck? I was just saying, how many times can they show the same piece of shit episode of America’s Next Top Model? I was just - I don’t - this has nothing to do with - him,” Brendon stutters, tripping over his words. “And - and besides, he could have called me any time, you know? He left. I’m still here - he left.”
“Shut up,” Jon replies, changing the channel to America’s Next Top Model just to piss Brendon off, and then he walks away.)
Brendon’s sitting next to Spencer at the kitchen table when Spencer gets the call. It’s hard to distinguish what’s being said just by listening to Spencer’s side of the conversation (Hey, man! Yeah, how are you? Yeah. Wow. Uh-huh. Yeah. So that’s - shit. Well, you know, good for you, I guess. You’re allowed to - you know, and - yeah. Yeah, man) but five seconds into the conversation, Brendon knows who he’s talking to.
“Well, hey, listen - I bet you want to talk to…” He starts to reach for Brendon, and mouths out, It’s Ryan, and Brendon rolls his eyes and sinks further in his seat. “I bet you want to talk to one of the guys, hold on a sec,” and he holds the phone out for Brendon to take.
Brendon ignores it.
“Bren - stop being a baby, take the goddamn phone,” Spencer says, raising his voice.
(Ryan’s hearing all of this, by the way, and as he tap tap taps his foot against the bedframe of his cheap motel bed, his breath hitches as he hears Brendon.)
Brendon shrugs, and then speaks calmly and slowly: “I have nothing to - what do you want me to do? I have nothing to say.” Spencer is silent, glowering at him. He’s reached the point where his anger has rendered him incapable of speech. “Listen, there’s nothing he wants to hear from me, I have nothing to say. If he wanted to talk to me, he could have called me.” He picked up his sidekick from its spot on the table, where it was previously sitting next to Spencer’s. “I’ve been here.”
Brendon walks out, and from his room he can hear Spencer saying, “Yeah, hey, Brendon’s just a little - you know, he’s just kind of busy right now with some - uh, with some stuff. What?” A pause. “Oh. Okay, I’ll tell him. Um, okay, bye, Ryan.”
Spencer walks into his room a few minutes later.
“So what does Ryan say then, huh?”
He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “He just wanted to let you know he’s met a girl out there - Keltie or something - and that you’d like her.”
Brendon lets out a laugh - a growl, almost; a scary sort of half-laugh, half-war cry that Spencer didn’t think Bren was capable of - and says, “Well, ain’t that sweet. Anything else?”
He falters, and then says, “He also says fuck you.”
--
Keltie’s taken Ryan out to a club, someplace Ryan would have never gone on his own accord - blaring techno music, flashing lights, glitter. Girls dance on tables with their skirts hitched high, shirts baring their navels, looking like the harlequin girls who danced behind the band when they toured.
Keltie turns to him and grins and says something like ‘isn’t this great’ or ‘aren’t you having fun’ and Ryan grin-grimaces but she doesn’t notice, not really.
And as she dances with some guy (because Ryan didn’t want to dance, but she did, and he didn’t want to be the loser date who makes the girl sit at the table with him, so he smiled and nodded when the man came up to Keltie and she said ‘Ry - is it okay -?’) he can’t help but wonder, what the hell am I doing here?
He reaches for his sidekick and remembers it’s at the motel. He shrugs; it’s better off that way. He knows what color the flashing light will be when he gets home. Green, green, green. Green means go.
He glances at Keltie; she’s grinding against the nameless man, he’s touching her skin and pushing against her.
Vroom.
Later, when they’re both sweaty and heading home, Keltie calls a cab and starts to slide in, holding her hand out for Ryan to take it.
“No,” Ryan says, because he wants to be alone and he wants to wander someplace and he can’t imagine seeing this beautiful girl again. “No,” he clarifies, “I’m gonna walk.”
“But Ryan,” she says, “it’s like, thirty-something blocks.”
He sticks his hands in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled twenty and hands it to her. “Thanks for tonight,” he replies, starting to walk away.
“Ryan,” she calls out, and it’s almost a little desperate, now.
He turns to look at her, and she leans her hands against the open door of the taxi, choosing her words carefully. “We’re not gonna see each other again, are we? You’re kinda… dumping me, then. In a really shitty way,” she adds as an afterthought, laughing even though it’s not funny.
There’s nothing to say - he nods.
“Why?” she asks suddenly, even though she knows he doesn’t have an answer.
“Because,” he says, and it’s pathetic, but it’s all he’s got. And she twirls her hair around her finger and he notices that she’s gorgeous. He never really deserved her in the first place - he’s a crappy guy, a wannabe poet who’s in love with his band mate. She deserves a nicer guy whose heart belongs to her, even if she doesn’t want it. She shouldn’t have to be second-best.
“Bye, Ryan.” - And it’s not harsh, or bitter, it’s… understanding. They were never supposed to go anywhere, anyway - they were a doomed romance from the start.
He doesn’t say anything, and the taxi drives away. He turns and walks in the opposite direction, because that’s what deadbeats do.
He goes back to the motel room and turns the water on, some sort of pseudo-background music for him to write to. But the pipes suck, and it takes at least ten minutes to produce even a drizzle from the faucet, and as it slowly trickles down, the noise of the water beating on the tub sounds like Ry-an, Ry-an. Then the water starts up, gushing out more rapidly, and it sounds like Bren-don, Bren-don, Bren-don.
--
He’s not sure what he’s doing here, in the middle of a dirty motel hallway, and - shit, was that just a cockroach? He scrunches up his nose (“You’re such a girl,” Jon would say, if he were there, “That’s why you and Ryan would be so good together. You’re both such fucking girls.”) and knocks on the door, bravely, surely - even though he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do once it’s opened.
And after a whole minute, no one answers. And then he starts getting pissed. And when he gets pissed, he sort of, um. Overreacts. Kind of.
He slams on the door. “Open up, Ross!” Slam, slam, slam. “What’re you doing in there, anyway?” Slam, slam. Kick, slam. “Are you with that Kassie - Katie - whateverthefuck bitch?” Kick, kick, kick. Bodyslam. “If you don’t answer the door right now, I’m going to consider you banished from the band forever - and forever is a long time and you can’t ever come back from a forever-banishment, you asshole, and-”
The door opens, and Ryan is standing there in a t-shirt that’s far too tight to be legal and Brendon sort of loses it and punches him neatly on the jaw.
--
Now, the whole Punching-Ryan-Ross thing does not at all turn out how Brendon imagines it would. This is what Brendon thought what happened:
Brendon punches Ryan on the jaw, and immediately feels bad about it. Ryan doesn’t react at first, only says, “ow, fuck,” or something to that effect. Brendon says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and Ryan says something like, “you should be, asshole,” and then there’s an awkward moment of silence and then Ryan pushes Brendon against a wall and makes out with him - a lot - and then they go back into his motel room and make sweet, sweet love all night long and then they go back home and tell Jon and Spencer they’re getting married and that Ryan will now be known as Ryan Ross-Urie.
Or,
Brendon punches Ryan on the jaw, and Ryan says, “ow, why did you do that” and Brendon says “fuck you, too,” and then walks away all dramatic-like, a la teen dramas. Then Ryan chases after him and commences with the wall-pushing and the kissing and the love-making and marrying bit.
Instead, when Brendon punches Ryan, Ryan does react, and not with a kiss. No, instead, he says “what the fuck?” and punches him back, and then Brendon grabs Ryan’s shirt and pushes him against a wall and then Ryan kicks him (quite like a girl) and then somehow they end up on the floor, punching and biting and scratching and pulling hair like they’re three years old and getting involved in their first schoolyard scrap. And someone must’ve heard them cursing and banging into things and breaking things (i.e., the cheap vase that Ryan used to hit over Brendon’s head, but since it was plastic it didn’t do much damage and Brendon just laughed and said, “that was a really fucking retarded move” and then Ryan got even madder and broke off the fire sprinkler and caused a downpour of epic proportions), because out of nowhere security came upstairs and had to pull them apart and put them in a white room with bars and they’ve been there ever since, sitting on a tiny bench in silence, soaking wet, feeling like complete idiots.
“I feel like a complete idiot,” Brendon tells Ryan, hoping that maybe this will help break the silence.
“That’s because you are a complete idiot, you fucker,” Ryan replies, crossing his arms and turning to face him. “Why did you come here, anyway? You decided to come all the way over here just to accost me in the middle of a hallway and get us locked in the security room? This is probably going to be all over fucking TMZ in the morning, and we’ve been so good at avoiding getting on there.”
Brendon is suddenly defiant. “Oh, come on, being on TMZ would be awesome. That would be like, the highlight of our career - we’d be on one of those VH1 ‘top 100 bad-ass rock star moments’ or something.”
Ryan ignores this. “Shut up. Why did you come here?”
It’s a good question, and it deserves an equally good answer, which Brendon doesn’t have. “Be-cause,” he says, and that’s that.
--
They’re standing on the street, shifting their feet awkwardly. It’s like, five in the morning and they’ve just been kicked out of the motel and released from Motel Prison and Brendon looks very uneasy, kind of like he wants to go huddle up in a corner and die, and Ryan scratches his neck and says, “so,” and wonders if they should part ways and realizes he doesn’t want to.
And then Brendon says, “Ryan,” softly and gently, as if he’d been practicing that word for a very long time and he’s somewhat unsure about whether or not he’s saying it right. And then he does the unthinkable and leans in and kisses him, almost like a practice round - testing the waters, making sure it’s okay, hesitant yet forceful - and Ryan sighs and grabs a fistful of Brendon’s shirt and drags him closer, closer, closer, until there’s nothing but arms tangled in arms tangled in limbs against the side of a building.
They don’t break apart for a long time, and when they finally do, Ryan realizes he’s trembling.
“Why are you shaking?” Brendon asks, whispers, as he runs his hands up and down Ryan’s arms.
“Because,” Ryan says, pulling him closer. “Because.”
--
Comments are greatlyyy appreciated :)
Also, i'm hoping that the coding works now :\