PCCF - Director's Cut
The following are scenes and extra stuff that didn't make it into the final version of PCCF for various reasons. Comments and links below. These are all by me. The ones by behindthec will be posted in his journal, primarily as stand-alones. Please see the PCCF masterpost for details.
All set? Here we go. :-)
CUT SCENE: THE STORY BEHIND RYAN'S ACTUAL SAFEWORD
This came about in a pretty funny way. Colin had written the pianissimo!powerplay, that ends with Ryan telling Brendon his safeword is 'aubergine'. My response to this was (after the key smash and heart eyes) “So what is Ryan's REAL safeword?” to which Colin came back with a “???” For some reason, when I read the scene, I was convinced that Ryan was making 'aubergine' up and that his ACTUAL safeword was even MORE revealing than Brendon's 'pianissimo'. Like, pretty much the equivalent of telling Brendon why he brought him to the cabin (which we all know Ryan was not ready to do at that point). And then this was born. Ryan's real safeword is 'scarlett'. Originally, there was supposed to be an introductory scene at the cabin where Ryan somehow confessed to Brendon that he'd lied about his safeword and why, but once the scene was cut (we just didn't know where to put it. It didn't work with the pacing at all.), it kind of fell out of the list of priorities.
(Flashback is set in 2007, during the recording/mixing of Pretty. Odd. in London.)
“Okay,” Spencer says, reaching for the laptop that's lying on the coffee table in their shared hotel suite. “Enough moping about being all alone and not getting laid, already. I say we get drunk, pig out on all the junk food in Brendon's stash and watch the most heartbreaking lovestory ever put on film. You game?”
“Sure,” Jon says easily. “I don't really see how watching two hours of epic love will make me miss Cassie any less, though. Can't we just watch something funny?”
“No, Spencer is right,” Ryan says, and Brendon looks at him questioningly, because seriously, Ryan's been bitching about being away from Keltie for days, even though they are recording at fucking Abbey Road Studios and should be over the moon. “Let's do it.” Ryan turns to Spencer, a small grin spreading over his face, and Brendon thinks ah.. “Let's hear it, Spence. What's the greatest loooove ever told in a movie?”
“Fuck you, Ryan, I was eight.”
“And it was still fucking Lassie, dude.”
Brendon looks at Jon, and they both get off the couch and start preparing enough drinks to drown a small army while Ryan and Spencer battle it out.
“Jon,” Spencer calls. “Terminator II, right? Back me up on this.”
“He's not even human!” Ryan protests, doing his best to wrestle the laptop out of Spencer's hands.
“All the more reason! Come on, he travelled through time to save her.”
“I don't know, dude, that's still kind of weird,” Jon says. “What about Star Wars?”
“Because telling someone you love them right before they're frozen in carbonite and getting dissed is the height of romance.”
“I was talking about the droids.”
“So if neither is human, it's totally okay?”
“Brendon, what do you think?”
Brendon looks up from the miniature fridge and tries not to let the sudden tension in the pit of his stomach show on his face. “I don't know,” he says slowly. “Ever After?”
“Drew Barrymore is pretty hot,” Jon muses. “I could totally go for that.”
“No,” Ryan says resolutely. “Ever After is a stupid fairytale remake. I don't know why we're even discussing this when Moulin Rouge should clearly win.”
Spencer rolls his eyes and Jon snickers. Brendon takes a deep breath and starts humming Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend just loud enough for Ryan to send him a disgusted look over his shoulder.
They watch Moulin Rouge, and Brendon lets himself be swept away in the gorgeous shimmer of it. It's just as beautiful as every other time they've watched it. Brendon really does love this movie. It's just... yeah. He grabs the bottle of vodka on the table, tops up all the glasses before leaning back, watching Nicole Kidman sway across the screen in the black leather skirt that really is fucking sexy.
“So this is perfect love?” Spencer asks Ryan when El Tango de Roxanne starts up, violins whipping prolonged tension into urgency. “I really hope you don't actually think that.”
Ryan doesn't answer, which, really, is answer enough. Brendon snuggles closer to Jon and tries to fall asleep. It doesn't work that well. He picks up his glass again, drains it. There, that should help.
Jon untangles himself and hits the bathroom, leaving Brendon alone on the left side of the couch with an empty space for company. Thirty seconds later, Spencer declares himself over the film and disappears into the bedroom he shares with Ryan.
The room is suddenly very small.
“Hey, come here.”
Brendon hesitates. They're back to normal, more or less. Friends. Good friends even. On the screen, Nicole Kidman pulls off her gloves.
Ryan makes a small, pleased sound as Brendon settles in against him, letting Ryan wrap an arm around his shoulders and resting his head on Ryan's chest. Brendon closes his eyes and lets himself breathe in the smell of skin and fabric softener, trying not to think too much about what it means.
“I think it's beautiful,” Ryan says suddenly, voice just loud enough to be heard over the film. “I mean, it's messy and tragic and against the odds, but it's there, you know. Like you can make a choice and just... get that. Get someone who knows you out of the spotlight. Who just loves you in spite of what you are, you know?”
Brendon bites his lip.
“Right?” Ryan prompts, nudging Brendon to move up until they're face to face, bodies far too close together.
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Brendon manages. It's the least convincing statement he's made in a long time. He's not surprised when Ryan frowns and his eyes become more focused.
“You love Moulin Rouge.”
“Yeah, I do,” Brendon says, and prays that Ryan will leave it at that. No such luck, apparently.
“So what's wrong with the love story?”
“It's just-” Brendon doesn't know why he's still talking instead of pushing himself off the couch, but talking he is, so. “-I think there's more to love than the fantasy they have. I mean, it's so pretty, and it just fits too well, I guess. I don't think they know each other. Hell, I don't think they even love each other, not really. They think they do, because it's romantic. It's the love of a century and all forbidden and shit, but... I don't know. It's too beautiful.”
He doesn't say “She only loves him because he loves her.” Doesn't say “She's just another part of scenery in Christian's epic, bohemian fantasy.” And he definitely doesn't make any comparisons to beautiful dancers with perpetually perfect hair, so really, it's fine.
Ryan looks at him for a long time.
“What's yours?” he asks, and Brendon stiffens.
He thinks of a hundred things he could say. Things he could make a credible case for. Cute and pretty and beautiful and meant to be. But dammit, Ryan fucking asked, and it's been too long, and Brendon doesn't lie well when he's this drunk, and this is him, and fuck Ryan if he still doesn't get what that means after four years of knowing one another.
“Gone With the Wind,” he murmurs, not meeting Ryan's eyes. “Wait, don't argue, okay. Just hear me out.”
Ryan nods, and Brendon takes a deep breath, closes his eyes.
“It's the illusions,” he tries to explain, and yeah, maybe he's thought about this a few too many times in the last year. “It's like, they all think they know exactly what they want. Scarlett waits for Ashley through, what is it? Three marriages? And she never gives up. And then, when it's all set, and he's a widower, and she's at the fucking finish line, she finally figures out that that was all it was-illusions. And she's such a bitch, seriously, and Rhett completely sees through it all, and he wants her anyway. No sparkles or smiles or ten thousand layers of lace, just her, you know? Selfish and spoiled and ready to walk over dead bodies to get what she wants. And she knows him too. She knows he's a con artist and a manipulating ass, and it's kind of exactly what she needs. Someone who'll just let her get out of the fucking corset once in a while and who won't play her sick little games. Someone who'll actually respect her and not just be happy with what she thinks she should be.”
He doesn't wait for Ryan to respond, because, fuck, Brendon knows what the answer will be. It's the same fucking answer as every other time they've stepped over the muddled line in the sand between them. He pushes himself off the couch and walks into the bathroom, starts brushing his teeth like it's a race.
“Rhett leaves.”
Brendon looks up, meets Ryan's eyes in the mirror. He looks shaken up but somehow determined, and Brendon has to fight not to turn around and take the three steps that mark the difference between looking out over the cliff and throwing himself off it at a run. Ryan's eyes are guarded, and Brendon can't do it. He can't. It's not fucking fair to ask him to always take the first step. Always be the one dragging them forward while Ryan gets to rest easily in his seat, one foot on the break pedal.
“Yeah, well, she took too long,” he says quietly, rinsing his mouth and replacing his toothbrush. “There's just so much you can take before the trust breaks, you know? Before you don't feel safe anymore.”
He angles his body to pass Ryan in the doorway without touching him, keeping his head down.
Ryan stops him.
It's just a hand on Brendon's arm. Nothing more. So easy to just brush away and ignore. But it feels like it, and Brendon's heart begins to race so fast in his chest, he loses his balance a little in the sudden dizziness.
Ryan catches him. Steadies him.
Fuck.
Ryan leans in, pressing his forehead against Brendon's, the hand on Brendon's arm tight as a vice.
“So that's it?”
It would be so easy for Brendon to close the distance, press Ryan up against the dark wood and show him exactly how off the mark he is with that statement. He leans in, lifts his free hand and brushes it over Ryan's jaw, cheek, into his hair, catching the shudder that goes through Ryan's body in the heart of his palm.
“I'll think about it tomorrow.”
He presses a kiss to Ryan's cheek and leaves, walking into his and Jon's room with unsteady steps, closing the door behind him.
CUT SCENE: BRENDON ALONE AT THE DINER POST SPOONING!SEX
This scene was written as an attempt to get Brendon from being heartbroken to deciding he wanted to fight for Ryan. We had a lot of discussions about how to actually get Brendon to the point he needed to be when he writes his song and, even more, when he decides to play it. This scene ended up with more or less the same effect as the disney-with-shane!scene, and we always wanted to keep that one, because it tied in with so many other things (the pre-story Brendon/Shane, Aladdin, the songs). Inspiration for below was actually from a FOB song. I was listening to Grand Theft Autumn and the line ”Where is your boy tonight” just made the image of Brendon entering the diner (which is such a happy place in this story) by himself pop into my head. Kind of heartbreaking.
He leaves his sunglasses on when he walks into the diner, keeping his head down as he slides into a seat at the end of the bar.
”Well, hello there!” Ruth greets him sunnily, and Brendon tries to smile back. ”Where's-Ryan, right?”
Brendon nods and manages another stiff smile. ”Could I just get some food to go, please? The lasagna. Two pieces, one veggie?”
He fiddles with his sunglasses to avoid looking up, too tired to keep up the smile. Too tired for everything, really. Ruth puts down the tray she's carrying, smile fading from her face.
”Oh, honey...”
It's not until Ruth moves around the bar, putting an arm around his shoulder and pulling him half-way into a tight hug that Brendon realises that he's shaking. He takes a couple of deep breaths and wipes his eyes quickly with the back of his fingers, offers another weak smile. ”I'm sorry.”
No, no, don't be,” Ruth says quickly, pulling up a cup and saucer seemingly out of thin air. ”Here, have some coffee. I'll have Mike whip up your order in a heartbeat, okay?”
She disappears into the kitchen. Brendon occupies his hands with his coffee cup, adding package after package of brown sugar and stirring until it dissolves. A plate slides into the space in front of him, and Ruth is back, handing him a spoon.
”What's this?”
”Raspberry/lemon pie. With a bit of custard on the side.”
Brendon takes a bite, more out of habit than anything. ”It's good.”
”It's made with love,” Ruth says. ”Well, that and a lot of sugar and butter.”
”Thank you.”
”So what happned? Last time I saw the two of you, you were over the moon. Did you have a fight?”
”No. Not really. It's just... It's complicated.”
”Is it?”
”Maybe. I don't know. I didn't think it was.”
”But Ryan does?”
”Yeah.”
”So how do you plan on getting things uncomplicated?”
”What?”
”Well, you can't just give up, can you? Ruth says, like it's self-evident. You can't tell me this is the first time you boys had a falling out.”
Brendon thinks back on writing sessions that nearly turned into war, fights about stage shows and hotel rooms and life constantly in each other's space on a bus and too far away in empty, expensive houses. His lips twitch a little against the brim of his cup. ”No. Definitely not.”
CUT SCENE: TWITTER!WAR - EXTENDED VERSION
This scene was shortened a lot, because chapter 8 was already growing into insane proportions and we wanted to keep the pace up. The glorious bad!fic in here is by j_plash, who completely and totally broke my brain with this. Quite possibly a rib too. I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt forever afterwards.
Brendon tells himself he's logging onto his computer to check his e-mail and steadfastly ignores the way his fingers pull up an extra tab for YouTube without his permission. He watches the clip until he knows every look and gesture by heart, until it's become part of the song in his head. They look so happy. Like it's easy-just music and the two of them in love.
It's too easy.
Maybe you're just making it too hard.
He sighs and pulls up his Twitter. Ever since the vid leaked, he's been getting literally thousands of questions and comments about Ryan and him. And as much as he would like to answer, to just say 'fuck it all' and come clean with the world, he knows he can't. There's been enough damage done.
thisisryanross love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered and I fear I never will.
The entry is dated late the previous night, when Brendon was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and forcing himself not to walk down the hallway, slip between Ryan's sheets and pretend they could turn back the clock for a few hours. Just one more night, had been a very convincing argument then, and he still doesn't know how he managed to stay in his room.
It doesn't matter now, though; Ryan's words hurt just as much as physical reminder would have, especially seeing them like this, on display for everyone who wants to look, making the decision brutally final.
Unless...
He pulls back the thought; there is too much hope in it. Ryan's told him, not what he wants but what he can do, and no matter how much his comment now reminds Brendon of California and little pleas for contact sent out into the night, he can't allow himself to think that this is similar. That Ryan is making a public show of running away just in order to make somebody stop him.
petewentz love is the only gold.
thespencersmith gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, dickface.
It would be a lot easier to keep fucking hope out of his head if the two people who know Ryan best in the entire world didn't come to the same conclusions.
thisisryanross theme of next album: literary sacrilege.
Not that Ryan is going to make it easy for any of them.
thespencersmith je donne mon avis non comme bon, mais comme le mien.
Brendon pulls up Babelfish, grateful that this time, he at least has whatever Spencer and Ryan are saying in writing. The translation comes out “I deliver my opinion not like good but like mine,” which isn't really that helpful. A Google search tells him someone called Montaigne said the same thing as Spencer back in the day. A second search, for “montaigne+opinion” produces a long line of sites about cannibalism, which, really, what the fuck? When a third search only gives him more sites on cannibalism and huge quantities of scientific text, Brendon gives up and goes back to what seems to be an escalating Twitter war.
petewntz @thisisryanross love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end. beat that.
thisisryanross @petewentz The course of true love never did run smooth (you should know)
Brendon bites his lip as he scrolls up the page. He doesn't like what the exchange is turning into. It's too personal in a way that's making something inside him clench. The French was a blow below the belt, even if only three people realize it, and Brendon's been in the middle of enough fights between Ryan and Spencer to know that once the gloves come off, both will go for the jugular.
amazondotjon there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear. bow to the wisdom of me at 4:18.
thisisryanross @thespencersmith sounds like a job for you http://tinyurl.com/asdkg
Fuck.
Brendon clicks the link and finds himself faced with a screen full of pornfiction so hideous that, if recast, would have brought even Pete and Patrick to their knees. It's Spencer and Jon. Some kind of sex slave scenario. In a basement. Jesus fucking Christ.
spencer cried in the dark room with concrete floors and a chair and no light or windows and the door locked from the outside, and his tears fell on his rock hard wiener. when jon first locked him in the basement spencer missed ryan and brendon and his mom but spencer could never be mad at jon walker and now he just misses jon's enormous manmeat when jon isn't here. Jon's penis is so delicious, spencer spends all his time thinking about it and it makes his erection hard and erect all day long. he cums over and over again all day long until he is in a puddle of his own creamy white juice.
then jon walker opens the door! spencer screams with joy and tries to stand up but his puckered anus is too sore from getting brutally but lovingly pounded so much all day.
"you are covered in your own pearly water" says jon "does that mean you want to suck on my manhood?" Spencer CRIES again cause he is so happy. "yes jon, please let me suck on your penis, please jon walker, I love you so much, you are so yummy i want to drink your sperm all day long!!"
Jon smiled happily and sat on Spencer's chest. "ok spence, i'm going to fuck your facepussy now." and he pulled his hard leaking member out of his exploding jeans (cause his throbbing penis was so huge it was making them explode)
spencer opened his mouth wide and jon held his pulsating manrod out so his precum poured into spencers mouth and almost choked him, but spencer swallowed it all and loved it. it tasted like ambrosia and fairy floss and CHRISTMAS, and spencer strained eagerly up toward Jon, desperate to suck on his bountiful flesh-horn. Jon's cum gurgled a bit in his throat and jon laughed at how funny spencer was when he was drinking jons semen locked in his basement. then he said "are you ready me spencey baby" and spencer answered "yes im always ready for you jon, I love you" and Jon sat on spencers face and moaned loudly at the feel of spencer's hot wet mouth sucking on his androgynous zone.
Spencer gazed up lovingly into Jon's chocolatey brown eyes, and Jon gazed back into Spencer's limpid pools of sky blue, all their love for each other pouring between their connected souls as jon thrust his manroot in and out of spencer plush candy pink lips
"i love you so much jon" spencer said around jon's huge dick in his mouth and jon bounced more on spencers face. "fuck me harder!" spencer yelled with jon's inflated erection down his throat, and jon sighed happily and pounded spencer's head into the floor, enjoying the feel of his balls flapping against spencers swelled pink lips.
Jon's creamy precum is pouring down spencers throat in milky waterfalls and spencer can feel he was close, so he opens his mouth wider and sucks on jons balls as well, which are huge too. "oh jon" he exclaims with his mouth stuffed full of Jon-meat, "you taste just like ham!"
"make me cum spencer!" jon cries
Spencer's teeth dig into the head of Jon's bursting monstercock (which he noticed was bigger than ryans) and then he licks the teeth marks on Jon's weeping, enormous member like a delectable gourmet lollypop.
"Graaaagh!" Jon yelled and squealed deeply as he spurted creamy white sperm all over Spencer's face and hair and ears and the floor. Spencer tried to lick as much of it up as he could because jon's cum was just as delicious as he dreamed about while jon was away, but it was so delicious that he wanted to have a huge orgasm, the biggest one he'd ever had, even bigger than the 27 he had had all day, because the creamy liquid all over his face and in his eyes was such a big turn on.
thespencersmith revenge is a dish best served cold. and in the absence of witnesses.
Brendon buries his face in his hands, takes a deep breath. Fuck. Normally, he would be laughing his ass off at the outrageousness and sheer badness of the text he just read, but seeing it used as a weapon between his best friends immediately makes it a lot less funny.
petewentz @thisisryanross @thespencersmith intra-band homicide is explicitly forbidden in your contracts. just saying.
Apparently, Pete agrees.
gabesaporta dudes, that's hot. cobra says give love a chance in the disco dance.
Brendon sends a prayer of thanks to Gabe, who knows both Ryan and Spencer well enough to realize that a comment like that has about an 95% chance of being a suicide mission.
thisisryanross @gabesaporta you don't get to quote your imaginary pet snake and call it a literary quote.
Then again, 95% risk of failure does mean 5% chance of success.
amazondotjon @thespencersmith @thisisryanross with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. my buddy peter at 2:15
Brendon holds his breath, even though he knows it's completely useless. Whatever went down between his friends went down over twelve hours ago, and short of finding a time-machine, there is nothing Brendon can to to change it.
thespencersmith fine
thisisryanross those of you following lit class 101, it's a) Burroughs b) Tennyson d) Montaigne e) Staël f) Shakespeare. Spence and Jon as themselves w/ spelling fail
It's the closest Spencer and Ryan will ever get to apologizing to each other, Brendon knows-the equivalent of two 17th Century noblemen giving each other a curt bow after a duel and then pretending that the blood staining lacy shirts and breaches isn't there, and that the cuts below never happened. It's just who they are. They fight and move on, forgiving each other before the blows even land.
petewentz @gabesaporta how would a cobra disco dance?
gabesaporta @petewentz with its body, heart and soul. like all men should. :)
petewentz @gabesaporta next tour, okay?
Brendon skims the rest of the exchange, smiling when it turns into another war-this time about cheesecake and whether using marshmallow fluff for icing is a crime against humanity. After that, he surfs around aimlessly for a while, until he ends up on their blog.
There's a new entry. A beautiful picture of the lake outside the cabin and a short text about summer that sounds far too much like goodbye.
He stares at it for a while, then goes back to Twitter and puts the cursor in the comment box. A song is playing in his head, too perfect for how he feels to be anything but painful, but impossible to ignore, nevertheless. He finds a link to it in another tab, hits copy/paste. He hesitates for a while on whether to write something more, deleting one disarming comment after another until he gives up and presses 'update' on the entry as it stands.
brendonuriesays http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song...
Not an 'I love you,' but so much more than that, and If Ryan gets it, he gets it, and if not, then well... there's nothing much Brendon can do about it. Existing in limbo like they are now is draining him, every little crumb of hope Ryan subconsciously drops from his table just enough to make it impossible for Brendon to declare defeat, lick his wounds and move on. It's just enough food for his heart to make him ache with how hungry he is. How much he wants, all the fucking time.
I will never be different.
Love me.
He closes his laptop and pulls his backpack out from under the bed, rummaging through the side compartment for his weed and a lighter. He wants to do something else, something normal, preferably something silly and stupid and shallow that will just get him out of his own head for a while.
He hears Ryan move around downstairs, the tell-tale ping of the microwave followed by the TV being switched on in the living room.
A minute later, Ryan appears in the door frame, looking like he's trying for casual but already knowing that he's not pulling it off.
“I made some popcorn?” he says, and Brendon nods, accepting the underlying invitation for the peace offering it is.
“I'll pick the movie.”
Ryan just smiles, and Brendon feels the hunger abate briefly, another crumb falling off the imaginary table and melting on his tongue. He puts the bag of weed into the back pocket of his jeans and follows Ryan down the stairs.
It's worth a shot.
AU: ANGSTY KITCHEN FLOOR!SEX
This is the first thing I wrote for pccf. It's set in chapter five, after they try to make waffles, Ryan accidentally turns himself into Casper and they race to the lake. Colin sent me the first part of the chapter to comment on when I was at work, and it ended right after Brendon came back into the cabin and overheard Ryan and Spencer on the phone. At this point, I was getting really scared whenever I read a new passage, because the tension was rising so high and I felt like the characters took one step closer to the edge with every line. And not in a good way. In a crash-and-burn-they-won't-be-able-to-trust-each-other-anymore kind of way. (Trust is a major theme in pccf. I don't know how many e-mails were devoted to that in the last half of the story or so. LOL.)
Anyway. I got the flour-war-and-lake-grinding passage and felt myself break a little. For me, that was a point of no return. Not the break in itself, but the point where I couldn't see HOW things would be okay in the end anymore. How they would be able to keep the trust between them. As you know, I was totally wrong. I swear, when Colin sent the rest of the chapter, where he totally just pulled them back from the brink and managed to flip the whole dynamic around into something almost stable (I still have no idea how the hell he pulled that off. I get all fangirly every time I read it.), I just stared at it for about half an hour in utter awe.
BEFORE I got the real chapter though, I was being all angsty and wrote this. It started out as me trying to explain what I felt was about to go wrong in the Ryan/Brendon dynamic and ended up as fic. Kitchen floor!sex AU. Let's go. :-)
Ryan is swearing over the stove when Brendon gets back to the cabin, fighting desperately with something that might once have been hash browns and that is now turning into coal in the frying pan. Brendon stops in the doorway, leaning against the wood while all energy just goes out of his body.
Ryan is trashing back and forth between the sink and the stove, trying to salvage some of the food while not setting the kitchen on fire. He’s changed his boxers for dry ones and put on one of his god-awful wifebeaters and a pair of completely unsexy white socks (Ryan’s feet are always cold. It’s the universe’s way of compensating for Jon being able to wear flip-flops in sub-zero temperatures.). It looks ridiculous. Ryan is probably in violation of every single fashion principle known to man at this very moment, and there is no reason why Brendon should look at him and feel what he does.
Brendon sags against the wall, trying to focus on his feet, getting them to move him out of the kitchen and into a place where everything he can’t have isn’t right in front of him. He watches Ryan’s body move and remembers hands and legs and lips and eyes and every single muscle pressed against him at some point. Always with an excuse to pull back, always swerving away right before the drop.
Enough.
Brendon doesn’t notice sliding to the floor or how his hands start to shake before he curls them tightly around his knees, his whole body curving inwards. He doesn’t notice the sounds that break from his throat either, not until Ryan is on his knees beside him, asking what the hell is happening.
“Fuck, Bren, talk to me,” Ryan pleads, which just makes Brendon’s body shake harder. He can see the drop now, right there in front of him on the back of his eyelids. He’s going to fall-he can feel himself slipping and stumbling, and whatever Ryan thinks he’s doing with his voice and hands and warmth, right there at Brendon’s side now, it won’t stop the fall.
Somehow, they’ve finally lost balance from where they were walking their tightrope, gone past the point of no return without even realising it.
Brendon never actually believed they would fall down on the wrong side.
“Just… leave. Ryan, please,” he manages through gritted teeth, as though he can somehow keep himself on the edge if he can keep his voice working. “It’s too late. I can’t do this anymore.”
“No,” Ryan says, and it doesn’t sound like any 'no' Brendon has heard from him before (and Brendon has heard at least a million). It sounds like breaking, like the last branch cracking and fingers slipping into nothingness.
Brendon squeezes his eyes more tightly together, hoping for whatever happens now to be quick, since he can’t phantom it to be painless.
Do hearts make sounds when they finally break?
Or is that just another lie in a fairy tale?
“I can’t lose you. Brendon, I can’t.” Ryan is getting desperate now, pulling and clawing at his arms and legs, trying to get them to loosen and give Ryan room to crawl inside. “Please, don’t do this. Please!”
“I love you,” Brendon chokes, and it feels so good to finally say it with no pretence, like poison from a wound, muscles relaxing into freefall when they know they have nothing to hold on to anymore. “More than anything.”
It’s a cliché goodbye, but Brendon’s always been one for classics. He curls into himself even more, arms and legs becoming solid walls to Ryan’s hands.
“I love you too,” Ryan says, voice breaking half-way through. “It kills me how much I love you, how much I want you-I-there's never been anyone else, I just-Bren, you’re everything.”
Brendon tries not to listen. It doesn’t make a difference now. He feels Ryan’s hands on him, then his mouth, kissing and touching in ways that Brendon has dreamt about for fucking years, and it’s so fucking typical of Ryan to do this now that it’s all too late.
Ryan doesn’t stop.
There are kisses down the length of Brendon’s arms. Caresses along his sides. Ryan’s legs coming around him on both sides as he somehow manages to manoeuvre his thin body into the non-existent void between Brendon’s back and the kitchen wall. Brendon fights the instinct to lean back and just melt into it, tightens his muscles to become even smaller.
Ryan doesn’t stop.
Maybe he’s dead, Brendon thinks, for the second time in one day. He’s still falling, it seems, but for some reason, Ryan is still there, kissing his neck and wrapping himself around Brendon like some kind of killer snake or overly-friendly octopus. The words whispered into his ear float by more or less unnoticed, which only serves to further convince Brendon that this-the two of them, curled together on a tiled kitchen floor-can’t possibly be real. If it were, he would be paying closer attention.
“Bren, please…”
He hits the ground. His head stops spinning, and he opens his eyes carefully against the darkness of the little cave he’s built out of arms and legs. Ryan’s hands sneak their way under Brendon’s arms and over the damp skin of his chest. He holds them there, pressed close, and Brendon can feel his heart beat beneath them. So maybe he’s not dead. But it still makes no sense.
Ryan’s lips ghost over the curve of his neck, small kisses on cold skin. Brendon raises his head, closes his eyes to the morning light and lets out a long, shaking breath.
Fuck it.
If this is where they crash and burn, they might as well do it right.
The floor is cold against his back when he twists around and pulls Ryan down on top of him. It’s sandy too; they haven’t been all that zealous when it comes to cleaning lately. He grits his teeth when Ryan pushes down, accepting the discomfort and letting it mix with the heat between them. Ryan kisses him, long fingers fumbling over Brendon’s hips to get the soaked-through boxers out of the way, and Brendon arches up to help him. It all spirals downward from there, hard and messy on the kitchen floor, with bruised knees, socks still on and not enough care or patience to make things truly pleasurable.
As executions after a six-year stint on romantic death-row go, it’s really kind of perfect.
***
They’re both completely masochistic, as it turns out, so after the kitchen, they go up to Brendon’s room, spending the day, and then the evening, and then the night that comes after that pounding each other into the mattress and learning the feel and taste of every patch of skin several times over. It’s like breaking glass-how it’s always possible to smash each shard into yet smaller pieces, sharpening the effects with the multiplication of cutting edges. Brendon loses track of how many times he hears I love you fall from Ryan’s lips, how many times he says it back as they fuse together, over and over again.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
When he wakes up again, somewhere between dawn and mid-morning, judging from the light filtering in through the blinds, he rolls out of bed gingerly and quietly starts packing. Ryan wakes up when he’s putting his guitar into its case, the snapping of fastenings a little too loud.
“What are you doing?”
“Do we need to strip the beds and do laundry before leaving or is it just sweeping the floor like last time?”
“What? Brendon…”
Brendon goes over to his dresser, taking out his clothes and randomly throwing them into his duffel bag. His hands are shaking; Ryan’s body is way too close for him to not be affected by it. He closes his eyes, blinks away the wetness and keeps up the motions of pull, fold, shove until all the drawers are empty.
“Shouldn’t you start packing?”
He doesn’t turn around. The wall is neutral, the bed is not.
“No,” Ryan says finally. “No, we’re not leaving.”
“Yeah, we are,” Brendon says simply. “Get your shit together. I’m gonna take a shower.”
When he comes back out, Ryan is still in bed, but now he has the only key to Brendon’s car wrapped securely in his hand.
“Ryan, give me the key.”
Ryan looks up, determination written all over his face.
“What do I need to do?”
“I told you: pack your shit. And give me the fucking key.”
“No,” Ryan says, tightening his fingers around the plastic key ring. “What do I need to do to make you trust me again?”
Brendon swallows and meets his eyes. They stare at each other, neither wavering, and maybe this is the most open they’ve been with each other. It probably is; it’s easy to be honest when you have nothing left to lose.
“I’m not sure you can.”
EXTRAS: RYDEN LYRICS
This is something I put together towards the end. I'd written Ryan's song, and I'd written Brendon's, and this idea of a song they would have written together, later on, after the cabin, maybe even years after it all happened, kept nagging at my brain. The theme is their journey, kind of. The fairytales, their individual songs, their past as bandmates, the fights and longing and fear. Reference to Benjamin Britten (with lyrics by Auden) at the end from Hymn to St Cecilia (lyrics here), which you might recognise from the twitter!war in chapter 8. In my head, this piece of music pretty much embodies pccf, and especially Ryden in this story. It's one of my all-time favourite classical pieces.
Reinvent love
And reinvent the fairy tale
Pile the happy endings
Until they reach the sky
Open your eyes
And watch me watch you
Through underwater plants
And wistful starlight
Until the seas run dry
And the desert floods
And we're all a synergy
Of too-bright colours
I will never be different
And I don't want you to be
Love me.
EXTRAS: BRENDON'S SONG
So. I actually wrote music to the lyrics in chapter 8 and recorded the song. I'm pretty sure that qualifies me for the 'Most Obsessive Fangirl' pagent this year. *headdesk*
Fair warning, guys: file quality (not to mention music skillz *facepalm*) is VERY poor. I have no recording equipment, no mikes, no editing program, no nothing. This is recorded with my cheap-ass camera and then converted to mp3 online. /o\
(Song belongs to me. Feel free to download a copy if you like it, but please don't share the file or copy it elsewhere. Thank you.)
Brendon's song (needs a real title. If you think of something, feel free to post a suggestion in the comments. :-))
All set? Here we go. :-)
CUT SCENE: THE STORY BEHIND RYAN'S ACTUAL SAFEWORD
This came about in a pretty funny way. Colin had written the pianissimo!powerplay, that ends with Ryan telling Brendon his safeword is 'aubergine'. My response to this was (after the key smash and heart eyes) “So what is Ryan's REAL safeword?” to which Colin came back with a “???” For some reason, when I read the scene, I was convinced that Ryan was making 'aubergine' up and that his ACTUAL safeword was even MORE revealing than Brendon's 'pianissimo'. Like, pretty much the equivalent of telling Brendon why he brought him to the cabin (which we all know Ryan was not ready to do at that point). And then this was born. Ryan's real safeword is 'scarlett'. Originally, there was supposed to be an introductory scene at the cabin where Ryan somehow confessed to Brendon that he'd lied about his safeword and why, but once the scene was cut (we just didn't know where to put it. It didn't work with the pacing at all.), it kind of fell out of the list of priorities.
(Flashback is set in 2007, during the recording/mixing of Pretty. Odd. in London.)
“Okay,” Spencer says, reaching for the laptop that's lying on the coffee table in their shared hotel suite. “Enough moping about being all alone and not getting laid, already. I say we get drunk, pig out on all the junk food in Brendon's stash and watch the most heartbreaking lovestory ever put on film. You game?”
“Sure,” Jon says easily. “I don't really see how watching two hours of epic love will make me miss Cassie any less, though. Can't we just watch something funny?”
“No, Spencer is right,” Ryan says, and Brendon looks at him questioningly, because seriously, Ryan's been bitching about being away from Keltie for days, even though they are recording at fucking Abbey Road Studios and should be over the moon. “Let's do it.” Ryan turns to Spencer, a small grin spreading over his face, and Brendon thinks ah.. “Let's hear it, Spence. What's the greatest loooove ever told in a movie?”
“Fuck you, Ryan, I was eight.”
“And it was still fucking Lassie, dude.”
Brendon looks at Jon, and they both get off the couch and start preparing enough drinks to drown a small army while Ryan and Spencer battle it out.
“Jon,” Spencer calls. “Terminator II, right? Back me up on this.”
“He's not even human!” Ryan protests, doing his best to wrestle the laptop out of Spencer's hands.
“All the more reason! Come on, he travelled through time to save her.”
“I don't know, dude, that's still kind of weird,” Jon says. “What about Star Wars?”
“Because telling someone you love them right before they're frozen in carbonite and getting dissed is the height of romance.”
“I was talking about the droids.”
“So if neither is human, it's totally okay?”
“Brendon, what do you think?”
Brendon looks up from the miniature fridge and tries not to let the sudden tension in the pit of his stomach show on his face. “I don't know,” he says slowly. “Ever After?”
“Drew Barrymore is pretty hot,” Jon muses. “I could totally go for that.”
“No,” Ryan says resolutely. “Ever After is a stupid fairytale remake. I don't know why we're even discussing this when Moulin Rouge should clearly win.”
Spencer rolls his eyes and Jon snickers. Brendon takes a deep breath and starts humming Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend just loud enough for Ryan to send him a disgusted look over his shoulder.
They watch Moulin Rouge, and Brendon lets himself be swept away in the gorgeous shimmer of it. It's just as beautiful as every other time they've watched it. Brendon really does love this movie. It's just... yeah. He grabs the bottle of vodka on the table, tops up all the glasses before leaning back, watching Nicole Kidman sway across the screen in the black leather skirt that really is fucking sexy.
“So this is perfect love?” Spencer asks Ryan when El Tango de Roxanne starts up, violins whipping prolonged tension into urgency. “I really hope you don't actually think that.”
Ryan doesn't answer, which, really, is answer enough. Brendon snuggles closer to Jon and tries to fall asleep. It doesn't work that well. He picks up his glass again, drains it. There, that should help.
Jon untangles himself and hits the bathroom, leaving Brendon alone on the left side of the couch with an empty space for company. Thirty seconds later, Spencer declares himself over the film and disappears into the bedroom he shares with Ryan.
The room is suddenly very small.
“Hey, come here.”
Brendon hesitates. They're back to normal, more or less. Friends. Good friends even. On the screen, Nicole Kidman pulls off her gloves.
Ryan makes a small, pleased sound as Brendon settles in against him, letting Ryan wrap an arm around his shoulders and resting his head on Ryan's chest. Brendon closes his eyes and lets himself breathe in the smell of skin and fabric softener, trying not to think too much about what it means.
“I think it's beautiful,” Ryan says suddenly, voice just loud enough to be heard over the film. “I mean, it's messy and tragic and against the odds, but it's there, you know. Like you can make a choice and just... get that. Get someone who knows you out of the spotlight. Who just loves you in spite of what you are, you know?”
Brendon bites his lip.
“Right?” Ryan prompts, nudging Brendon to move up until they're face to face, bodies far too close together.
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Brendon manages. It's the least convincing statement he's made in a long time. He's not surprised when Ryan frowns and his eyes become more focused.
“You love Moulin Rouge.”
“Yeah, I do,” Brendon says, and prays that Ryan will leave it at that. No such luck, apparently.
“So what's wrong with the love story?”
“It's just-” Brendon doesn't know why he's still talking instead of pushing himself off the couch, but talking he is, so. “-I think there's more to love than the fantasy they have. I mean, it's so pretty, and it just fits too well, I guess. I don't think they know each other. Hell, I don't think they even love each other, not really. They think they do, because it's romantic. It's the love of a century and all forbidden and shit, but... I don't know. It's too beautiful.”
He doesn't say “She only loves him because he loves her.” Doesn't say “She's just another part of scenery in Christian's epic, bohemian fantasy.” And he definitely doesn't make any comparisons to beautiful dancers with perpetually perfect hair, so really, it's fine.
Ryan looks at him for a long time.
“What's yours?” he asks, and Brendon stiffens.
He thinks of a hundred things he could say. Things he could make a credible case for. Cute and pretty and beautiful and meant to be. But dammit, Ryan fucking asked, and it's been too long, and Brendon doesn't lie well when he's this drunk, and this is him, and fuck Ryan if he still doesn't get what that means after four years of knowing one another.
“Gone With the Wind,” he murmurs, not meeting Ryan's eyes. “Wait, don't argue, okay. Just hear me out.”
Ryan nods, and Brendon takes a deep breath, closes his eyes.
“It's the illusions,” he tries to explain, and yeah, maybe he's thought about this a few too many times in the last year. “It's like, they all think they know exactly what they want. Scarlett waits for Ashley through, what is it? Three marriages? And she never gives up. And then, when it's all set, and he's a widower, and she's at the fucking finish line, she finally figures out that that was all it was-illusions. And she's such a bitch, seriously, and Rhett completely sees through it all, and he wants her anyway. No sparkles or smiles or ten thousand layers of lace, just her, you know? Selfish and spoiled and ready to walk over dead bodies to get what she wants. And she knows him too. She knows he's a con artist and a manipulating ass, and it's kind of exactly what she needs. Someone who'll just let her get out of the fucking corset once in a while and who won't play her sick little games. Someone who'll actually respect her and not just be happy with what she thinks she should be.”
He doesn't wait for Ryan to respond, because, fuck, Brendon knows what the answer will be. It's the same fucking answer as every other time they've stepped over the muddled line in the sand between them. He pushes himself off the couch and walks into the bathroom, starts brushing his teeth like it's a race.
“Rhett leaves.”
Brendon looks up, meets Ryan's eyes in the mirror. He looks shaken up but somehow determined, and Brendon has to fight not to turn around and take the three steps that mark the difference between looking out over the cliff and throwing himself off it at a run. Ryan's eyes are guarded, and Brendon can't do it. He can't. It's not fucking fair to ask him to always take the first step. Always be the one dragging them forward while Ryan gets to rest easily in his seat, one foot on the break pedal.
“Yeah, well, she took too long,” he says quietly, rinsing his mouth and replacing his toothbrush. “There's just so much you can take before the trust breaks, you know? Before you don't feel safe anymore.”
He angles his body to pass Ryan in the doorway without touching him, keeping his head down.
Ryan stops him.
It's just a hand on Brendon's arm. Nothing more. So easy to just brush away and ignore. But it feels like it, and Brendon's heart begins to race so fast in his chest, he loses his balance a little in the sudden dizziness.
Ryan catches him. Steadies him.
Fuck.
Ryan leans in, pressing his forehead against Brendon's, the hand on Brendon's arm tight as a vice.
“So that's it?”
It would be so easy for Brendon to close the distance, press Ryan up against the dark wood and show him exactly how off the mark he is with that statement. He leans in, lifts his free hand and brushes it over Ryan's jaw, cheek, into his hair, catching the shudder that goes through Ryan's body in the heart of his palm.
“I'll think about it tomorrow.”
He presses a kiss to Ryan's cheek and leaves, walking into his and Jon's room with unsteady steps, closing the door behind him.
CUT SCENE: BRENDON ALONE AT THE DINER POST SPOONING!SEX
This scene was written as an attempt to get Brendon from being heartbroken to deciding he wanted to fight for Ryan. We had a lot of discussions about how to actually get Brendon to the point he needed to be when he writes his song and, even more, when he decides to play it. This scene ended up with more or less the same effect as the disney-with-shane!scene, and we always wanted to keep that one, because it tied in with so many other things (the pre-story Brendon/Shane, Aladdin, the songs). Inspiration for below was actually from a FOB song. I was listening to Grand Theft Autumn and the line ”Where is your boy tonight” just made the image of Brendon entering the diner (which is such a happy place in this story) by himself pop into my head. Kind of heartbreaking.
He leaves his sunglasses on when he walks into the diner, keeping his head down as he slides into a seat at the end of the bar.
”Well, hello there!” Ruth greets him sunnily, and Brendon tries to smile back. ”Where's-Ryan, right?”
Brendon nods and manages another stiff smile. ”Could I just get some food to go, please? The lasagna. Two pieces, one veggie?”
He fiddles with his sunglasses to avoid looking up, too tired to keep up the smile. Too tired for everything, really. Ruth puts down the tray she's carrying, smile fading from her face.
”Oh, honey...”
It's not until Ruth moves around the bar, putting an arm around his shoulder and pulling him half-way into a tight hug that Brendon realises that he's shaking. He takes a couple of deep breaths and wipes his eyes quickly with the back of his fingers, offers another weak smile. ”I'm sorry.”
No, no, don't be,” Ruth says quickly, pulling up a cup and saucer seemingly out of thin air. ”Here, have some coffee. I'll have Mike whip up your order in a heartbeat, okay?”
She disappears into the kitchen. Brendon occupies his hands with his coffee cup, adding package after package of brown sugar and stirring until it dissolves. A plate slides into the space in front of him, and Ruth is back, handing him a spoon.
”What's this?”
”Raspberry/lemon pie. With a bit of custard on the side.”
Brendon takes a bite, more out of habit than anything. ”It's good.”
”It's made with love,” Ruth says. ”Well, that and a lot of sugar and butter.”
”Thank you.”
”So what happned? Last time I saw the two of you, you were over the moon. Did you have a fight?”
”No. Not really. It's just... It's complicated.”
”Is it?”
”Maybe. I don't know. I didn't think it was.”
”But Ryan does?”
”Yeah.”
”So how do you plan on getting things uncomplicated?”
”What?”
”Well, you can't just give up, can you? Ruth says, like it's self-evident. You can't tell me this is the first time you boys had a falling out.”
Brendon thinks back on writing sessions that nearly turned into war, fights about stage shows and hotel rooms and life constantly in each other's space on a bus and too far away in empty, expensive houses. His lips twitch a little against the brim of his cup. ”No. Definitely not.”
CUT SCENE: TWITTER!WAR - EXTENDED VERSION
This scene was shortened a lot, because chapter 8 was already growing into insane proportions and we wanted to keep the pace up. The glorious bad!fic in here is by j_plash, who completely and totally broke my brain with this. Quite possibly a rib too. I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt forever afterwards.
Brendon tells himself he's logging onto his computer to check his e-mail and steadfastly ignores the way his fingers pull up an extra tab for YouTube without his permission. He watches the clip until he knows every look and gesture by heart, until it's become part of the song in his head. They look so happy. Like it's easy-just music and the two of them in love.
It's too easy.
Maybe you're just making it too hard.
He sighs and pulls up his Twitter. Ever since the vid leaked, he's been getting literally thousands of questions and comments about Ryan and him. And as much as he would like to answer, to just say 'fuck it all' and come clean with the world, he knows he can't. There's been enough damage done.
thisisryanross love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered and I fear I never will.
The entry is dated late the previous night, when Brendon was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and forcing himself not to walk down the hallway, slip between Ryan's sheets and pretend they could turn back the clock for a few hours. Just one more night, had been a very convincing argument then, and he still doesn't know how he managed to stay in his room.
It doesn't matter now, though; Ryan's words hurt just as much as physical reminder would have, especially seeing them like this, on display for everyone who wants to look, making the decision brutally final.
Unless...
He pulls back the thought; there is too much hope in it. Ryan's told him, not what he wants but what he can do, and no matter how much his comment now reminds Brendon of California and little pleas for contact sent out into the night, he can't allow himself to think that this is similar. That Ryan is making a public show of running away just in order to make somebody stop him.
petewentz love is the only gold.
thespencersmith gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, dickface.
It would be a lot easier to keep fucking hope out of his head if the two people who know Ryan best in the entire world didn't come to the same conclusions.
thisisryanross theme of next album: literary sacrilege.
Not that Ryan is going to make it easy for any of them.
thespencersmith je donne mon avis non comme bon, mais comme le mien.
Brendon pulls up Babelfish, grateful that this time, he at least has whatever Spencer and Ryan are saying in writing. The translation comes out “I deliver my opinion not like good but like mine,” which isn't really that helpful. A Google search tells him someone called Montaigne said the same thing as Spencer back in the day. A second search, for “montaigne+opinion” produces a long line of sites about cannibalism, which, really, what the fuck? When a third search only gives him more sites on cannibalism and huge quantities of scientific text, Brendon gives up and goes back to what seems to be an escalating Twitter war.
petewntz @thisisryanross love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end. beat that.
thisisryanross @petewentz The course of true love never did run smooth (you should know)
Brendon bites his lip as he scrolls up the page. He doesn't like what the exchange is turning into. It's too personal in a way that's making something inside him clench. The French was a blow below the belt, even if only three people realize it, and Brendon's been in the middle of enough fights between Ryan and Spencer to know that once the gloves come off, both will go for the jugular.
amazondotjon there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear. bow to the wisdom of me at 4:18.
thisisryanross @thespencersmith sounds like a job for you http://tinyurl.com/asdkg
Fuck.
Brendon clicks the link and finds himself faced with a screen full of pornfiction so hideous that, if recast, would have brought even Pete and Patrick to their knees. It's Spencer and Jon. Some kind of sex slave scenario. In a basement. Jesus fucking Christ.
spencer cried in the dark room with concrete floors and a chair and no light or windows and the door locked from the outside, and his tears fell on his rock hard wiener. when jon first locked him in the basement spencer missed ryan and brendon and his mom but spencer could never be mad at jon walker and now he just misses jon's enormous manmeat when jon isn't here. Jon's penis is so delicious, spencer spends all his time thinking about it and it makes his erection hard and erect all day long. he cums over and over again all day long until he is in a puddle of his own creamy white juice.
then jon walker opens the door! spencer screams with joy and tries to stand up but his puckered anus is too sore from getting brutally but lovingly pounded so much all day.
"you are covered in your own pearly water" says jon "does that mean you want to suck on my manhood?" Spencer CRIES again cause he is so happy. "yes jon, please let me suck on your penis, please jon walker, I love you so much, you are so yummy i want to drink your sperm all day long!!"
Jon smiled happily and sat on Spencer's chest. "ok spence, i'm going to fuck your facepussy now." and he pulled his hard leaking member out of his exploding jeans (cause his throbbing penis was so huge it was making them explode)
spencer opened his mouth wide and jon held his pulsating manrod out so his precum poured into spencers mouth and almost choked him, but spencer swallowed it all and loved it. it tasted like ambrosia and fairy floss and CHRISTMAS, and spencer strained eagerly up toward Jon, desperate to suck on his bountiful flesh-horn. Jon's cum gurgled a bit in his throat and jon laughed at how funny spencer was when he was drinking jons semen locked in his basement. then he said "are you ready me spencey baby" and spencer answered "yes im always ready for you jon, I love you" and Jon sat on spencers face and moaned loudly at the feel of spencer's hot wet mouth sucking on his androgynous zone.
Spencer gazed up lovingly into Jon's chocolatey brown eyes, and Jon gazed back into Spencer's limpid pools of sky blue, all their love for each other pouring between their connected souls as jon thrust his manroot in and out of spencer plush candy pink lips
"i love you so much jon" spencer said around jon's huge dick in his mouth and jon bounced more on spencers face. "fuck me harder!" spencer yelled with jon's inflated erection down his throat, and jon sighed happily and pounded spencer's head into the floor, enjoying the feel of his balls flapping against spencers swelled pink lips.
Jon's creamy precum is pouring down spencers throat in milky waterfalls and spencer can feel he was close, so he opens his mouth wider and sucks on jons balls as well, which are huge too. "oh jon" he exclaims with his mouth stuffed full of Jon-meat, "you taste just like ham!"
"make me cum spencer!" jon cries
Spencer's teeth dig into the head of Jon's bursting monstercock (which he noticed was bigger than ryans) and then he licks the teeth marks on Jon's weeping, enormous member like a delectable gourmet lollypop.
"Graaaagh!" Jon yelled and squealed deeply as he spurted creamy white sperm all over Spencer's face and hair and ears and the floor. Spencer tried to lick as much of it up as he could because jon's cum was just as delicious as he dreamed about while jon was away, but it was so delicious that he wanted to have a huge orgasm, the biggest one he'd ever had, even bigger than the 27 he had had all day, because the creamy liquid all over his face and in his eyes was such a big turn on.
thespencersmith revenge is a dish best served cold. and in the absence of witnesses.
Brendon buries his face in his hands, takes a deep breath. Fuck. Normally, he would be laughing his ass off at the outrageousness and sheer badness of the text he just read, but seeing it used as a weapon between his best friends immediately makes it a lot less funny.
petewentz @thisisryanross @thespencersmith intra-band homicide is explicitly forbidden in your contracts. just saying.
Apparently, Pete agrees.
gabesaporta dudes, that's hot. cobra says give love a chance in the disco dance.
Brendon sends a prayer of thanks to Gabe, who knows both Ryan and Spencer well enough to realize that a comment like that has about an 95% chance of being a suicide mission.
thisisryanross @gabesaporta you don't get to quote your imaginary pet snake and call it a literary quote.
Then again, 95% risk of failure does mean 5% chance of success.
amazondotjon @thespencersmith @thisisryanross with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. my buddy peter at 2:15
Brendon holds his breath, even though he knows it's completely useless. Whatever went down between his friends went down over twelve hours ago, and short of finding a time-machine, there is nothing Brendon can to to change it.
thespencersmith fine
thisisryanross those of you following lit class 101, it's a) Burroughs b) Tennyson d) Montaigne e) Staël f) Shakespeare. Spence and Jon as themselves w/ spelling fail
It's the closest Spencer and Ryan will ever get to apologizing to each other, Brendon knows-the equivalent of two 17th Century noblemen giving each other a curt bow after a duel and then pretending that the blood staining lacy shirts and breaches isn't there, and that the cuts below never happened. It's just who they are. They fight and move on, forgiving each other before the blows even land.
petewentz @gabesaporta how would a cobra disco dance?
gabesaporta @petewentz with its body, heart and soul. like all men should. :)
petewentz @gabesaporta next tour, okay?
Brendon skims the rest of the exchange, smiling when it turns into another war-this time about cheesecake and whether using marshmallow fluff for icing is a crime against humanity. After that, he surfs around aimlessly for a while, until he ends up on their blog.
There's a new entry. A beautiful picture of the lake outside the cabin and a short text about summer that sounds far too much like goodbye.
He stares at it for a while, then goes back to Twitter and puts the cursor in the comment box. A song is playing in his head, too perfect for how he feels to be anything but painful, but impossible to ignore, nevertheless. He finds a link to it in another tab, hits copy/paste. He hesitates for a while on whether to write something more, deleting one disarming comment after another until he gives up and presses 'update' on the entry as it stands.
brendonuriesays http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song...
Not an 'I love you,' but so much more than that, and If Ryan gets it, he gets it, and if not, then well... there's nothing much Brendon can do about it. Existing in limbo like they are now is draining him, every little crumb of hope Ryan subconsciously drops from his table just enough to make it impossible for Brendon to declare defeat, lick his wounds and move on. It's just enough food for his heart to make him ache with how hungry he is. How much he wants, all the fucking time.
I will never be different.
Love me.
He closes his laptop and pulls his backpack out from under the bed, rummaging through the side compartment for his weed and a lighter. He wants to do something else, something normal, preferably something silly and stupid and shallow that will just get him out of his own head for a while.
He hears Ryan move around downstairs, the tell-tale ping of the microwave followed by the TV being switched on in the living room.
A minute later, Ryan appears in the door frame, looking like he's trying for casual but already knowing that he's not pulling it off.
“I made some popcorn?” he says, and Brendon nods, accepting the underlying invitation for the peace offering it is.
“I'll pick the movie.”
Ryan just smiles, and Brendon feels the hunger abate briefly, another crumb falling off the imaginary table and melting on his tongue. He puts the bag of weed into the back pocket of his jeans and follows Ryan down the stairs.
It's worth a shot.
AU: ANGSTY KITCHEN FLOOR!SEX
This is the first thing I wrote for pccf. It's set in chapter five, after they try to make waffles, Ryan accidentally turns himself into Casper and they race to the lake. Colin sent me the first part of the chapter to comment on when I was at work, and it ended right after Brendon came back into the cabin and overheard Ryan and Spencer on the phone. At this point, I was getting really scared whenever I read a new passage, because the tension was rising so high and I felt like the characters took one step closer to the edge with every line. And not in a good way. In a crash-and-burn-they-won't-be-able-to-trust-each-other-anymore kind of way. (Trust is a major theme in pccf. I don't know how many e-mails were devoted to that in the last half of the story or so. LOL.)
Anyway. I got the flour-war-and-lake-grinding passage and felt myself break a little. For me, that was a point of no return. Not the break in itself, but the point where I couldn't see HOW things would be okay in the end anymore. How they would be able to keep the trust between them. As you know, I was totally wrong. I swear, when Colin sent the rest of the chapter, where he totally just pulled them back from the brink and managed to flip the whole dynamic around into something almost stable (I still have no idea how the hell he pulled that off. I get all fangirly every time I read it.), I just stared at it for about half an hour in utter awe.
BEFORE I got the real chapter though, I was being all angsty and wrote this. It started out as me trying to explain what I felt was about to go wrong in the Ryan/Brendon dynamic and ended up as fic. Kitchen floor!sex AU. Let's go. :-)
Ryan is swearing over the stove when Brendon gets back to the cabin, fighting desperately with something that might once have been hash browns and that is now turning into coal in the frying pan. Brendon stops in the doorway, leaning against the wood while all energy just goes out of his body.
Ryan is trashing back and forth between the sink and the stove, trying to salvage some of the food while not setting the kitchen on fire. He’s changed his boxers for dry ones and put on one of his god-awful wifebeaters and a pair of completely unsexy white socks (Ryan’s feet are always cold. It’s the universe’s way of compensating for Jon being able to wear flip-flops in sub-zero temperatures.). It looks ridiculous. Ryan is probably in violation of every single fashion principle known to man at this very moment, and there is no reason why Brendon should look at him and feel what he does.
Brendon sags against the wall, trying to focus on his feet, getting them to move him out of the kitchen and into a place where everything he can’t have isn’t right in front of him. He watches Ryan’s body move and remembers hands and legs and lips and eyes and every single muscle pressed against him at some point. Always with an excuse to pull back, always swerving away right before the drop.
Enough.
Brendon doesn’t notice sliding to the floor or how his hands start to shake before he curls them tightly around his knees, his whole body curving inwards. He doesn’t notice the sounds that break from his throat either, not until Ryan is on his knees beside him, asking what the hell is happening.
“Fuck, Bren, talk to me,” Ryan pleads, which just makes Brendon’s body shake harder. He can see the drop now, right there in front of him on the back of his eyelids. He’s going to fall-he can feel himself slipping and stumbling, and whatever Ryan thinks he’s doing with his voice and hands and warmth, right there at Brendon’s side now, it won’t stop the fall.
Somehow, they’ve finally lost balance from where they were walking their tightrope, gone past the point of no return without even realising it.
Brendon never actually believed they would fall down on the wrong side.
“Just… leave. Ryan, please,” he manages through gritted teeth, as though he can somehow keep himself on the edge if he can keep his voice working. “It’s too late. I can’t do this anymore.”
“No,” Ryan says, and it doesn’t sound like any 'no' Brendon has heard from him before (and Brendon has heard at least a million). It sounds like breaking, like the last branch cracking and fingers slipping into nothingness.
Brendon squeezes his eyes more tightly together, hoping for whatever happens now to be quick, since he can’t phantom it to be painless.
Do hearts make sounds when they finally break?
Or is that just another lie in a fairy tale?
“I can’t lose you. Brendon, I can’t.” Ryan is getting desperate now, pulling and clawing at his arms and legs, trying to get them to loosen and give Ryan room to crawl inside. “Please, don’t do this. Please!”
“I love you,” Brendon chokes, and it feels so good to finally say it with no pretence, like poison from a wound, muscles relaxing into freefall when they know they have nothing to hold on to anymore. “More than anything.”
It’s a cliché goodbye, but Brendon’s always been one for classics. He curls into himself even more, arms and legs becoming solid walls to Ryan’s hands.
“I love you too,” Ryan says, voice breaking half-way through. “It kills me how much I love you, how much I want you-I-there's never been anyone else, I just-Bren, you’re everything.”
Brendon tries not to listen. It doesn’t make a difference now. He feels Ryan’s hands on him, then his mouth, kissing and touching in ways that Brendon has dreamt about for fucking years, and it’s so fucking typical of Ryan to do this now that it’s all too late.
Ryan doesn’t stop.
There are kisses down the length of Brendon’s arms. Caresses along his sides. Ryan’s legs coming around him on both sides as he somehow manages to manoeuvre his thin body into the non-existent void between Brendon’s back and the kitchen wall. Brendon fights the instinct to lean back and just melt into it, tightens his muscles to become even smaller.
Ryan doesn’t stop.
Maybe he’s dead, Brendon thinks, for the second time in one day. He’s still falling, it seems, but for some reason, Ryan is still there, kissing his neck and wrapping himself around Brendon like some kind of killer snake or overly-friendly octopus. The words whispered into his ear float by more or less unnoticed, which only serves to further convince Brendon that this-the two of them, curled together on a tiled kitchen floor-can’t possibly be real. If it were, he would be paying closer attention.
“Bren, please…”
He hits the ground. His head stops spinning, and he opens his eyes carefully against the darkness of the little cave he’s built out of arms and legs. Ryan’s hands sneak their way under Brendon’s arms and over the damp skin of his chest. He holds them there, pressed close, and Brendon can feel his heart beat beneath them. So maybe he’s not dead. But it still makes no sense.
Ryan’s lips ghost over the curve of his neck, small kisses on cold skin. Brendon raises his head, closes his eyes to the morning light and lets out a long, shaking breath.
Fuck it.
If this is where they crash and burn, they might as well do it right.
The floor is cold against his back when he twists around and pulls Ryan down on top of him. It’s sandy too; they haven’t been all that zealous when it comes to cleaning lately. He grits his teeth when Ryan pushes down, accepting the discomfort and letting it mix with the heat between them. Ryan kisses him, long fingers fumbling over Brendon’s hips to get the soaked-through boxers out of the way, and Brendon arches up to help him. It all spirals downward from there, hard and messy on the kitchen floor, with bruised knees, socks still on and not enough care or patience to make things truly pleasurable.
As executions after a six-year stint on romantic death-row go, it’s really kind of perfect.
***
They’re both completely masochistic, as it turns out, so after the kitchen, they go up to Brendon’s room, spending the day, and then the evening, and then the night that comes after that pounding each other into the mattress and learning the feel and taste of every patch of skin several times over. It’s like breaking glass-how it’s always possible to smash each shard into yet smaller pieces, sharpening the effects with the multiplication of cutting edges. Brendon loses track of how many times he hears I love you fall from Ryan’s lips, how many times he says it back as they fuse together, over and over again.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
When he wakes up again, somewhere between dawn and mid-morning, judging from the light filtering in through the blinds, he rolls out of bed gingerly and quietly starts packing. Ryan wakes up when he’s putting his guitar into its case, the snapping of fastenings a little too loud.
“What are you doing?”
“Do we need to strip the beds and do laundry before leaving or is it just sweeping the floor like last time?”
“What? Brendon…”
Brendon goes over to his dresser, taking out his clothes and randomly throwing them into his duffel bag. His hands are shaking; Ryan’s body is way too close for him to not be affected by it. He closes his eyes, blinks away the wetness and keeps up the motions of pull, fold, shove until all the drawers are empty.
“Shouldn’t you start packing?”
He doesn’t turn around. The wall is neutral, the bed is not.
“No,” Ryan says finally. “No, we’re not leaving.”
“Yeah, we are,” Brendon says simply. “Get your shit together. I’m gonna take a shower.”
When he comes back out, Ryan is still in bed, but now he has the only key to Brendon’s car wrapped securely in his hand.
“Ryan, give me the key.”
Ryan looks up, determination written all over his face.
“What do I need to do?”
“I told you: pack your shit. And give me the fucking key.”
“No,” Ryan says, tightening his fingers around the plastic key ring. “What do I need to do to make you trust me again?”
Brendon swallows and meets his eyes. They stare at each other, neither wavering, and maybe this is the most open they’ve been with each other. It probably is; it’s easy to be honest when you have nothing left to lose.
“I’m not sure you can.”
EXTRAS: RYDEN LYRICS
This is something I put together towards the end. I'd written Ryan's song, and I'd written Brendon's, and this idea of a song they would have written together, later on, after the cabin, maybe even years after it all happened, kept nagging at my brain. The theme is their journey, kind of. The fairytales, their individual songs, their past as bandmates, the fights and longing and fear. Reference to Benjamin Britten (with lyrics by Auden) at the end from Hymn to St Cecilia (lyrics here), which you might recognise from the twitter!war in chapter 8. In my head, this piece of music pretty much embodies pccf, and especially Ryden in this story. It's one of my all-time favourite classical pieces.
Reinvent love
And reinvent the fairy tale
Pile the happy endings
Until they reach the sky
Open your eyes
And watch me watch you
Through underwater plants
And wistful starlight
Until the seas run dry
And the desert floods
And we're all a synergy
Of too-bright colours
I will never be different
And I don't want you to be
Love me.
EXTRAS: BRENDON'S SONG
So. I actually wrote music to the lyrics in chapter 8 and recorded the song. I'm pretty sure that qualifies me for the 'Most Obsessive Fangirl' pagent this year. *headdesk*
Fair warning, guys: file quality (not to mention music skillz *facepalm*) is VERY poor. I have no recording equipment, no mikes, no editing program, no nothing. This is recorded with my cheap-ass camera and then converted to mp3 online. /o\
(Song belongs to me. Feel free to download a copy if you like it, but please don't share the file or copy it elsewhere. Thank you.)
Brendon's song (needs a real title. If you think of something, feel free to post a suggestion in the comments. :-))