wrapped up in headphone cords.
here comes the sun
Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie. 2000 words on a love song that's not really about them.
The first thing Ryan realises is that Brendon the musician and Brendon the human being are two completely different people. And this is why he only seriously considers him the first time he opens his mouth to sing.
Ryan doesn't hear the words, can't analyse his voice or anything else at this point, can't feel anything about it, can't judge or can't think in the way he always has about everything, because the only thing there is Brendon, the real Brendon, Brendon singing from the deepest part of him because it's the only way he can.
Brendon only stops when Spencer looks at him a little strangely, and says, "That's enough, right, Ryan?" and he jerks his head upwards a little bit like he doesn't know what's happening. Then he nods at Spencer, moves his eyes back to Brendon, and can think again.
"I think," he says, "you're pretty good."
He hates him a little, then, for being able to give himself away so freely.
The first thing Brendon decides is that he loves the gold light in Ryan's eyes when he's describing something, when he's excited, that different kind of excited. Brendon's is different: the kind of excitement that is a force of nature at the moment it exists, the kind that you can't begin to comprehend the morning after but that leaves you with sore throats, aches, bruises, the greatest happiness you will ever feel.
Ryan's subdued version reminds him in a sad sort of way that his doesn't last, can't last, because sooner or later, it'll end up killing you.
(Ryan talks and talks, words blending together, contorting, distracting, and Brendon thinks, You're beautiful in all the ways you will never know.)
Ryan doesn't fall in love with Brendon in an hour. He doesn't fall in love in four years. He falls in love sometime in between all of it. In between the time and between the lines. He falls in love during the time he thinks about Brendon when he's not there.
Brendon's hands frame his hips, his waist. Ribs, elbows, sharp places that need softening. He presses a kiss to his shoulder blade, leans into the curve of his neck and shoulder, and he's never really fitted perfectly. They've never, not when they were living together and got in each other's way more than they ever imagined they would when they weren't (somehow, they never tell anyone else about this-and silent agreement has always been the best kind for them). Not when they were trying to figure out what this was exactly (Brendon, Brendon admits he's not his type, not at all, and Ryan, well, Ryan is pretty sure Brendon somehow became his favourite person in the world without Ryan even really liking him at all).
It's not about fitting. It's about not. It's about puzzle pieces aligning but clashing, colliding, making sound and colour the way only they could.
(It's about how Brendon never allows Ryan to sober him, never, but can still care in this serious, honest, terrible way. It's how Brendon can always, always make him that little bit happier. It's not a matter of equality, not about perfect matches or compensation. It's not anything anyone else will ever say it is.)
It's not perfect. It wouldn't be anything worth having otherwise.
The first time they kiss is in their practice space, and Ryan moves back, but never to break the contact, and they only do, really, when Ryan crashes into the drums (on purpose, probably; Brendon won't know, and Ryan will, but he won't ever admit it to himself). Brendon tells him, tells him, I'm not perfect, tells him a lot of things, and Ryan wonders what Brendon knows about him, wonders if he'd feel sorry if he did know, if he'd want him to feel sorry. He's not supposed to care, though; he's not. But he knows Brendon. He does. He cares.
The next day, he only looks at him when Brendon approaches, like before (and this is dangerous; this shouldn't- this can't be-). He wipes his hands on his pants, like they're sweating, or maybe, maybe he's just steadying himself for something: looking down before looking up, moving back a few steps before jumping off a cliff. Breathing. Just breathing. For the last time, for the last time that it'll be like this, the last time before it changes.
He gets up to face him, and he looks different again, different from anything Ryan Ross has ever been.
Says, "I think. I think I'm fed up of girls."
Brendon laughs at him then, laughs and wraps his arms around his tiny waist, twirls him around laughing into his neck. Ryan closes his eyes, smiles a little.
Brendon pulls away, stares at him with those eyes, and Ryan, Ryan doesn't look down.
He doesn't want to again.
Ryan, he says once, "I'll never deserve you."
All Brendon says is, "You didn't deserve a lot of things. But I'm not one of them. Or I hope I'm not."
This is what Brendon sees in him: words that flow unrestrained; pain, corked tightly for now; love, untapped and careful.
Ryan's all levels and layers. Brendon's fascinated. It's not something you are born with; it's not the natural that he's so familiar with. It's built, structurally sound, erected high for all to see or underground (or somewhere in between the two). Brendon wonders, more often than he should, what Ryan would be without it.
(The conclusion he comes to more than once is: someone I wouldn't be able to love like this.)
They spend the first night in Ryan's room, and he wakes up to Brendon playing with his make-up. Not in an intrusive way (not like him), but an interested one.
Ryan gets up, says, "Sit," and Brendon does, chair facing away from the mirror and towards the sunlight.
Ryan smears colour on his eyelids, makes intricate designs on his cheeks, and the dark lines and the bright lines contrast in the same way against his pale skin.
Ryan moves back to take a better look, but Brendon takes his wrist in his thumb and forefinger and pulls him onto his lap, gently (not like him). Ryan shifts a little to look at him properly. Brendon says, "You're really good at this," even though he hasn't really seen it yet, and maybe he's not talking about that, but he can't be. Ryan rests his fingertips on his face, exactly, in places where he won't smudge his artwork, and kisses him just like that, careful, like one wrong move could break him, break them both.
Brendon's not the sun. He doesn't control anything. It's all inconsequential because comfort comes after the pain and what fucking use is that? What's the point of being happy when your world is going to end anyway?
Brendon's not the sun, but he wants it to come out and sing with him. He wants it to be more than it is. Somehow, he can ask that from everything but Ryan.
With Ryan, he doesn't want. He probably doesn't need either. (There's nothing he could because Ryan, Ryan doesn't have anymore to give. He just gives his words, and it's enough; it's always been enough. They're the only things he's ever been able to give so easily.) He just chooses to be, in some way, Ryan's sun. But not the one that controls. The one that comes out to sing. The one that comes out to be exactly who he is without demanding that from anything else. The one that lets you waste it, use it up, burn it up on untidy deeds like judging where to put the blade against your wrist. This is how Ryan uses Brendon: as a gauge, a metre; Brendon represents happiness and the closer he is to him, the closer he is to that.
Their first night in a real tour bus with real bunks, Brendon finds Ryan asleep with his feet on the pillows and his head on the keyboard of his laptop, headphone cord wrapped round and round him (and you can't feel the music like that, can't feel the pulsating, can't even feel the electricity, but there's something oddly poetic-because that's all they used to have: the music, maybe hidden, maybe covered up, but always there, either as a lifeline or an ocean to drown in, and somehow, it's still all they'll ever have). Brendon giggles softly as the light from the screensaver plays across his face, and he makes a tiny noise in his sleep. Brendon doesn't wake him but presses himself up behind him, arms curling around his waist. Somehow, they wake up even more entangled than Ryan alone was, and they laugh and laugh about potentially getting strangled in their sleep.
Later, Ryan sinks into his arms and Brendon strokes his hair, fingernails rough.
He says, "I never would have imagined this."
"Imagined what?"
"I don't know. This. Here. You."
Brendon, he says, serious, "I knew the first time I saw you that I'd fall in love with you. If you'd let me, that is."
"If I let you?" Ryan's puzzled. And he knows Brendon can still (always) surprise him. They wouldn't be here if he couldn't.
"You can't fall in love with someone unless they let you," Brendon says, as if this is just a plain truth of the world. And maybe it should be (maybe it is) solely for the fact that Brendon believes in it.
(But there's something sad in that, too: asking for permission to love. Ryan wonders if he ever really gave it-maybe Brendon's mistaken-and maybe he's never received it, maybe he doesn't know how to. But somehow, somehow, he knows Brendon isn't wrong, knows it like it's the most basic truth he's ever known.)
So, Ryan falls in love in the dark somewhere between ground level and the roof of the underworld. Ryan falls in love in memory, in the beauty of the things they've done and the dreams they could dare to have. Ryan doesn't fall in love with Brendon there, right next to him, because he is too caught up in that moment, that dream that isn't a dream or is someone else's dream, too caught up in Brendon to be anywhere else, be anyone else.
Ryan gets them famous, and for the most part, Brendon keeps them famous. He wonders if it should bother him, at least sometimes, knowing there were kids all over the world having Brendon whisper Ryan's story in their ear. It doesn't ever though. He's good at this part. Good at writing it, playing it, like it's someone else's. They're supposed to thrive on emotion, on their own experiences. They're supposed to sell it to the world. Ryan's okay with selling the story.
Brendon, Brendon sings it exactly as Ryan says to, asks no questions, and that tells him everything he needs to know about whether or not it's just a story to him too. He realises the reason Ryan sometimes wants to cause pain, wants to hurt, wants to not care (wants to pretend he doesn't have to) is not to make up for his pain but to leave his own mark.
It's still a story in July, but this is when Brendon holds onto him like he really thinks if he stays, stays here, and nevereverever goes anywhere else again, maybe something will change. Maybe his whole life will change. Maybe it's not alright to love Ryan for who he is, who this is. Maybe that's fucking selfish. Fucking awful.
It's later when Brendon will realise that it's about how brave he is. That's what it always was about. How brave they all were. How they changed it all for themselves. For each other.
Brendon wasn't too late.
The last tour comes to a close and Ryan brings his love up to ground level. Somehow, this is when he realises Brendon, Brendon is not going anywhere. This is when he realises that they're young, that that's scary but not as scary as some things. It's when he learns that the people around him are so much better suited for this than empty rooms and blank pages. This is when he realises that Brendon may move away but he always comes back. (After all, maybe it was Ryan moving away all the time. Maybe sometimes it's not apparent which object is orbiting which.)
Sometime between the end of touring and the start of writing again, Ryan decides that the world needs to stop fucking romanticising suffering.
Ryan writes a love song that's not about them but about two distant objects in outer space that pass each other every ten thousand days.
Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie. 2000 words on a love song that's not really about them.
The first thing Ryan realises is that Brendon the musician and Brendon the human being are two completely different people. And this is why he only seriously considers him the first time he opens his mouth to sing.
Ryan doesn't hear the words, can't analyse his voice or anything else at this point, can't feel anything about it, can't judge or can't think in the way he always has about everything, because the only thing there is Brendon, the real Brendon, Brendon singing from the deepest part of him because it's the only way he can.
Brendon only stops when Spencer looks at him a little strangely, and says, "That's enough, right, Ryan?" and he jerks his head upwards a little bit like he doesn't know what's happening. Then he nods at Spencer, moves his eyes back to Brendon, and can think again.
"I think," he says, "you're pretty good."
He hates him a little, then, for being able to give himself away so freely.
The first thing Brendon decides is that he loves the gold light in Ryan's eyes when he's describing something, when he's excited, that different kind of excited. Brendon's is different: the kind of excitement that is a force of nature at the moment it exists, the kind that you can't begin to comprehend the morning after but that leaves you with sore throats, aches, bruises, the greatest happiness you will ever feel.
Ryan's subdued version reminds him in a sad sort of way that his doesn't last, can't last, because sooner or later, it'll end up killing you.
(Ryan talks and talks, words blending together, contorting, distracting, and Brendon thinks, You're beautiful in all the ways you will never know.)
Ryan doesn't fall in love with Brendon in an hour. He doesn't fall in love in four years. He falls in love sometime in between all of it. In between the time and between the lines. He falls in love during the time he thinks about Brendon when he's not there.
Brendon's hands frame his hips, his waist. Ribs, elbows, sharp places that need softening. He presses a kiss to his shoulder blade, leans into the curve of his neck and shoulder, and he's never really fitted perfectly. They've never, not when they were living together and got in each other's way more than they ever imagined they would when they weren't (somehow, they never tell anyone else about this-and silent agreement has always been the best kind for them). Not when they were trying to figure out what this was exactly (Brendon, Brendon admits he's not his type, not at all, and Ryan, well, Ryan is pretty sure Brendon somehow became his favourite person in the world without Ryan even really liking him at all).
It's not about fitting. It's about not. It's about puzzle pieces aligning but clashing, colliding, making sound and colour the way only they could.
(It's about how Brendon never allows Ryan to sober him, never, but can still care in this serious, honest, terrible way. It's how Brendon can always, always make him that little bit happier. It's not a matter of equality, not about perfect matches or compensation. It's not anything anyone else will ever say it is.)
It's not perfect. It wouldn't be anything worth having otherwise.
The first time they kiss is in their practice space, and Ryan moves back, but never to break the contact, and they only do, really, when Ryan crashes into the drums (on purpose, probably; Brendon won't know, and Ryan will, but he won't ever admit it to himself). Brendon tells him, tells him, I'm not perfect, tells him a lot of things, and Ryan wonders what Brendon knows about him, wonders if he'd feel sorry if he did know, if he'd want him to feel sorry. He's not supposed to care, though; he's not. But he knows Brendon. He does. He cares.
The next day, he only looks at him when Brendon approaches, like before (and this is dangerous; this shouldn't- this can't be-). He wipes his hands on his pants, like they're sweating, or maybe, maybe he's just steadying himself for something: looking down before looking up, moving back a few steps before jumping off a cliff. Breathing. Just breathing. For the last time, for the last time that it'll be like this, the last time before it changes.
He gets up to face him, and he looks different again, different from anything Ryan Ross has ever been.
Says, "I think. I think I'm fed up of girls."
Brendon laughs at him then, laughs and wraps his arms around his tiny waist, twirls him around laughing into his neck. Ryan closes his eyes, smiles a little.
Brendon pulls away, stares at him with those eyes, and Ryan, Ryan doesn't look down.
He doesn't want to again.
Ryan, he says once, "I'll never deserve you."
All Brendon says is, "You didn't deserve a lot of things. But I'm not one of them. Or I hope I'm not."
This is what Brendon sees in him: words that flow unrestrained; pain, corked tightly for now; love, untapped and careful.
Ryan's all levels and layers. Brendon's fascinated. It's not something you are born with; it's not the natural that he's so familiar with. It's built, structurally sound, erected high for all to see or underground (or somewhere in between the two). Brendon wonders, more often than he should, what Ryan would be without it.
(The conclusion he comes to more than once is: someone I wouldn't be able to love like this.)
They spend the first night in Ryan's room, and he wakes up to Brendon playing with his make-up. Not in an intrusive way (not like him), but an interested one.
Ryan gets up, says, "Sit," and Brendon does, chair facing away from the mirror and towards the sunlight.
Ryan smears colour on his eyelids, makes intricate designs on his cheeks, and the dark lines and the bright lines contrast in the same way against his pale skin.
Ryan moves back to take a better look, but Brendon takes his wrist in his thumb and forefinger and pulls him onto his lap, gently (not like him). Ryan shifts a little to look at him properly. Brendon says, "You're really good at this," even though he hasn't really seen it yet, and maybe he's not talking about that, but he can't be. Ryan rests his fingertips on his face, exactly, in places where he won't smudge his artwork, and kisses him just like that, careful, like one wrong move could break him, break them both.
Brendon's not the sun. He doesn't control anything. It's all inconsequential because comfort comes after the pain and what fucking use is that? What's the point of being happy when your world is going to end anyway?
Brendon's not the sun, but he wants it to come out and sing with him. He wants it to be more than it is. Somehow, he can ask that from everything but Ryan.
With Ryan, he doesn't want. He probably doesn't need either. (There's nothing he could because Ryan, Ryan doesn't have anymore to give. He just gives his words, and it's enough; it's always been enough. They're the only things he's ever been able to give so easily.) He just chooses to be, in some way, Ryan's sun. But not the one that controls. The one that comes out to sing. The one that comes out to be exactly who he is without demanding that from anything else. The one that lets you waste it, use it up, burn it up on untidy deeds like judging where to put the blade against your wrist. This is how Ryan uses Brendon: as a gauge, a metre; Brendon represents happiness and the closer he is to him, the closer he is to that.
Their first night in a real tour bus with real bunks, Brendon finds Ryan asleep with his feet on the pillows and his head on the keyboard of his laptop, headphone cord wrapped round and round him (and you can't feel the music like that, can't feel the pulsating, can't even feel the electricity, but there's something oddly poetic-because that's all they used to have: the music, maybe hidden, maybe covered up, but always there, either as a lifeline or an ocean to drown in, and somehow, it's still all they'll ever have). Brendon giggles softly as the light from the screensaver plays across his face, and he makes a tiny noise in his sleep. Brendon doesn't wake him but presses himself up behind him, arms curling around his waist. Somehow, they wake up even more entangled than Ryan alone was, and they laugh and laugh about potentially getting strangled in their sleep.
Later, Ryan sinks into his arms and Brendon strokes his hair, fingernails rough.
He says, "I never would have imagined this."
"Imagined what?"
"I don't know. This. Here. You."
Brendon, he says, serious, "I knew the first time I saw you that I'd fall in love with you. If you'd let me, that is."
"If I let you?" Ryan's puzzled. And he knows Brendon can still (always) surprise him. They wouldn't be here if he couldn't.
"You can't fall in love with someone unless they let you," Brendon says, as if this is just a plain truth of the world. And maybe it should be (maybe it is) solely for the fact that Brendon believes in it.
(But there's something sad in that, too: asking for permission to love. Ryan wonders if he ever really gave it-maybe Brendon's mistaken-and maybe he's never received it, maybe he doesn't know how to. But somehow, somehow, he knows Brendon isn't wrong, knows it like it's the most basic truth he's ever known.)
So, Ryan falls in love in the dark somewhere between ground level and the roof of the underworld. Ryan falls in love in memory, in the beauty of the things they've done and the dreams they could dare to have. Ryan doesn't fall in love with Brendon there, right next to him, because he is too caught up in that moment, that dream that isn't a dream or is someone else's dream, too caught up in Brendon to be anywhere else, be anyone else.
Ryan gets them famous, and for the most part, Brendon keeps them famous. He wonders if it should bother him, at least sometimes, knowing there were kids all over the world having Brendon whisper Ryan's story in their ear. It doesn't ever though. He's good at this part. Good at writing it, playing it, like it's someone else's. They're supposed to thrive on emotion, on their own experiences. They're supposed to sell it to the world. Ryan's okay with selling the story.
Brendon, Brendon sings it exactly as Ryan says to, asks no questions, and that tells him everything he needs to know about whether or not it's just a story to him too. He realises the reason Ryan sometimes wants to cause pain, wants to hurt, wants to not care (wants to pretend he doesn't have to) is not to make up for his pain but to leave his own mark.
It's still a story in July, but this is when Brendon holds onto him like he really thinks if he stays, stays here, and nevereverever goes anywhere else again, maybe something will change. Maybe his whole life will change. Maybe it's not alright to love Ryan for who he is, who this is. Maybe that's fucking selfish. Fucking awful.
It's later when Brendon will realise that it's about how brave he is. That's what it always was about. How brave they all were. How they changed it all for themselves. For each other.
Brendon wasn't too late.
The last tour comes to a close and Ryan brings his love up to ground level. Somehow, this is when he realises Brendon, Brendon is not going anywhere. This is when he realises that they're young, that that's scary but not as scary as some things. It's when he learns that the people around him are so much better suited for this than empty rooms and blank pages. This is when he realises that Brendon may move away but he always comes back. (After all, maybe it was Ryan moving away all the time. Maybe sometimes it's not apparent which object is orbiting which.)
Sometime between the end of touring and the start of writing again, Ryan decides that the world needs to stop fucking romanticising suffering.
Ryan writes a love song that's not about them but about two distant objects in outer space that pass each other every ten thousand days.