I Spiked Your Cup With Angst And A Heart Attack [s/a]
Title:I Spiked Your Cup With Angst And A Heart Attack [s/a]
Author: selectivelyurie
Beta: killinglocals, my muse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
POV: Ryan
Summary: It’s been three days and my mail has collectively gathered into one massive pile of responsibilities and reminders that life moves on without me.
Disclaimer: Not real, never happened.
Author Notes: What do you know? An ex-best friend breaks my heart and I write up this little ditty in one day. If it's confusing to you, blame me, it's not you, I promise.
It’s been three days and my mail has collectively gathered into one massive pile of responsibilities and reminders that life moves on without me. I’m sure my electricity will be cut any day now; the bill came four days ago and it’s sitting, torn open and read over on my counter, right where I left it. Four days ago.
Four fucking days ago.
When things were okay and my house didn’t reek of shame and dishonesty and when the mirror in the foyer wasn’t shattered on the floor.
Four days ago when I had the urge to eatsleepsurvive.
Four days ago when I hadn’t fucked things up completely.
----
He says, “Mmm, you smell good,” into my neck, tastes the skin there, hums, smiles and says, “Like me.”
“Really?”
He mewls, wiggles his nose, “Yep.” He over punctuates his ‘p’ and I smile. “But I don’t think I smell like you,” his bottom lip grazes my throat and his eyelashes tickle, light and flirty.
I kiss his head, “Yeah?” and he shakes his head, dark hair scraping the stubble shadowing my chin. I press a kiss into it and close my eyes, just him and me and this and say, “Let’s change that.”
----
One week and I finally need a shower. Actually, a shower was needed about a six days ago but only now do I need it. I’ve spent the last one hundred and fifty seven hours staring at my hands - I’ve torn myself apart with these - and convinced myself that a shower is cheating.
I just need to sit here, on this couch for the rest of eternity and be plagued by it. Be smothered and covered and overwhelmed in the scent of sweat and lies and if I wash it off I’m not punishing myself enough.
I deserve it. To be reminded every fucking waking second (and even those few seconds of my dreams) that I am scum and he has reason to hate me. To wish me dead. And even worse, wish that he’d never have to look at me again. I’ve achieved almost seven days of this eternal suffering and it’s only when the smell gets to be too much that I puke, that I fucking gag up the guts that I’ve come to realize I don’t have, do I drag myself into the bathroom to clean up.
Showering requires standing and I feel so weak the thought of remaining vertical for more than five seconds makes my head woozy and a bath seems like the only option.
The water is lukewarm when I sink myself in and I laugh despite myself at the fact that my water hasn’t been cut yet. I’ll give it another two days. My electricity: probably any minute.
My bones ache and my fingers itch to touch (just touch, please) and I submerge my shoulders, neck, head and I’m completely underwater and the echoes of his sobbing are louder here but I don’t surface because I’m drowning.
All I sense is past and present and what the future doesn’t hold anymore and I’m drowning in regret and self loathing and it’s only when I emerge, sputtering and eyes blurry, that I realize the water now feels like ice.
----
“Keep singing, babe. It’s good,” he says, gripping my shoulders, a light massage and a loving reminder.
“Bren,” I sigh, tired, frustrated. “I don’t think me singing is the best choice for this tra-”
He silences me, wet kisses on my neck and fingers splayed down over across my chest and back up my arms, ghosting. “It’s right,” he murmurs and I melt back into his chest.
“It feels wrong,” I protest.
“How come?” soft and innocent.
“This is you.” Lips and tongue and love decorate my throat. “This is what I create for you, not me.” I swallow, his lips now mumbling my chorus against my hairline. “You’re meant for this.”
“To sing?”
“To make my words come alive, yes.”
“To make your words, or you?”
A pause. A stuttered heartbeat. An epiphany.
Sweet and tender, “Ry,” he says, “Let’s go to bed, yeah?”
Nodding, I stand and follow his lead, fingers intertwined and trying to wrap my head around the fact that we might have just discovered where we belong in this life.
----
I call and he doesn’t answer, just “Hey, it’s Brendon! Sorry I couldn’t get-” and I go back to dreaming that one day that recording won’t be my entire world synchronized in a message that gives promises of the second chances I’ll never have.
----
He’s gone for a week and a half, “Back to Vegas to visit the family,” he says and it’s one too many sunsets without him in my bed.
----
He’s gone for a week and a half, “I’m not coming back, Ry. I can’t,” he cries and I’m not sure it’s been a week and a half or over an entire month because I’ve drawn my curtains so I can’t count the sunsets anymore.
----
He’s playful and beautiful and everything I never thought I could handle but somehow I manage because we fit, we’re right, we belong. And when he stops me in the middle of making dinner (Tuna Helper and fucking Wonder Bread), says, “You look ridiculous in that apron,” nuzzles into my back as I stand there over the stove and he whispers, “And you kinda sorta mean the world to me.”
When he turns me around and kisses me until the tuna burns in the pan, that’s when I realize that, hey, he kinda sorta means the world to me, too.
----
I’m calling back, fourth time today, twelfth time this week and. I think it might be Tuesday?
I get his voicemail again, that sweet, painful promise and say, “Hey, Bear. It’s me. Uh, I was just calling to see what’s up, tell you that I miss you and- Oh! They cut my electricity so my house phone is disconnected… You still mean the world to me, even if…even if the world is such an ugly place for me lately.”
Hang up. Wait, wait, wait.
Nothing.
Wait, wait, wait.
Nothing.
Wait, wait, wait, waste.
----
“You’re cold?” he asks and I nod, teeth chattering, body shaking and lips blue.
He removes his jacket - such a gentleman - and drapes it over my shoulders. “Take this,” he says and pulls it tight around me, arms encasing me into a tight seal that is BrendonBrendonBrendon all around.
“But,” I argue, attempting to wiggle my way out of his grasp to give back his warmth. He squeezes me tighter, kisses my red nose and smiles at my huff.
“I’m fine, Ry,” he says, promises and seals it with a kiss that lingers around the blue in my lips and I smile despite the fact that I can feel him start to shiver around me.
He catches a cold and I nurse his runny nose and rough, scratchy throat. I feed him soup and warm tea and honey and he says, “I’m fine,” and I laugh as he sniffles.
“Sure you are,” I reply sarcastically and his smile, although groggy and drugged up is genuine and I can’t help myself. I curl up next to him and snuggle, cuddle, envelop myself around him until he’s sure he’s not going to let out another pitiful cough again.
By the time he’s well again, we’re not sure we even want to leave the bed.
----
I’m fucking pathetic but I need him and I just wish he would answer his phone so I could tell him this little known fact.
I’m fucking pathetic but.
I plead, “I miss you,” and “Please answer,” and “Two weeks? Bear, has it been two weeks, tell me,” and I fall asleep sobbing his name into my pillow and biting back loud, heartbreaking moans while I repeat over and over in my mind: I’m fucking pathetic.
But I need him.
----
I’ve known him for three weeks and I feel like I’m out of my mind in love with this boy.
----
“Bear, baby honey sugar pumpkin sweetie babybabybaby-”
I breath in deep, shallow breaths and try to veer away from the shambles I’m about to resort to.
“I need you,” I say before I drop the phone, forgetting to press the red button and I don’t realize that he will be able to hear me falling apart at the seams.
----
I’ve known him for four months, been with him for three and if there’s supposed to be anyone after him, I don’t want them. He is mine until I can no longer breathe and then some.
----
Somehow, I drag myself out of my house. My too-hot-during-the-day but fucking-freezing-at-night house that has no electricity and now, no running water. It’s dim and hot and then dark and cold and everything with him used to be bright and warm, everything my house isn’t showing me.
I don’t know how I do it because I’m here, there and everywhere all at once but I manage to walk to the grocery store. I get a bag of potato chips, a case of beer and a fucking crazy straw (Baby Bear, this is for you) and slap a fifty down on the counter. A tall girl, name’s Cindy and I’ve never seen her before in my life, I think she short changes me five dollars when I get back my change but I don’t care because there he is, walking into the automatic doors and I can’t move.
He’s so perfect and pretty and pleasant and he doesn’t see me but fuck, I see him and I think it has been over two weeks. My heart stills when he finally catches my eye and his face pales and his mouth drops and god, those eyes, those delicious chocolate eyes look sad and it isn’t until I feel a hand on my shoulder that I look down to see that my case of beer is spewing out all over the ground and my shoes are ruined.
When I look up, he’s gone.
----
When the moon fell in love with the sun
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
I write him a song of sorts, it’s more upbeat than I expected but everything with him is upbeat and unexpected so it’s okay, I decide and when I get out of bed one morning and kiss his head protectively, I leave it on my pillow and wait for him to call.
----
My shoes are ruined, my house is cold and I’m still waiting for him to call.
----
He’s spinning in the living room, arms open wide and he’s giggling, “Whoa! Ry-Ryan, I can’t. I’m so dizzy I- Holy shit this is fun,” and I watch him from the couch, grinning big and alive.
“Be careful, Bren,” I warn and he stumbles to his left, which just so happens to be towards the television and the last thing I need is him hurt and dizzy.
“I’m…so dizzy,” he repeats, panting out of breath from all the twirling and he’s edging close to the coffee table he moved out of his way.
I chuckle at his perseverance and it just so happens to be the exact moment he stumbles, loses his footing and lands right on top of me, elbow straight to my face and, “Shit, Bren. That was my nose,” and there’s blood all down the front of my shirt.
He’s disoriented and lightheaded and he looks at me with crossed eyes and a lopsided grin and I’m trying to push him off of me so that I don’t ruin the couch before I can stop the bleeding. “Where are you going?” he asks, all innocent and in a stupor. I talk into my hand, cupping my nose and tilt my head back so as to slow the stream of crimson coming from my nose and say, “Kitchen,” and he plants his face with a giggle into the couch.
I’m not mad but I think my nose might be broken and I quickly stand over the sink, all of our dirty dishes thankfully cleaned and already put away. The blood trickles through my fingers and drips into the metal basin below and I reach through my watery eyes for a paper towel from the roll.
Brendon says, “Baby, are you okay?” and his voice sounds a little more composed, less loopy. I hear him shuffle over my carpet, still a little wobbly, and his socks are silent on the linoleum in the kitchen. “Is your-” he pauses, a small gasp and then he’s at my side, rushing words, “Ry, oh my god. Your nose, I’m- Look up, baby, don’t- No, up,” and the blood pouring from my nose trickles to a stop less than two minutes later.
He whispers, “I’m sorry,” hugs me tight and kisses my temple. “I didn’t mean to-”
“I know.”
“Your nose is all puffy and red,” he notices and grazes a thumb lightly over it. I wince, his hand retreats and he’s rubbing soothing circles into my hips. “I’m sorry,” he says, again and extra soft.
Nodding I kiss his nose because I can and smile, “S’okay.” My nose isn’t broken.
It isn’t broken but if it was, Brendon fixed it.
----
“Brendon, please. Please. Let me fix this,” I sob, tears and red cheeks and sweaty palms and my cell phone is about to die because I haven’t charged it in two days. “I have to fix this, I-” Swallow, deep breath, collect yourself, Ryan. “You have to let me fix this.”
I’m curled up, under my kitchen table of all places and I’m shaking and he still won’t answer his phone. My calendar above the couch isn’t reliable anymore and I still haven’t eaten my potato chips.
“I’m sorry,” I moan and I’m fucking pathetic but I need him and I tell him that, say it with all the honesty I can muster and afterwards I feel exhausted. From under here I can see the shards of broken mirror scattered along the floor and I whimper, “You broke my mirror, Bear. It’s all over my floor and I can’t clean it up because you won’t answer my calls.”
It doesn’t make sense but I can’t do anything because he won’t answer. He won’t and I can’t and, “I’m fucking pathetic and I need you.”
----
I’m heading out the door for work and I haven’t heard from him yet, but it’s early and he’s probably still sleeping and the mental image of him twisted around his pillow makes me grin wider than it should.
I take one, two, almost three steps out of my door before a pair of lips are blanketing my own and I’m sighing because he’s wrapping his arms around me and mumbling something similar to “Good morning, sunshine of my heart,” and I’m fucking melting on my own damn door step.
My tongue lashes out, rubs against his and my hands are everywhere I can put them and before I know it he’s saying, “Ry, Ryan, Ryan” and I’m blinking at him lazily, standing a foot away from him now. He smirks, dips his head down and kisses me light one last time, rasps, “Don’t be late for work,” and he’s trotting into my house and closing the door before I have the ability to put my head back on and realize that I have five minutes until I have to clock in.
----
I’m knocking on his door and when I blink I realize that I’ve lost my fucking mind. A muffled, “Coming,” greets me back into reality and my feet are rooting me to the spot, my eyes not allowing me to look away from the deep oak of his front door.
To let him see me like this, unshaven, unkempt, unimaginable. To place myself on his property and bang on his door. To entertain the idea that he’s actually coming to answer it, to answer me. I’ve lost my mother fucking mind.
But I don’t move and when the door swings open and I’m met with those brown eyes, I empty the contents of my stomach into his rosebush.
He groans, “Ryan, that’s fucking sick,” but comes down to wipe my hair out of my face, fingers ice cold on my hot forehead and god I miss his touch.
“My mirror is broken,” I choke and I didn’t even realize I was sobbing, the taste of vomit lingering in my mouth and Brendon’s fingers tracing my spine like old times. “Brendon, my mirror is broken and I can’t fix it.”
“What are you doing here, Ryan?” he asks, sighing and curious and I can hear the hurt in his voice. I put it there and I’m so fucking pathetic.
“I lied to you and I haven’t paid my bills and my house has these temperatures that they shouldn’t. I dropped all my beer and, Bear, you broke my mirror,” I wail, head resting on the railing of his porch and I can’t see anything because everything’s swirling grey with a black backdrop but I can feel his fingers on my neck now, twirling hair at the base of my head.
“I need a mirror, Brendon. You broke mine and I need one and I love you so fucking much.”
His door is open and there’s a breeze coming out of his house, the right temperature and my tears are burning my face. I have vomit on my breath and he’s lifting me up off the ground, strong, reassuring hands under my armpits and then behind my back, under my legs and I’m sobbing, “My mirror. Bear, my mirror is broken,” into his collar and he’s carrying me into his house, his perfect temperature house and shushing me.
“I’ll fix it,” he murmurs, “I’ll fix it.”
Author: selectivelyurie
Beta: killinglocals, my muse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
POV: Ryan
Summary: It’s been three days and my mail has collectively gathered into one massive pile of responsibilities and reminders that life moves on without me.
Disclaimer: Not real, never happened.
Author Notes: What do you know? An ex-best friend breaks my heart and I write up this little ditty in one day. If it's confusing to you, blame me, it's not you, I promise.
It’s been three days and my mail has collectively gathered into one massive pile of responsibilities and reminders that life moves on without me. I’m sure my electricity will be cut any day now; the bill came four days ago and it’s sitting, torn open and read over on my counter, right where I left it. Four days ago.
Four fucking days ago.
When things were okay and my house didn’t reek of shame and dishonesty and when the mirror in the foyer wasn’t shattered on the floor.
Four days ago when I had the urge to eatsleepsurvive.
Four days ago when I hadn’t fucked things up completely.
----
He says, “Mmm, you smell good,” into my neck, tastes the skin there, hums, smiles and says, “Like me.”
“Really?”
He mewls, wiggles his nose, “Yep.” He over punctuates his ‘p’ and I smile. “But I don’t think I smell like you,” his bottom lip grazes my throat and his eyelashes tickle, light and flirty.
I kiss his head, “Yeah?” and he shakes his head, dark hair scraping the stubble shadowing my chin. I press a kiss into it and close my eyes, just him and me and this and say, “Let’s change that.”
----
One week and I finally need a shower. Actually, a shower was needed about a six days ago but only now do I need it. I’ve spent the last one hundred and fifty seven hours staring at my hands - I’ve torn myself apart with these - and convinced myself that a shower is cheating.
I just need to sit here, on this couch for the rest of eternity and be plagued by it. Be smothered and covered and overwhelmed in the scent of sweat and lies and if I wash it off I’m not punishing myself enough.
I deserve it. To be reminded every fucking waking second (and even those few seconds of my dreams) that I am scum and he has reason to hate me. To wish me dead. And even worse, wish that he’d never have to look at me again. I’ve achieved almost seven days of this eternal suffering and it’s only when the smell gets to be too much that I puke, that I fucking gag up the guts that I’ve come to realize I don’t have, do I drag myself into the bathroom to clean up.
Showering requires standing and I feel so weak the thought of remaining vertical for more than five seconds makes my head woozy and a bath seems like the only option.
The water is lukewarm when I sink myself in and I laugh despite myself at the fact that my water hasn’t been cut yet. I’ll give it another two days. My electricity: probably any minute.
My bones ache and my fingers itch to touch (just touch, please) and I submerge my shoulders, neck, head and I’m completely underwater and the echoes of his sobbing are louder here but I don’t surface because I’m drowning.
All I sense is past and present and what the future doesn’t hold anymore and I’m drowning in regret and self loathing and it’s only when I emerge, sputtering and eyes blurry, that I realize the water now feels like ice.
----
“Keep singing, babe. It’s good,” he says, gripping my shoulders, a light massage and a loving reminder.
“Bren,” I sigh, tired, frustrated. “I don’t think me singing is the best choice for this tra-”
He silences me, wet kisses on my neck and fingers splayed down over across my chest and back up my arms, ghosting. “It’s right,” he murmurs and I melt back into his chest.
“It feels wrong,” I protest.
“How come?” soft and innocent.
“This is you.” Lips and tongue and love decorate my throat. “This is what I create for you, not me.” I swallow, his lips now mumbling my chorus against my hairline. “You’re meant for this.”
“To sing?”
“To make my words come alive, yes.”
“To make your words, or you?”
A pause. A stuttered heartbeat. An epiphany.
Sweet and tender, “Ry,” he says, “Let’s go to bed, yeah?”
Nodding, I stand and follow his lead, fingers intertwined and trying to wrap my head around the fact that we might have just discovered where we belong in this life.
----
I call and he doesn’t answer, just “Hey, it’s Brendon! Sorry I couldn’t get-” and I go back to dreaming that one day that recording won’t be my entire world synchronized in a message that gives promises of the second chances I’ll never have.
----
He’s gone for a week and a half, “Back to Vegas to visit the family,” he says and it’s one too many sunsets without him in my bed.
----
He’s gone for a week and a half, “I’m not coming back, Ry. I can’t,” he cries and I’m not sure it’s been a week and a half or over an entire month because I’ve drawn my curtains so I can’t count the sunsets anymore.
----
He’s playful and beautiful and everything I never thought I could handle but somehow I manage because we fit, we’re right, we belong. And when he stops me in the middle of making dinner (Tuna Helper and fucking Wonder Bread), says, “You look ridiculous in that apron,” nuzzles into my back as I stand there over the stove and he whispers, “And you kinda sorta mean the world to me.”
When he turns me around and kisses me until the tuna burns in the pan, that’s when I realize that, hey, he kinda sorta means the world to me, too.
----
I’m calling back, fourth time today, twelfth time this week and. I think it might be Tuesday?
I get his voicemail again, that sweet, painful promise and say, “Hey, Bear. It’s me. Uh, I was just calling to see what’s up, tell you that I miss you and- Oh! They cut my electricity so my house phone is disconnected… You still mean the world to me, even if…even if the world is such an ugly place for me lately.”
Hang up. Wait, wait, wait.
Nothing.
Wait, wait, wait.
Nothing.
Wait, wait, wait, waste.
----
“You’re cold?” he asks and I nod, teeth chattering, body shaking and lips blue.
He removes his jacket - such a gentleman - and drapes it over my shoulders. “Take this,” he says and pulls it tight around me, arms encasing me into a tight seal that is BrendonBrendonBrendon all around.
“But,” I argue, attempting to wiggle my way out of his grasp to give back his warmth. He squeezes me tighter, kisses my red nose and smiles at my huff.
“I’m fine, Ry,” he says, promises and seals it with a kiss that lingers around the blue in my lips and I smile despite the fact that I can feel him start to shiver around me.
He catches a cold and I nurse his runny nose and rough, scratchy throat. I feed him soup and warm tea and honey and he says, “I’m fine,” and I laugh as he sniffles.
“Sure you are,” I reply sarcastically and his smile, although groggy and drugged up is genuine and I can’t help myself. I curl up next to him and snuggle, cuddle, envelop myself around him until he’s sure he’s not going to let out another pitiful cough again.
By the time he’s well again, we’re not sure we even want to leave the bed.
----
I’m fucking pathetic but I need him and I just wish he would answer his phone so I could tell him this little known fact.
I’m fucking pathetic but.
I plead, “I miss you,” and “Please answer,” and “Two weeks? Bear, has it been two weeks, tell me,” and I fall asleep sobbing his name into my pillow and biting back loud, heartbreaking moans while I repeat over and over in my mind: I’m fucking pathetic.
But I need him.
----
I’ve known him for three weeks and I feel like I’m out of my mind in love with this boy.
----
“Bear, baby honey sugar pumpkin sweetie babybabybaby-”
I breath in deep, shallow breaths and try to veer away from the shambles I’m about to resort to.
“I need you,” I say before I drop the phone, forgetting to press the red button and I don’t realize that he will be able to hear me falling apart at the seams.
----
I’ve known him for four months, been with him for three and if there’s supposed to be anyone after him, I don’t want them. He is mine until I can no longer breathe and then some.
----
Somehow, I drag myself out of my house. My too-hot-during-the-day but fucking-freezing-at-night house that has no electricity and now, no running water. It’s dim and hot and then dark and cold and everything with him used to be bright and warm, everything my house isn’t showing me.
I don’t know how I do it because I’m here, there and everywhere all at once but I manage to walk to the grocery store. I get a bag of potato chips, a case of beer and a fucking crazy straw (Baby Bear, this is for you) and slap a fifty down on the counter. A tall girl, name’s Cindy and I’ve never seen her before in my life, I think she short changes me five dollars when I get back my change but I don’t care because there he is, walking into the automatic doors and I can’t move.
He’s so perfect and pretty and pleasant and he doesn’t see me but fuck, I see him and I think it has been over two weeks. My heart stills when he finally catches my eye and his face pales and his mouth drops and god, those eyes, those delicious chocolate eyes look sad and it isn’t until I feel a hand on my shoulder that I look down to see that my case of beer is spewing out all over the ground and my shoes are ruined.
When I look up, he’s gone.
----
When the moon fell in love with the sun
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
I write him a song of sorts, it’s more upbeat than I expected but everything with him is upbeat and unexpected so it’s okay, I decide and when I get out of bed one morning and kiss his head protectively, I leave it on my pillow and wait for him to call.
----
My shoes are ruined, my house is cold and I’m still waiting for him to call.
----
He’s spinning in the living room, arms open wide and he’s giggling, “Whoa! Ry-Ryan, I can’t. I’m so dizzy I- Holy shit this is fun,” and I watch him from the couch, grinning big and alive.
“Be careful, Bren,” I warn and he stumbles to his left, which just so happens to be towards the television and the last thing I need is him hurt and dizzy.
“I’m…so dizzy,” he repeats, panting out of breath from all the twirling and he’s edging close to the coffee table he moved out of his way.
I chuckle at his perseverance and it just so happens to be the exact moment he stumbles, loses his footing and lands right on top of me, elbow straight to my face and, “Shit, Bren. That was my nose,” and there’s blood all down the front of my shirt.
He’s disoriented and lightheaded and he looks at me with crossed eyes and a lopsided grin and I’m trying to push him off of me so that I don’t ruin the couch before I can stop the bleeding. “Where are you going?” he asks, all innocent and in a stupor. I talk into my hand, cupping my nose and tilt my head back so as to slow the stream of crimson coming from my nose and say, “Kitchen,” and he plants his face with a giggle into the couch.
I’m not mad but I think my nose might be broken and I quickly stand over the sink, all of our dirty dishes thankfully cleaned and already put away. The blood trickles through my fingers and drips into the metal basin below and I reach through my watery eyes for a paper towel from the roll.
Brendon says, “Baby, are you okay?” and his voice sounds a little more composed, less loopy. I hear him shuffle over my carpet, still a little wobbly, and his socks are silent on the linoleum in the kitchen. “Is your-” he pauses, a small gasp and then he’s at my side, rushing words, “Ry, oh my god. Your nose, I’m- Look up, baby, don’t- No, up,” and the blood pouring from my nose trickles to a stop less than two minutes later.
He whispers, “I’m sorry,” hugs me tight and kisses my temple. “I didn’t mean to-”
“I know.”
“Your nose is all puffy and red,” he notices and grazes a thumb lightly over it. I wince, his hand retreats and he’s rubbing soothing circles into my hips. “I’m sorry,” he says, again and extra soft.
Nodding I kiss his nose because I can and smile, “S’okay.” My nose isn’t broken.
It isn’t broken but if it was, Brendon fixed it.
----
“Brendon, please. Please. Let me fix this,” I sob, tears and red cheeks and sweaty palms and my cell phone is about to die because I haven’t charged it in two days. “I have to fix this, I-” Swallow, deep breath, collect yourself, Ryan. “You have to let me fix this.”
I’m curled up, under my kitchen table of all places and I’m shaking and he still won’t answer his phone. My calendar above the couch isn’t reliable anymore and I still haven’t eaten my potato chips.
“I’m sorry,” I moan and I’m fucking pathetic but I need him and I tell him that, say it with all the honesty I can muster and afterwards I feel exhausted. From under here I can see the shards of broken mirror scattered along the floor and I whimper, “You broke my mirror, Bear. It’s all over my floor and I can’t clean it up because you won’t answer my calls.”
It doesn’t make sense but I can’t do anything because he won’t answer. He won’t and I can’t and, “I’m fucking pathetic and I need you.”
----
I’m heading out the door for work and I haven’t heard from him yet, but it’s early and he’s probably still sleeping and the mental image of him twisted around his pillow makes me grin wider than it should.
I take one, two, almost three steps out of my door before a pair of lips are blanketing my own and I’m sighing because he’s wrapping his arms around me and mumbling something similar to “Good morning, sunshine of my heart,” and I’m fucking melting on my own damn door step.
My tongue lashes out, rubs against his and my hands are everywhere I can put them and before I know it he’s saying, “Ry, Ryan, Ryan” and I’m blinking at him lazily, standing a foot away from him now. He smirks, dips his head down and kisses me light one last time, rasps, “Don’t be late for work,” and he’s trotting into my house and closing the door before I have the ability to put my head back on and realize that I have five minutes until I have to clock in.
----
I’m knocking on his door and when I blink I realize that I’ve lost my fucking mind. A muffled, “Coming,” greets me back into reality and my feet are rooting me to the spot, my eyes not allowing me to look away from the deep oak of his front door.
To let him see me like this, unshaven, unkempt, unimaginable. To place myself on his property and bang on his door. To entertain the idea that he’s actually coming to answer it, to answer me. I’ve lost my mother fucking mind.
But I don’t move and when the door swings open and I’m met with those brown eyes, I empty the contents of my stomach into his rosebush.
He groans, “Ryan, that’s fucking sick,” but comes down to wipe my hair out of my face, fingers ice cold on my hot forehead and god I miss his touch.
“My mirror is broken,” I choke and I didn’t even realize I was sobbing, the taste of vomit lingering in my mouth and Brendon’s fingers tracing my spine like old times. “Brendon, my mirror is broken and I can’t fix it.”
“What are you doing here, Ryan?” he asks, sighing and curious and I can hear the hurt in his voice. I put it there and I’m so fucking pathetic.
“I lied to you and I haven’t paid my bills and my house has these temperatures that they shouldn’t. I dropped all my beer and, Bear, you broke my mirror,” I wail, head resting on the railing of his porch and I can’t see anything because everything’s swirling grey with a black backdrop but I can feel his fingers on my neck now, twirling hair at the base of my head.
“I need a mirror, Brendon. You broke mine and I need one and I love you so fucking much.”
His door is open and there’s a breeze coming out of his house, the right temperature and my tears are burning my face. I have vomit on my breath and he’s lifting me up off the ground, strong, reassuring hands under my armpits and then behind my back, under my legs and I’m sobbing, “My mirror. Bear, my mirror is broken,” into his collar and he’s carrying me into his house, his perfect temperature house and shushing me.
“I’ll fix it,” he murmurs, “I’ll fix it.”