the stage is set. [11/11]
TITLE: The Stage Is Set. [11]
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx
RATING: R. Mature themes.
POV: Third-ish.
PAIRING: If you're reading, you know. =]
SUMMARY: AU. He met her on a Tuesday. Just an ordinary Tuesday, like any other day of the week, really, except that it wasn’t at all.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own or know them, and I am 200% certain this never happened.
A/N: Under the cut, ladies and gents!
*dramatic crying* I'm really sad this is over, you guyssss. I mean. I don't know. *sigh* I always hate when chaptered fic gets to the end. But, I have a few other ideas lurking around in my brain involving the songs 'Hallelujah' (a standalone) and 'Do It Again' by You, Me and Everyone We Know (chaptered, involving serious existential angst and substance abuse). You know. Uhm. So, I'll be back, probably really soon, and you guys can leave me sweet comments that make me giggle insanely on those, too, if you want to. =]
ON WITH IT. =|
///
When he thinks back over it now, months past and distant, it all kind of blurs together. He doesn’t exactly remember where it started, and he doesn’t know if it ever had an end. There are a lot of beginnings and endings in life, so much that sometimes they run together and they stop being anything but moments in time; that’s what he likes about memory. Time always wears down its own sharp edges, and even what he can’t forget he eventually learns to live with. Even the most intense pain, given time, becomes just a ghost or a memory of a memory, a shadow or a smudge of light on the negatives that play behind his eyes.
Everything is the same, just like it always was, even on that Tuesday, which really was just the same as any other day. He gets up, he showers, he dresses, he goes to work, he comes home. Sometimes he hangs out with Jon and his girlfriend, sometimes he goes out on the weekends. Things are nice, simple, calm.
He has a dog now, a spotted little freak of a thing that he hasn’t named, just calls her Mutt, but she sits by the door and waits for him at the end of the day and sleeps curled up at the end of the bed, and he likes that, likes that she loves him even if it’s only for food and behind-the-ear scratches. Dogs are simpler than people, he sometimes thinks, and she licks his nose as if to say, yeah, yeah, we are.
Sometimes, when he feels like it, he calls Shane, who’s happily situated in an apartment that he pays for by himself, his parents like those ghostly negatives in time, who’s happy, who has a cat named Bartholomew, who visits sometimes. Maybe things are different between them now, because a screaming match and a few weeks apart gave them distance, perspective. Brendon tries hard not to think about what they fought over; it was stupid, distant, ridiculous, nothing that really mattered.
Brendon thinks maybe he still loves him, sometimes, misses his touch and his laugh, but they’re friends, and he likes friends. Likes that they still go out drinking or dancing, and doesn’t even mind that they go home with different people at the end of the night, or alone, parting with a promise to meet again. Yeah, it hurts some days, more than others. Sometimes it makes it so that he can’t breathe, so that he’s choking hard on everything they used to be. But he knows that, eventually, like anything else, it will end up how it should. The pain will stop spiking when he sees him, just become a vague tug like a hook in his chest some days, and he’ll be able to say it with a straight face, this is my friend Shane, this is my ex.
Or maybe they’ll decide they were better together than they are apart. They’ll wake up in the same bed again, maybe just once or maybe forever. Brendon thinks he can learn to be happy either way.
And then there’s Ryan, who’s made his decision, gotten his letters, talked to the psychiatrists. The ones who decided he’s not just a masochist, not just confused, he really wants this, and they’ve given him the green light to go ahead. To spend time, to work on becoming who he really is on the inside, and he’s happy, too. Happier than he’s maybe been in his whole life, feeling more normal and fitting right inside his skin after so long. He has this tiny, quiet slip of a boyfriend with light eyes and a soft laugh, and Brendon thinks they’re perfect together when he meets up with them, sees them holding hands and exchanging soft kisses.
With Ryan, now, he can smile at anyone and say, this is my friend Ryan, my ex. Maybe the first person I ever fell in love with, in a different time and a different skin, but still the first. The first, but not the last. He can look at Ryan and say, and really believe it, that everything’s alright. That maybe things aren’t perfect, but that things are livable, breathable, suitable, nice.
It’s like most love is, it never really dies, it stays dormant in you, and given sunshine and water and a breath of hope, it could grow again, a beautiful poisonous flower with barbed roots and silk petals. But, he thinks he likes things this way. Likes laughing with Ryan, and only sometimes thinking about what if? when the light catches his face just right.
And one day, he thinks it’s maybe a Thursday, possibly, he walks into the coffee shop. There’s a girl sitting on the couch, legs tucked Indian-style under her body, reading a book. Her hair is red, copper-blond, and her skin is clustered with small freckles. She looks up and smiles at him, and even from here he can see how green her eyes are, how her lashes fringe her eyes perfectly, pointed like stars, and her lips stretch a soft pink gash across her face, revealing a row of perfect pearl teeth. He smiles, polite, and nods his head, counting his change and putting it back into his pocket.
He grabs his coffee, turns around and walks back out the door, wind chimes singing over his head, breath condensing in the air, because it’s getting cold, getting closer to winter.
He doesn’t look back.
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx
RATING: R. Mature themes.
POV: Third-ish.
PAIRING: If you're reading, you know. =]
SUMMARY: AU. He met her on a Tuesday. Just an ordinary Tuesday, like any other day of the week, really, except that it wasn’t at all.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own or know them, and I am 200% certain this never happened.
A/N: Under the cut, ladies and gents!
*dramatic crying* I'm really sad this is over, you guyssss. I mean. I don't know. *sigh* I always hate when chaptered fic gets to the end. But, I have a few other ideas lurking around in my brain involving the songs 'Hallelujah' (a standalone) and 'Do It Again' by You, Me and Everyone We Know (chaptered, involving serious existential angst and substance abuse). You know. Uhm. So, I'll be back, probably really soon, and you guys can leave me sweet comments that make me giggle insanely on those, too, if you want to. =]
ON WITH IT. =|
///
When he thinks back over it now, months past and distant, it all kind of blurs together. He doesn’t exactly remember where it started, and he doesn’t know if it ever had an end. There are a lot of beginnings and endings in life, so much that sometimes they run together and they stop being anything but moments in time; that’s what he likes about memory. Time always wears down its own sharp edges, and even what he can’t forget he eventually learns to live with. Even the most intense pain, given time, becomes just a ghost or a memory of a memory, a shadow or a smudge of light on the negatives that play behind his eyes.
Everything is the same, just like it always was, even on that Tuesday, which really was just the same as any other day. He gets up, he showers, he dresses, he goes to work, he comes home. Sometimes he hangs out with Jon and his girlfriend, sometimes he goes out on the weekends. Things are nice, simple, calm.
He has a dog now, a spotted little freak of a thing that he hasn’t named, just calls her Mutt, but she sits by the door and waits for him at the end of the day and sleeps curled up at the end of the bed, and he likes that, likes that she loves him even if it’s only for food and behind-the-ear scratches. Dogs are simpler than people, he sometimes thinks, and she licks his nose as if to say, yeah, yeah, we are.
Sometimes, when he feels like it, he calls Shane, who’s happily situated in an apartment that he pays for by himself, his parents like those ghostly negatives in time, who’s happy, who has a cat named Bartholomew, who visits sometimes. Maybe things are different between them now, because a screaming match and a few weeks apart gave them distance, perspective. Brendon tries hard not to think about what they fought over; it was stupid, distant, ridiculous, nothing that really mattered.
Brendon thinks maybe he still loves him, sometimes, misses his touch and his laugh, but they’re friends, and he likes friends. Likes that they still go out drinking or dancing, and doesn’t even mind that they go home with different people at the end of the night, or alone, parting with a promise to meet again. Yeah, it hurts some days, more than others. Sometimes it makes it so that he can’t breathe, so that he’s choking hard on everything they used to be. But he knows that, eventually, like anything else, it will end up how it should. The pain will stop spiking when he sees him, just become a vague tug like a hook in his chest some days, and he’ll be able to say it with a straight face, this is my friend Shane, this is my ex.
Or maybe they’ll decide they were better together than they are apart. They’ll wake up in the same bed again, maybe just once or maybe forever. Brendon thinks he can learn to be happy either way.
And then there’s Ryan, who’s made his decision, gotten his letters, talked to the psychiatrists. The ones who decided he’s not just a masochist, not just confused, he really wants this, and they’ve given him the green light to go ahead. To spend time, to work on becoming who he really is on the inside, and he’s happy, too. Happier than he’s maybe been in his whole life, feeling more normal and fitting right inside his skin after so long. He has this tiny, quiet slip of a boyfriend with light eyes and a soft laugh, and Brendon thinks they’re perfect together when he meets up with them, sees them holding hands and exchanging soft kisses.
With Ryan, now, he can smile at anyone and say, this is my friend Ryan, my ex. Maybe the first person I ever fell in love with, in a different time and a different skin, but still the first. The first, but not the last. He can look at Ryan and say, and really believe it, that everything’s alright. That maybe things aren’t perfect, but that things are livable, breathable, suitable, nice.
It’s like most love is, it never really dies, it stays dormant in you, and given sunshine and water and a breath of hope, it could grow again, a beautiful poisonous flower with barbed roots and silk petals. But, he thinks he likes things this way. Likes laughing with Ryan, and only sometimes thinking about what if? when the light catches his face just right.
And one day, he thinks it’s maybe a Thursday, possibly, he walks into the coffee shop. There’s a girl sitting on the couch, legs tucked Indian-style under her body, reading a book. Her hair is red, copper-blond, and her skin is clustered with small freckles. She looks up and smiles at him, and even from here he can see how green her eyes are, how her lashes fringe her eyes perfectly, pointed like stars, and her lips stretch a soft pink gash across her face, revealing a row of perfect pearl teeth. He smiles, polite, and nods his head, counting his change and putting it back into his pocket.
He grabs his coffee, turns around and walks back out the door, wind chimes singing over his head, breath condensing in the air, because it’s getting cold, getting closer to winter.
He doesn’t look back.