OMG, i'm not dead!!
TITLE: Land Me Down Softly.
AUTHOR: Hi, my name is Kayla, and I am addicted to slash...
RATING: It's pretty PG, dudes.
POV: 3rd, omniscient, blah blah.
PAIRING: Ryan/Brendon. Do I ever write anything else?
SUMMARY: In which there are streetlights, snow, candles, cuddling, etc.
DISCLAIMER: Not in this universe.
A/N: Okay, you guys. This is only posted here for your enjoyment/disappointment right now, because...it's the first thing I've written in almost two months, and I think it sucks, and it has no plot and is completely and purely FLUFF. (If you actually think it's worth posting somewhere else, you should tell me, or I never will. Just sayin'.) Don't ask me why it's so fluffy, I've been feeling anything but fluffy lately, but this is just what happened. I don't question what I'm writing at this point, as long as I am; it's been too long since I've been able to. Title goes to gregoRy and the hawK, because 'The Bolder Thing To Do' is what sparked the initial idea. Okay, enough rambling.
He tells himself over and over, walking down the street, around the block, past the winking storefronts decorated for Christmas with spray-frost and pine garland, I’m Going To Do This, And It’s Going To Be Fine.
The concrete is less than forgiving under the thin soles of his shoes, and it is cold, so damn cold out here, too cold for just jeans and a hoodie and fingerless gloves. He stops and buys coffee in a Styrofoam cup, holding the palms of his hands over the cold ridges of his ears in the temporary warmth of the coffee shop, and then it’s back into the street and the twelfth cigarette of the day. He tells himself he’s not shaking, irrational, completely fucking stupid, and He Is Going To Do This.
He passes the building for like, the millionth time in his life, but this time it’s different because he’s going to go in and ring the buzzer and walk up the stairs, because he hates elevators, and this time he’s going to do it. He’s stood in the little vestibule in the front, staring into the empty lobby through the glass doors, for two days. Today, he tells himself, he’s going to go in.
Because when he met this boy, when he met him three days ago, he had said, I live in apartment 4A. Come over any time. We’ll hang out. And he had said, Yeah, yes, okay, and the boy had smiled.
He blinks and then he’s standing in front of the buzzer board, scanning his index finger up and over, until he sees: Ross, 4A. He pushes the button and waits, and he is so stupid, he should leave right now, and…
“Hello?”
“Oh, uhm. Hi. It’s Brendon. From…”
“The other night, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. I, uhm,” he fiddles with the empty Styrofoam cup, digging his fingers in and crushing it, tearing it piece by piece and leaving it littering the thin patterned carpet like the bodies of fallen moths, giant snowflakes. The boy laughs, and he hears the distinctive buzz and click of the door opening.
“Come on up.”
+++
When the door opens in front of him, he’s shifting from foot to foot and blowing on his hands, because they’re cold and because they’re shaking, trembling, and with his hood pulled over his ears they’re starting to thaw, to burn and prickle with blood flow and invading heat, and it stings.
“You know, I didn’t really think you’d take me up on what I said,” the boy (Ryan, he says in his head, he has a name and it’s Ryan) says, swinging the white-painted door, chipped and with its vaguely bronze doorknob, open and the air from the apartment smells like cinnamon, or something that reminds Brendon of Thanksgiving and Christmas, pumpkin pie?, and cigarettes and coffee.
“Well, I,” Brendon says, and Ryan shakes his head.
“I didn’t think you’d take me up on it, but that doesn’t mean you’re not welcome. Jesus fuck, you must be freezing, out there dressed like that. Come in, I’ll get you some coffee.”
“Okay,” Brendon says, stepping inside and letting Ryan push it shut and twist the deadbolt, and when Ryan turns his back to go into the kitchen, Brendon doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but he says, “I can’t believe I actually did this,” under his breath, and Ryan laughs, laughs, and goes into the kitchen, pours him a coffee.
“What do you like in your coffee?” Ryan says, muffled by the thin wall between here and there, and Brendon calls across the living room, still standing on the mat in front of the door.
“Uh, double-double.”
“Dude, take off your shoes. Sit down,” Ryan says, walking back into the room, two steaming mugs trapped in his long hands, and Brendon kicks his sneakers onto the rubber mat under the coat hooks and works his way to the couch.
“Thanks,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up, when Ryan deposits the mug into his care, burning hot through the glazed porcelain and bittersweet and just a little milky. “So I have no idea why I actually came here,” he says, trying vainly to be at least a little bit conversational, and Ryan laughs again, and Brendon likes that, how free his laughter is.
“It’s okay, I told you that you could, didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah. I just, we don’t even really know each other, so I figured it might be…”
“Well, yeah, but the whole reason I told you to come is because I want to know you,” Ryan says and he’s teasing a little but Brendon doesn’t mind, and he settles his back into the arm of the couch and folds his legs under him. “How about that, hm?” and Ryan smiles and takes a sip of coffee and then sets the mug on the table. Brendon makes a face that Ryan doesn’t really understand, and then shrugs.
“I guess that just doesn’t happen a lot,” he says, cupping his hands around the mug and raising his eyebrows into his bangs, and then the lower half of his face disappears and the coffee burns his mouth but he doesn’t stop drinking it.
“That’s really unfortunate,” Ryan says, and when Brendon looks out over the cylindrical wall of the mug, so close to his face that it’s just a white, white blur, all he can see are Ryan’s eyes, warm like the smell in the air and a little crinkly in the corners, and in spite of himself, he relaxes a little.
+++
It’s getting dark and he looks out the window and sees the orange glow of the streetlamps, but he just doesn’t want to go home. He just wants to sit here on this old couch with Ryan and talk and drink coffee and smoke and smell the cinnamon-something smell of the air until forever.
“It’s snowing,” Ryan says, turning his head to smile at the vague reflections of the apartment in the window, and then outside that, the fat flakes like volcanic ash settling through the waning light outside. And the next thing he knows, Ryan’s pulling him by the wrist out the front door into the snow, snow snow snow, and he’s freezing in just his jeans and his sneakers and his zip-up and the gloves do nothing to stave off the numbness in his fingertips, but there, right there where Ryan’s hand is still clasped around his wrist, he’s warm. And Ryan doesn’t let go, just stands under the streetlight with a halo of reflected light and snowflakes settling on his eyelashes, smiling at the sky.
And then somehow, someway, his fingers slide and twist until they’re laced and tied like ribbons, perfectly through Brendon’s, and suddenly he thinks it’s just not so cold out but his body still shivers and bristles, and the snow tastes salty and he can feel it chapping his lips. The street is empty, so empty, except for parked cars and the tall, sentinel streetlights, and Ryan tugs his other arm until both his hands are held captive and tangled with Ryan’s long fingers, almost long enough to reach his wrist on the other side.
“I hope you don’t think I’m too forward,” he says, voice quieted by the blanket of falling snow, back pressed against the cold flecked metal of the streetlamp, and then he tugs Brendon’s hands and kisses him so both their arms are tucked neatly between their chests, warm and safe there.
And cold, cold is just a nagging feeling like a dream he can’t remember. And every memory before this feels like that same hallucinatory, cold-medicine induced nightmare, fragmented and surreal. And he kisses back.
+++
It takes a few weeks, but eventually he learns that the laughter and smiles he saw so much of in the first while were so pretty like the painted mask of a player under the hot lights of a stage, because that was exactly what they were; careful and practiced. When he learns to see the difference between that face and the face underneath, the bones and muscles and skin, when he becomes the sole witness to the rare and beautiful true smiles that sometimes stretched Ryan’s mouth or when he learns to listen for the real tones of laughter and the edges of pain in Ryan’s voice, sometimes, well. Well that, that was when he fell in love.
It was less catastrophic than he had imagined, seeing his parents with their quiet malevolence, seeing couples with their air of perfection. It was more like an extension of the things he already knew inside himself, like all of a sudden he cared about someone else more than himself and maybe that was okay. It was quiet and simple, unfolding inside of him, so much more and so much less than he had been led to believe.
And one night, he shows up at Ryan’s door and he feels like the cheesy loser in a romantic comedy staring some willowy blond and a bumbling chiseled man’s-man, standing there as clean as you please with a red, red, brilliant scarlet red rose wrapped carefully in his hands and held behind his back.
And when he swings the door open wearing only jeans and socks, Ryan’s smile is genuine.
+++
He’s stretched on his back on Ryan’s worn red sheets, staring at the amber flicker on the ceiling, and it’s some sort of candle that makes the apartment smell like holidays, stronger in here from where one melts on the dresser. His arms are folded behind his head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles, are Ryan’s head rests in the joint, nose so close to brushing the skin of his cheek, golden and flawless in the dim light.
“So, uhm,” Ryan says into his neck, running a hand over the flat of skin above his hips and then kissing the bend of his neck.
“I maybe kind of love you,” Brendon says to the ceiling, stretching and curling the fingers of his right hand in Ryan’s t-shirt.
“Only maybe?” Ryan says, mouthing at his shoulder, and Brendon breathes out long and slow through his nose, a hiss, and closes his eyes.
“No,” he says, just at the same time that Ryan says, “Me too.”
+++
When they wake up in the morning, a foot of snow lays thick and soft on the ground, to be trampled and turned to slush by shoes and cars and buses in a few hours or minutes, and the sun lays salmon and gold and sparkling on the drifts around the streetlight, warmth against the inevitable coldness of the window glass and the weather.
But here, inside, there’s no such thing as cold.
AUTHOR: Hi, my name is Kayla, and I am addicted to slash...
RATING: It's pretty PG, dudes.
POV: 3rd, omniscient, blah blah.
PAIRING: Ryan/Brendon. Do I ever write anything else?
SUMMARY: In which there are streetlights, snow, candles, cuddling, etc.
DISCLAIMER: Not in this universe.
A/N: Okay, you guys. This is only posted here for your enjoyment/disappointment right now, because...it's the first thing I've written in almost two months, and I think it sucks, and it has no plot and is completely and purely FLUFF. (If you actually think it's worth posting somewhere else, you should tell me, or I never will. Just sayin'.) Don't ask me why it's so fluffy, I've been feeling anything but fluffy lately, but this is just what happened. I don't question what I'm writing at this point, as long as I am; it's been too long since I've been able to. Title goes to gregoRy and the hawK, because 'The Bolder Thing To Do' is what sparked the initial idea. Okay, enough rambling.
He tells himself over and over, walking down the street, around the block, past the winking storefronts decorated for Christmas with spray-frost and pine garland, I’m Going To Do This, And It’s Going To Be Fine.
The concrete is less than forgiving under the thin soles of his shoes, and it is cold, so damn cold out here, too cold for just jeans and a hoodie and fingerless gloves. He stops and buys coffee in a Styrofoam cup, holding the palms of his hands over the cold ridges of his ears in the temporary warmth of the coffee shop, and then it’s back into the street and the twelfth cigarette of the day. He tells himself he’s not shaking, irrational, completely fucking stupid, and He Is Going To Do This.
He passes the building for like, the millionth time in his life, but this time it’s different because he’s going to go in and ring the buzzer and walk up the stairs, because he hates elevators, and this time he’s going to do it. He’s stood in the little vestibule in the front, staring into the empty lobby through the glass doors, for two days. Today, he tells himself, he’s going to go in.
Because when he met this boy, when he met him three days ago, he had said, I live in apartment 4A. Come over any time. We’ll hang out. And he had said, Yeah, yes, okay, and the boy had smiled.
He blinks and then he’s standing in front of the buzzer board, scanning his index finger up and over, until he sees: Ross, 4A. He pushes the button and waits, and he is so stupid, he should leave right now, and…
“Hello?”
“Oh, uhm. Hi. It’s Brendon. From…”
“The other night, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. I, uhm,” he fiddles with the empty Styrofoam cup, digging his fingers in and crushing it, tearing it piece by piece and leaving it littering the thin patterned carpet like the bodies of fallen moths, giant snowflakes. The boy laughs, and he hears the distinctive buzz and click of the door opening.
“Come on up.”
+++
When the door opens in front of him, he’s shifting from foot to foot and blowing on his hands, because they’re cold and because they’re shaking, trembling, and with his hood pulled over his ears they’re starting to thaw, to burn and prickle with blood flow and invading heat, and it stings.
“You know, I didn’t really think you’d take me up on what I said,” the boy (Ryan, he says in his head, he has a name and it’s Ryan) says, swinging the white-painted door, chipped and with its vaguely bronze doorknob, open and the air from the apartment smells like cinnamon, or something that reminds Brendon of Thanksgiving and Christmas, pumpkin pie?, and cigarettes and coffee.
“Well, I,” Brendon says, and Ryan shakes his head.
“I didn’t think you’d take me up on it, but that doesn’t mean you’re not welcome. Jesus fuck, you must be freezing, out there dressed like that. Come in, I’ll get you some coffee.”
“Okay,” Brendon says, stepping inside and letting Ryan push it shut and twist the deadbolt, and when Ryan turns his back to go into the kitchen, Brendon doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but he says, “I can’t believe I actually did this,” under his breath, and Ryan laughs, laughs, and goes into the kitchen, pours him a coffee.
“What do you like in your coffee?” Ryan says, muffled by the thin wall between here and there, and Brendon calls across the living room, still standing on the mat in front of the door.
“Uh, double-double.”
“Dude, take off your shoes. Sit down,” Ryan says, walking back into the room, two steaming mugs trapped in his long hands, and Brendon kicks his sneakers onto the rubber mat under the coat hooks and works his way to the couch.
“Thanks,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up, when Ryan deposits the mug into his care, burning hot through the glazed porcelain and bittersweet and just a little milky. “So I have no idea why I actually came here,” he says, trying vainly to be at least a little bit conversational, and Ryan laughs again, and Brendon likes that, how free his laughter is.
“It’s okay, I told you that you could, didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah. I just, we don’t even really know each other, so I figured it might be…”
“Well, yeah, but the whole reason I told you to come is because I want to know you,” Ryan says and he’s teasing a little but Brendon doesn’t mind, and he settles his back into the arm of the couch and folds his legs under him. “How about that, hm?” and Ryan smiles and takes a sip of coffee and then sets the mug on the table. Brendon makes a face that Ryan doesn’t really understand, and then shrugs.
“I guess that just doesn’t happen a lot,” he says, cupping his hands around the mug and raising his eyebrows into his bangs, and then the lower half of his face disappears and the coffee burns his mouth but he doesn’t stop drinking it.
“That’s really unfortunate,” Ryan says, and when Brendon looks out over the cylindrical wall of the mug, so close to his face that it’s just a white, white blur, all he can see are Ryan’s eyes, warm like the smell in the air and a little crinkly in the corners, and in spite of himself, he relaxes a little.
+++
It’s getting dark and he looks out the window and sees the orange glow of the streetlamps, but he just doesn’t want to go home. He just wants to sit here on this old couch with Ryan and talk and drink coffee and smoke and smell the cinnamon-something smell of the air until forever.
“It’s snowing,” Ryan says, turning his head to smile at the vague reflections of the apartment in the window, and then outside that, the fat flakes like volcanic ash settling through the waning light outside. And the next thing he knows, Ryan’s pulling him by the wrist out the front door into the snow, snow snow snow, and he’s freezing in just his jeans and his sneakers and his zip-up and the gloves do nothing to stave off the numbness in his fingertips, but there, right there where Ryan’s hand is still clasped around his wrist, he’s warm. And Ryan doesn’t let go, just stands under the streetlight with a halo of reflected light and snowflakes settling on his eyelashes, smiling at the sky.
And then somehow, someway, his fingers slide and twist until they’re laced and tied like ribbons, perfectly through Brendon’s, and suddenly he thinks it’s just not so cold out but his body still shivers and bristles, and the snow tastes salty and he can feel it chapping his lips. The street is empty, so empty, except for parked cars and the tall, sentinel streetlights, and Ryan tugs his other arm until both his hands are held captive and tangled with Ryan’s long fingers, almost long enough to reach his wrist on the other side.
“I hope you don’t think I’m too forward,” he says, voice quieted by the blanket of falling snow, back pressed against the cold flecked metal of the streetlamp, and then he tugs Brendon’s hands and kisses him so both their arms are tucked neatly between their chests, warm and safe there.
And cold, cold is just a nagging feeling like a dream he can’t remember. And every memory before this feels like that same hallucinatory, cold-medicine induced nightmare, fragmented and surreal. And he kisses back.
+++
It takes a few weeks, but eventually he learns that the laughter and smiles he saw so much of in the first while were so pretty like the painted mask of a player under the hot lights of a stage, because that was exactly what they were; careful and practiced. When he learns to see the difference between that face and the face underneath, the bones and muscles and skin, when he becomes the sole witness to the rare and beautiful true smiles that sometimes stretched Ryan’s mouth or when he learns to listen for the real tones of laughter and the edges of pain in Ryan’s voice, sometimes, well. Well that, that was when he fell in love.
It was less catastrophic than he had imagined, seeing his parents with their quiet malevolence, seeing couples with their air of perfection. It was more like an extension of the things he already knew inside himself, like all of a sudden he cared about someone else more than himself and maybe that was okay. It was quiet and simple, unfolding inside of him, so much more and so much less than he had been led to believe.
And one night, he shows up at Ryan’s door and he feels like the cheesy loser in a romantic comedy staring some willowy blond and a bumbling chiseled man’s-man, standing there as clean as you please with a red, red, brilliant scarlet red rose wrapped carefully in his hands and held behind his back.
And when he swings the door open wearing only jeans and socks, Ryan’s smile is genuine.
+++
He’s stretched on his back on Ryan’s worn red sheets, staring at the amber flicker on the ceiling, and it’s some sort of candle that makes the apartment smell like holidays, stronger in here from where one melts on the dresser. His arms are folded behind his head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles, are Ryan’s head rests in the joint, nose so close to brushing the skin of his cheek, golden and flawless in the dim light.
“So, uhm,” Ryan says into his neck, running a hand over the flat of skin above his hips and then kissing the bend of his neck.
“I maybe kind of love you,” Brendon says to the ceiling, stretching and curling the fingers of his right hand in Ryan’s t-shirt.
“Only maybe?” Ryan says, mouthing at his shoulder, and Brendon breathes out long and slow through his nose, a hiss, and closes his eyes.
“No,” he says, just at the same time that Ryan says, “Me too.”
+++
When they wake up in the morning, a foot of snow lays thick and soft on the ground, to be trampled and turned to slush by shoes and cars and buses in a few hours or minutes, and the sun lays salmon and gold and sparkling on the drifts around the streetlight, warmth against the inevitable coldness of the window glass and the weather.
But here, inside, there’s no such thing as cold.