secret love, and the fastest way to loneliness. [3/?]
TITLE: secret love, and the fastest way to loneliness.
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx
RATING: Ranges from PG13 to R/NC17 eventually. It'll be marked when it gets higher...
POV: Third, omniscient.
PAIRING: Eventually Ryan/Brendon...who else? I like my comfort zone, thank you.
SUMMARY: AU, in which Ryan is half in denial and picks up transgendered hookers, and Brendon is a not-so-much transgendered whore.
DISCLAIMER: Oh please, honey.
A/N: Title credit to This Providence ♥ Chapter title goes to Bayside. P.S. 3 parts in 3 days? My brain is on fire!
He wakes up with a hangover like nobody’s business, pounding head and dry mouth, a long cylindrical ash of a cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed. He’s as glad as he can muster that it’s Saturday, lying sprawled across the wrinkled sheets with his brain trying to crack out of his skull with an axe.
Hereee’s Johnny! Whack, whack, whack.
He finds himself kissing the tile on his bathroom floor about twelve minutes later, the contents of his stomach lost somewhere in the city’s sewer system, throat burning and mouth soured. With his cheek pressed to the cold, dirty tile, he’s never felt less alive.
This, in itself, is consolation.
He vaguely wonders how a 21 year old kid winds up this broken, a fleeting white thought in the back of his gray mind, dancing and spinning behind his closed eyelids.
And then he’s heaving again, as if the thought itself was enough to make him vomit, and it’s gone in a rush of water and the smell of whiskey.
He falls asleep on the bathroom floor, curled into a ball with his hand lying slack on the mint green tile, cold linoleum easing the ache in his head.
He dreams uneasy, memories better left forgotten, and the way it feels to be alone.
He wakes up in a cold sweat and pukes on the floor, bile and air, tearing his stomach in half.
He wishes he was anywhere but here.
----------
He’s still sitting in the bar, elbows on the stained table, eyes half-closed with sleep and vodka. He’s alone except for some old drunk sleeping on his arms at a table across the room. It’s something like 6 a.m., and there’s a half-gone cigarette scarring the table, hanging from his limp fingers.
Some other hooker, a pretty brunette in tall boots and a too-small skirt, shakes him by the shoulder and whispers that he should go home, that it’s too late, or too early, for him to still be here.
He stands up in a half-asleep haze, grabs his sweater and stumbles out, leaving the cigarette to burn holes in the table. She sighs and throws it on the floor, squashing it with the toe of her boot, and scrapes the ash off on the foot of the table.
“Brendon,” she says to no one in particular, and certainly not to him, “Brendon, you’re too good for this,” and rubs at the track marks on her elbow.
And if he would have heard her, he would have laughed.
He deserves everything he gets.
----------
He holds his head and leans against the cabinets in the bathroom, and he decides he needs coffee and cigarettes and Tylenol, he needs to muster the energy to drag himself to the corner store.
One step at a time, he’s walking back to the bedroom, throwing on yesterday’s ripped jeans and a dirty black sweater, slipping his ratty Converse onto his feet, flattening his hair with the palm of his hand.
He grabs his wallet and his keys and pushes open the door, painted brown with a bronze 23 on the front, stepping out onto the patterned, worn carpet of the hallway, staring at the yellowing walls.
He locks the door, not that he has anything to steal, and shoves his key in his pocket and starts to shuffle down the hall. There’s a guy at the other end, sweater thrown over his arm, walking bleary-eyed towards him, and Ryan can’t help but think he looks a little familiar.
When they pass, the guy looks at him, bags under his eyes and gray skin, and Ryan thinks that must be exactly what he looks like right now. Dead, completely fucking dead, a zombie drunk at 8 a.m.
He wishes he could remember where he knows this guy from, because the feeling is nagging the back of his already aching skull, remember, remember, remember. But he doesn’t, because it hurts too much to think, and he just continues down the hall to the elevator, down, down to the lobby and out into the chill air.
----------
When he passes him in the hallway on his way to the apartment, his heart almost stops.
Glancing at him, bags under his eyes and gray skin, he thinks that must be exactly what he looks like right now. Dead, completely fucking dead. Junkie. Whore. Drunk.
And he can’t believe, not really, that the boy who picks up queens, the pretty boy with the caramel hair, lives right across the hall from him in this shitty apartment building; that he’s never noticed him before, coming or going or in the elevator.
Small fucking world, he thinks, unlocking his door and pushing it open, falling face first onto his dirty bed, pulling the blankets up to block out the cold, dusty air.
----------
The guy at the counter tells him he looks like shit, and Ryan just nods and pushes money onto the counter. He knows, he doesn’t need some minimum-wage shithead clerk to tell him that.
He takes his coffee and his Tylenol and his Marlboro’s and he walks home, head down, plastic bag cutting off circulation to his hand, coffee burning through the cardboard.
For the millionth time that week, he wishes he had someone else’s life, anyone's, just so he could be alive for a few minutes, just so he could feel something.
----------
Across the hall from his apartment, Brendon’s watching him walk down the sidewalk from his dirty window, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his tired eyes.
He watches him disappear in the door, and a few minutes later, he hears his footsteps in the hall. He gets up and looks out the peep hole, staring at the back of the other boy’s head, wondering, wondering why in the world, why in the world he hadn't noticed before.
----------
They both fall asleep on their dirty beds, staring at the ceiling and smoking cigarettes, wondering how they’d ended up this way, empty and broken.
Once, they’d had dreams, ambitions. Once, they’d been alive.
And now, and now, they’re as good as dead.
Part 4.
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx
RATING: Ranges from PG13 to R/NC17 eventually. It'll be marked when it gets higher...
POV: Third, omniscient.
PAIRING: Eventually Ryan/Brendon...who else? I like my comfort zone, thank you.
SUMMARY: AU, in which Ryan is half in denial and picks up transgendered hookers, and Brendon is a not-so-much transgendered whore.
DISCLAIMER: Oh please, honey.
A/N: Title credit to This Providence ♥ Chapter title goes to Bayside. P.S. 3 parts in 3 days? My brain is on fire!
He wakes up with a hangover like nobody’s business, pounding head and dry mouth, a long cylindrical ash of a cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed. He’s as glad as he can muster that it’s Saturday, lying sprawled across the wrinkled sheets with his brain trying to crack out of his skull with an axe.
Hereee’s Johnny! Whack, whack, whack.
He finds himself kissing the tile on his bathroom floor about twelve minutes later, the contents of his stomach lost somewhere in the city’s sewer system, throat burning and mouth soured. With his cheek pressed to the cold, dirty tile, he’s never felt less alive.
This, in itself, is consolation.
He vaguely wonders how a 21 year old kid winds up this broken, a fleeting white thought in the back of his gray mind, dancing and spinning behind his closed eyelids.
And then he’s heaving again, as if the thought itself was enough to make him vomit, and it’s gone in a rush of water and the smell of whiskey.
He falls asleep on the bathroom floor, curled into a ball with his hand lying slack on the mint green tile, cold linoleum easing the ache in his head.
He dreams uneasy, memories better left forgotten, and the way it feels to be alone.
He wakes up in a cold sweat and pukes on the floor, bile and air, tearing his stomach in half.
He wishes he was anywhere but here.
----------
He’s still sitting in the bar, elbows on the stained table, eyes half-closed with sleep and vodka. He’s alone except for some old drunk sleeping on his arms at a table across the room. It’s something like 6 a.m., and there’s a half-gone cigarette scarring the table, hanging from his limp fingers.
Some other hooker, a pretty brunette in tall boots and a too-small skirt, shakes him by the shoulder and whispers that he should go home, that it’s too late, or too early, for him to still be here.
He stands up in a half-asleep haze, grabs his sweater and stumbles out, leaving the cigarette to burn holes in the table. She sighs and throws it on the floor, squashing it with the toe of her boot, and scrapes the ash off on the foot of the table.
“Brendon,” she says to no one in particular, and certainly not to him, “Brendon, you’re too good for this,” and rubs at the track marks on her elbow.
And if he would have heard her, he would have laughed.
He deserves everything he gets.
----------
He holds his head and leans against the cabinets in the bathroom, and he decides he needs coffee and cigarettes and Tylenol, he needs to muster the energy to drag himself to the corner store.
One step at a time, he’s walking back to the bedroom, throwing on yesterday’s ripped jeans and a dirty black sweater, slipping his ratty Converse onto his feet, flattening his hair with the palm of his hand.
He grabs his wallet and his keys and pushes open the door, painted brown with a bronze 23 on the front, stepping out onto the patterned, worn carpet of the hallway, staring at the yellowing walls.
He locks the door, not that he has anything to steal, and shoves his key in his pocket and starts to shuffle down the hall. There’s a guy at the other end, sweater thrown over his arm, walking bleary-eyed towards him, and Ryan can’t help but think he looks a little familiar.
When they pass, the guy looks at him, bags under his eyes and gray skin, and Ryan thinks that must be exactly what he looks like right now. Dead, completely fucking dead, a zombie drunk at 8 a.m.
He wishes he could remember where he knows this guy from, because the feeling is nagging the back of his already aching skull, remember, remember, remember. But he doesn’t, because it hurts too much to think, and he just continues down the hall to the elevator, down, down to the lobby and out into the chill air.
----------
When he passes him in the hallway on his way to the apartment, his heart almost stops.
Glancing at him, bags under his eyes and gray skin, he thinks that must be exactly what he looks like right now. Dead, completely fucking dead. Junkie. Whore. Drunk.
And he can’t believe, not really, that the boy who picks up queens, the pretty boy with the caramel hair, lives right across the hall from him in this shitty apartment building; that he’s never noticed him before, coming or going or in the elevator.
Small fucking world, he thinks, unlocking his door and pushing it open, falling face first onto his dirty bed, pulling the blankets up to block out the cold, dusty air.
----------
The guy at the counter tells him he looks like shit, and Ryan just nods and pushes money onto the counter. He knows, he doesn’t need some minimum-wage shithead clerk to tell him that.
He takes his coffee and his Tylenol and his Marlboro’s and he walks home, head down, plastic bag cutting off circulation to his hand, coffee burning through the cardboard.
For the millionth time that week, he wishes he had someone else’s life, anyone's, just so he could be alive for a few minutes, just so he could feel something.
----------
Across the hall from his apartment, Brendon’s watching him walk down the sidewalk from his dirty window, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his tired eyes.
He watches him disappear in the door, and a few minutes later, he hears his footsteps in the hall. He gets up and looks out the peep hole, staring at the back of the other boy’s head, wondering, wondering why in the world, why in the world he hadn't noticed before.
----------
They both fall asleep on their dirty beds, staring at the ceiling and smoking cigarettes, wondering how they’d ended up this way, empty and broken.
Once, they’d had dreams, ambitions. Once, they’d been alive.
And now, and now, they’re as good as dead.
Part 4.