Shoot Down The Stars [1/1]
TITLE: Shoot Down The Stars.
AUTHOR: Me, Kayla. therecordskipsx
RATING: Uhm, like PG-10?
POV: Third.
PAIRING: Brendon/Ryan. I should expand my horizons one day.
SUMMARY: Writer's block, coffee, stars, and analytical obsessive over-thinking.
DISCLAIMER: I do not believe this ever happened. If I'm wrong, let me know.
A/N: I wrote the beginning of this whilst experience writers block, and so I decided to write about writers block and try to explain it in an effort to get rid of it, and over a number of days, this approach seems to have resulted in...whatever this is. Mmkay? Credit to GCH and My Favorite Highway, title and cut text respectively. Aaand, GO!
It’s like there’s some thought, some idea, itching in his fingers and gnawing at the back of his brain, an inability to keep still no matter how hard he tries, like all his muscles are straining in the wrong direction and his brain is twisted in his skull. There’s some string of vowels and consonants, pronouns and clauses and metaphors that are racing around, smashing into each other in a desperate race to reach his nerve endings first, and in all their haste, they’re getting nowhere, running in circles. A few angular words scribbled on the white field of the paper, battle lines drawn in blue and the front line drawn in red, the soldiers of the alphabet drawn out stretched in black ink. Scribbles mark the graves of fallen ideas, impression from the nib of the pen wearing through the paper into the sheet beneath it, tears and holes like the ones forming in his brain.
You can’t force it, he keeps telling himself, you can’t push words out where there are none. But there are always words in his brain, always, they’re just waiting for the right time, moment, place to come out, and it just seems like right now, there’s something plugging the arteries and nerve cells that would carry them to his fingers and out the pen and onto the paper. Something small and dark and electric, tingling in his skin and gnashing at his skull, trying to find a way that doesn’t involve brain and hands, a way that feels more like forceful excavation of bones and tissue and things that don’t grow back. Nerves, acid burnt cells. Sanity.
The walls, dust white and dark paneling, the shadowy corners of the bus ceiling, they’re sinking down to cover him, to crush him with particle board and plaster, to pin him to the dark wood table and the faux-leather of the couch, to smash the beloved T.V. into the floor and shatter all their DVD collections of the OC and the Simpsons.
So he throws his pen down in the valley of his notebook, folds the pages together, and runs in slow motion to the door of the bus, flinging himself down the corrugated metal fold-out steps into and onto the waiting concrete and a sea of grass and night sky. He folds like a card house, legs curling underneath him, jeans and palms coming hard into contact with the gravely concrete, and he stares at the different colours of the conglomerate and he wants so hard to be able to express it in words, all of it, but it’s lost.
He walks-crawls-stumbles his way to the grass, cold and verdant and wet, and falls backwards onto it, staring at the stars spattered across the sky by some invisible paintbrush, at the tree branches stretching like skeletal fingers, a shade darker than the black of the sky. New moon, a blank canvas to be painted by waxing and waning, to pull the tide to the shores. He wants to capture it, paint it in words on lined paper, hold onto it forever even while something else is pulling at his tendons, begging for release. He wants to make something beautiful, he wants to be something beautiful.
He hears the bus door open and close, rubber soles clanging on metal and slapping on pavement. He knows it isn’t Spencer, because Spencer’s been his friend so long that he understands Ryan when he gets like this, knows to leave him alone and things will pass, that he’ll be back to writing when something particularly striking catches his attention, because it’s always been this way.
So it could be Jon, coming out to click and snap with his camera, to capture what Ryan wants to snare with words on film, stars and trees and maybe Ryan laying on the grass, the shadows of the concrete, slow shutter speeds to let in the light. Or it could be Brendon, with something loud and funny to say, trying to cheer Ryan up when all he’s really doing is digging the hole deeper, because Ryan doesn’t need cheering, he needs silence to sort out the words in his head. And as much as he loves his band mates, he almost wishes it were Spencer coming towards him, Spencer with his silence and his understanding of the way Ryan works, the way things are.
When the body lands beside him on the grass in silence, he thinks maybe it is Spencer after all, because they don’t say anything, and there’s no clicking or snapping or shuffling. He doesn’t turn his head to look, he just lays there and stares at the sky with his arms folded over his stomach, the dew on the grass soaking through his cotton t-shirt to brush against the skin of his back. Something blurs into his vision, and he nearly crosses his eyes in an effort to bring it into focus, to leave the stars in the background. There’s an arm, undeniably Brendon’s, holding out a shiny porcelain mug with steam swirling and twisting out of the top, and the smell of coffee hits him hard and fast.
He pushes himself up and slides backwards on the wet grass, shivering slightly when the breeze ghosts along the dampness on his back, and wraps his fingers around the cup. He doesn’t say anything, because the silence is thick and warm like the coffee, just nods his head and takes a sip, and it’s perfect, bitter and sweet and hot, made expressly for him, he knows. The heat seeps through the porcelain, rushes through his hands into his arms, and curls in his stomach with the next sip.
He’s waiting, on edge, for Brendon to jump up, to fidget, to open his mouth and say something out of the blue, but he doesn’t, and he knows Brendon is waiting for him to say something, and so they dance in a circle of silence around each other, a metaphorical boxing match, waiting for the first punch. And when Brendon finally speaks, he’s almost whispering, and there is no hysterical tinge, no excitement, nothing to make Ryan cringe and wish for silence.
“I thought you’d like some coffee,” he rubs his hands up and down his arms, “because it’s kind of cold out here.” Ryan nods, resting the cup on his knee, turning his attention back to the sky.
“Yeah, thanks,” and he thinks maybe Brendon gets it, maybe Spencer explained it to him, to be quiet, to just let him think, just let him be. “It’s good.”
“Hmm,” Brendon agrees, flopping backwards onto the grass as Ryan drains the last drops of liquid out of the cup, setting it to the side and setting himself down on the ground. “That’s one thing I can do, make coffee.” Ryan smiles at the sky.
“Yeah, like you need the caffeine,” he sighs, shifting his arms over his stomach, because Brendon’s right, it is getting cold out here. “And you can do more than that.” He doesn’t need to elaborate, to explain about music or anything else, because it’s just there, in those seven words. Brendon doesn’t say anything, and Ryan thanks the brightest star in the sky, because sometimes he just needs this, quiet. The tugging in his brain seems to be slowing down, whatever thought was there filing itself away for later, and the solitude and the hot coffee seemed to be stitching the wounds.
“So,” Brendon says, and Ryan doesn’t move, just stares straight up at the sky, starlight bouncing, and Brendon turns towards him, propped up on one elbow. “So I know you like to be left alone when you’re like this, and I’m not out here to bother you, honestly.” Ryan turns his head to look at Brendon, shadowed by the night, and raises an eyebrow. “I was just,” he sighs, “I always want to know what’s up with you, y’know, when you’re like this. Spencer seems to get it, and Jon seems to get it, and I just...I just don’t get you.” Ryan can’t stop the short burst of sardonic laughter that explodes into the sky, and Brendon looks a little startled, confused, hurt.
“You don’t get me? I don’t get me.” He sighs, turning his eyes back to the stars, getting brighter as the night gets darker, pure white pin points on a black, shapeless map. “You make it seem like there’s some big mystery to comprehend,” he says to the sky, “but there isn’t. There’s just...there’s just me.” Brendon takes a deep breath and breathes out through his nose, fingers dragging idly through the damp grass.
“Well, no,” he says, “that’s the thing, is that you are the mystery. And even if you don’t think there’s anything to figure out...” he shifts, wiping his wet fingers on his jeans, “there is. Like,” he rushes on, “okay, why do you get like this, where nothing works for you, when you’re so damn good at writing? And why are you so...so...rational, when we’re all so fucking clueless, I mean...you never do anything without thinking it through from every angle, and...”
“Do you want me to do something without thinking it through?” he interrupts, voice slashing through Brendon’s tirade and leaving it deflated on the ground behind them, and Brendon stares at him blankly. “Well, do you?” Brendon opens and closes his mouth, knits his eyebrows together.
“I, I don’t know, what? Do what?”
“Well if I told you that would be thinking it through,” Ryan points out, and Brendon’s face twists.
“Okay, well then, yeah. Sure. Whatever it is, you sh-” And instead of Ryan’s words slashing through his sentences, fragmenting them, he kisses him, short and hard and closed mouthed. “I,” Brendon says, staring at Ryan. “What?”
“I lied,” Ryan says, and Brendon just stares. “I’ve been thinking that through from every angle for weeks. I know everything you could possibly do right now. Take your pick.” And Brendon stares at him for another long second, a reaction Ryan had gauged, and then the least likely scenario that Ryan thought up plays out in slow motion. There’s no laughing, no screaming, no hitting, no weird. Just maybe something that Ryan would describe as careful, fingertips and closed lips progressing to palms of hands and open mouths, ending in something that Ryan would describe as unexpected, breath condensing in the night air and fingers burnt into his hip.
Then there are slow smiles and stiff limbs and awkwardly twined fingers, standing up and going back into the bus, and he sits down at the table and opens his notebook while Brendon pours more coffee, and writes sentences clauses predicates nouns verbs, paragraphs and pages, while Brendon sits on the couch beside him and watches the words spill out of his pen in angles and flourishes, coming out faster than his hand can go, misspelled words and half thoughts jumping into new territory in the blink of an eye.
And Ryan thinks that for all Spencer’s understanding, he never really sped up the process, and that maybe misunderstanding was really what he needed, a slice of chaos in the order. He thinks that for all Jon’s methodical capturing of beauty, he never really gave Ryan anything to write about, and that something real and tactile was what he needed, lips on lips in the wet grass. And when his pen veers sharply across the page and starts writing a love story, he thinks that until the next time he’s hurt, until the next time his brain shuts off, he won’t be able to write about anything else, and he writes about how he doesn’t ever want that to happen, for all of it’s supposed artistic merits, and leaves his coffee sitting on the table until it goes cold and Brendon falls asleep against his shoulder.
And the next time he finds himself over-analyzing and examining every breath he takes, Brendon takes it away so there’s nothing left to examine, and he loses his train of thought and forgets all about it, and the nerve block never sets in, and his notebook is full of fantasy and forever-ever-after, words he’s never considered using repeated and rehashed.
Every night, even when it’s cloudy, the stars fall and land in his eyes and on the pages of his notebook, and nothing else matters, not even the rain. And on the dark nights, the little bunk window reflects his eyes, and the two of them sleeping cramped into the tiny space, and the rattling in the back of his head shuts off, disappears, and his wounds close with the first rush of blood and feeling, and all that lives there now is warmth and unapologetic caring, winding it’s way onto paper and through his lips.
He wanted to make, to be, something beautiful, and he doesn’t think there’s ever been anything more beautiful than this.
AUTHOR: Me, Kayla. therecordskipsx
RATING: Uhm, like PG-10?
POV: Third.
PAIRING: Brendon/Ryan. I should expand my horizons one day.
SUMMARY: Writer's block, coffee, stars, and analytical obsessive over-thinking.
DISCLAIMER: I do not believe this ever happened. If I'm wrong, let me know.
A/N: I wrote the beginning of this whilst experience writers block, and so I decided to write about writers block and try to explain it in an effort to get rid of it, and over a number of days, this approach seems to have resulted in...whatever this is. Mmkay? Credit to GCH and My Favorite Highway, title and cut text respectively. Aaand, GO!
It’s like there’s some thought, some idea, itching in his fingers and gnawing at the back of his brain, an inability to keep still no matter how hard he tries, like all his muscles are straining in the wrong direction and his brain is twisted in his skull. There’s some string of vowels and consonants, pronouns and clauses and metaphors that are racing around, smashing into each other in a desperate race to reach his nerve endings first, and in all their haste, they’re getting nowhere, running in circles. A few angular words scribbled on the white field of the paper, battle lines drawn in blue and the front line drawn in red, the soldiers of the alphabet drawn out stretched in black ink. Scribbles mark the graves of fallen ideas, impression from the nib of the pen wearing through the paper into the sheet beneath it, tears and holes like the ones forming in his brain.
You can’t force it, he keeps telling himself, you can’t push words out where there are none. But there are always words in his brain, always, they’re just waiting for the right time, moment, place to come out, and it just seems like right now, there’s something plugging the arteries and nerve cells that would carry them to his fingers and out the pen and onto the paper. Something small and dark and electric, tingling in his skin and gnashing at his skull, trying to find a way that doesn’t involve brain and hands, a way that feels more like forceful excavation of bones and tissue and things that don’t grow back. Nerves, acid burnt cells. Sanity.
The walls, dust white and dark paneling, the shadowy corners of the bus ceiling, they’re sinking down to cover him, to crush him with particle board and plaster, to pin him to the dark wood table and the faux-leather of the couch, to smash the beloved T.V. into the floor and shatter all their DVD collections of the OC and the Simpsons.
So he throws his pen down in the valley of his notebook, folds the pages together, and runs in slow motion to the door of the bus, flinging himself down the corrugated metal fold-out steps into and onto the waiting concrete and a sea of grass and night sky. He folds like a card house, legs curling underneath him, jeans and palms coming hard into contact with the gravely concrete, and he stares at the different colours of the conglomerate and he wants so hard to be able to express it in words, all of it, but it’s lost.
He walks-crawls-stumbles his way to the grass, cold and verdant and wet, and falls backwards onto it, staring at the stars spattered across the sky by some invisible paintbrush, at the tree branches stretching like skeletal fingers, a shade darker than the black of the sky. New moon, a blank canvas to be painted by waxing and waning, to pull the tide to the shores. He wants to capture it, paint it in words on lined paper, hold onto it forever even while something else is pulling at his tendons, begging for release. He wants to make something beautiful, he wants to be something beautiful.
He hears the bus door open and close, rubber soles clanging on metal and slapping on pavement. He knows it isn’t Spencer, because Spencer’s been his friend so long that he understands Ryan when he gets like this, knows to leave him alone and things will pass, that he’ll be back to writing when something particularly striking catches his attention, because it’s always been this way.
So it could be Jon, coming out to click and snap with his camera, to capture what Ryan wants to snare with words on film, stars and trees and maybe Ryan laying on the grass, the shadows of the concrete, slow shutter speeds to let in the light. Or it could be Brendon, with something loud and funny to say, trying to cheer Ryan up when all he’s really doing is digging the hole deeper, because Ryan doesn’t need cheering, he needs silence to sort out the words in his head. And as much as he loves his band mates, he almost wishes it were Spencer coming towards him, Spencer with his silence and his understanding of the way Ryan works, the way things are.
When the body lands beside him on the grass in silence, he thinks maybe it is Spencer after all, because they don’t say anything, and there’s no clicking or snapping or shuffling. He doesn’t turn his head to look, he just lays there and stares at the sky with his arms folded over his stomach, the dew on the grass soaking through his cotton t-shirt to brush against the skin of his back. Something blurs into his vision, and he nearly crosses his eyes in an effort to bring it into focus, to leave the stars in the background. There’s an arm, undeniably Brendon’s, holding out a shiny porcelain mug with steam swirling and twisting out of the top, and the smell of coffee hits him hard and fast.
He pushes himself up and slides backwards on the wet grass, shivering slightly when the breeze ghosts along the dampness on his back, and wraps his fingers around the cup. He doesn’t say anything, because the silence is thick and warm like the coffee, just nods his head and takes a sip, and it’s perfect, bitter and sweet and hot, made expressly for him, he knows. The heat seeps through the porcelain, rushes through his hands into his arms, and curls in his stomach with the next sip.
He’s waiting, on edge, for Brendon to jump up, to fidget, to open his mouth and say something out of the blue, but he doesn’t, and he knows Brendon is waiting for him to say something, and so they dance in a circle of silence around each other, a metaphorical boxing match, waiting for the first punch. And when Brendon finally speaks, he’s almost whispering, and there is no hysterical tinge, no excitement, nothing to make Ryan cringe and wish for silence.
“I thought you’d like some coffee,” he rubs his hands up and down his arms, “because it’s kind of cold out here.” Ryan nods, resting the cup on his knee, turning his attention back to the sky.
“Yeah, thanks,” and he thinks maybe Brendon gets it, maybe Spencer explained it to him, to be quiet, to just let him think, just let him be. “It’s good.”
“Hmm,” Brendon agrees, flopping backwards onto the grass as Ryan drains the last drops of liquid out of the cup, setting it to the side and setting himself down on the ground. “That’s one thing I can do, make coffee.” Ryan smiles at the sky.
“Yeah, like you need the caffeine,” he sighs, shifting his arms over his stomach, because Brendon’s right, it is getting cold out here. “And you can do more than that.” He doesn’t need to elaborate, to explain about music or anything else, because it’s just there, in those seven words. Brendon doesn’t say anything, and Ryan thanks the brightest star in the sky, because sometimes he just needs this, quiet. The tugging in his brain seems to be slowing down, whatever thought was there filing itself away for later, and the solitude and the hot coffee seemed to be stitching the wounds.
“So,” Brendon says, and Ryan doesn’t move, just stares straight up at the sky, starlight bouncing, and Brendon turns towards him, propped up on one elbow. “So I know you like to be left alone when you’re like this, and I’m not out here to bother you, honestly.” Ryan turns his head to look at Brendon, shadowed by the night, and raises an eyebrow. “I was just,” he sighs, “I always want to know what’s up with you, y’know, when you’re like this. Spencer seems to get it, and Jon seems to get it, and I just...I just don’t get you.” Ryan can’t stop the short burst of sardonic laughter that explodes into the sky, and Brendon looks a little startled, confused, hurt.
“You don’t get me? I don’t get me.” He sighs, turning his eyes back to the stars, getting brighter as the night gets darker, pure white pin points on a black, shapeless map. “You make it seem like there’s some big mystery to comprehend,” he says to the sky, “but there isn’t. There’s just...there’s just me.” Brendon takes a deep breath and breathes out through his nose, fingers dragging idly through the damp grass.
“Well, no,” he says, “that’s the thing, is that you are the mystery. And even if you don’t think there’s anything to figure out...” he shifts, wiping his wet fingers on his jeans, “there is. Like,” he rushes on, “okay, why do you get like this, where nothing works for you, when you’re so damn good at writing? And why are you so...so...rational, when we’re all so fucking clueless, I mean...you never do anything without thinking it through from every angle, and...”
“Do you want me to do something without thinking it through?” he interrupts, voice slashing through Brendon’s tirade and leaving it deflated on the ground behind them, and Brendon stares at him blankly. “Well, do you?” Brendon opens and closes his mouth, knits his eyebrows together.
“I, I don’t know, what? Do what?”
“Well if I told you that would be thinking it through,” Ryan points out, and Brendon’s face twists.
“Okay, well then, yeah. Sure. Whatever it is, you sh-” And instead of Ryan’s words slashing through his sentences, fragmenting them, he kisses him, short and hard and closed mouthed. “I,” Brendon says, staring at Ryan. “What?”
“I lied,” Ryan says, and Brendon just stares. “I’ve been thinking that through from every angle for weeks. I know everything you could possibly do right now. Take your pick.” And Brendon stares at him for another long second, a reaction Ryan had gauged, and then the least likely scenario that Ryan thought up plays out in slow motion. There’s no laughing, no screaming, no hitting, no weird. Just maybe something that Ryan would describe as careful, fingertips and closed lips progressing to palms of hands and open mouths, ending in something that Ryan would describe as unexpected, breath condensing in the night air and fingers burnt into his hip.
Then there are slow smiles and stiff limbs and awkwardly twined fingers, standing up and going back into the bus, and he sits down at the table and opens his notebook while Brendon pours more coffee, and writes sentences clauses predicates nouns verbs, paragraphs and pages, while Brendon sits on the couch beside him and watches the words spill out of his pen in angles and flourishes, coming out faster than his hand can go, misspelled words and half thoughts jumping into new territory in the blink of an eye.
And Ryan thinks that for all Spencer’s understanding, he never really sped up the process, and that maybe misunderstanding was really what he needed, a slice of chaos in the order. He thinks that for all Jon’s methodical capturing of beauty, he never really gave Ryan anything to write about, and that something real and tactile was what he needed, lips on lips in the wet grass. And when his pen veers sharply across the page and starts writing a love story, he thinks that until the next time he’s hurt, until the next time his brain shuts off, he won’t be able to write about anything else, and he writes about how he doesn’t ever want that to happen, for all of it’s supposed artistic merits, and leaves his coffee sitting on the table until it goes cold and Brendon falls asleep against his shoulder.
And the next time he finds himself over-analyzing and examining every breath he takes, Brendon takes it away so there’s nothing left to examine, and he loses his train of thought and forgets all about it, and the nerve block never sets in, and his notebook is full of fantasy and forever-ever-after, words he’s never considered using repeated and rehashed.
Every night, even when it’s cloudy, the stars fall and land in his eyes and on the pages of his notebook, and nothing else matters, not even the rain. And on the dark nights, the little bunk window reflects his eyes, and the two of them sleeping cramped into the tiny space, and the rattling in the back of his head shuts off, disappears, and his wounds close with the first rush of blood and feeling, and all that lives there now is warmth and unapologetic caring, winding it’s way onto paper and through his lips.
He wanted to make, to be, something beautiful, and he doesn’t think there’s ever been anything more beautiful than this.