casino clouds. [1/1]
TITLE: Casino Clouds.
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx Or, you know, me.
RATING: I’d give it a PG-13. You know what that means. No reading, little kiddies!
POV: Third.
PAIRING: It’s always Ryan/Brendon, guys. Seriously.
SUMMARY: “If these are the black gates of hell, then I'm sorry for the life I've wasted so.” Slightly AU in which there is church, fairgrounds, and muchos angstyfluff.
DISCLAIMER: Possibly, but probably not.
A/N: Title and lyrics © to Lovedrug, a band which you should know. Now.
you left tuesday, and by wednesday you were so alone. is this your nightmare, man? the millions of punch drunks and the cannibal king is taking control.
They walk out to the old fair grounds, really just a flat sea of drab gray concrete and scrub grass, now reborn, filled with people and alive with lights and the lightning bug softness of children’s glow sticks. The electric sounds of conversation fade in and out, and armies of paper-winged moths and blood-fattened mosquitoes dance around the yellow halo of the lights. Distracted, attracted, and repelled. Repeat.
It was hot today, the kind of close heat that’s unusual even for the desert, the kind that’s like the way lip balm lingers waxy on your lips for hours afterwards. From somewhere in the distance, music blares and bumps, too loud out of some kids speakers. They tap their fingers silently and smile.
A breeze is blowing, silent and silken, the last bow of the sun bringing a curtain of night and cold fingers of wind, curling around limbs. Sparklers crackle and flare in the hands of screaming children, writing names in letters broken and slanted and joined, before fizzling out and leaving charred metal bones and burnt fingers.
Here, in such a place, there is shadow. Security. Anonymity. Freedom. They stand in the bending shadows of the trees, bodies and eyes avoiding the lights like fledgling immortals, the fear of immolation, of recognition. They hold hands in the dark, letting the fear flicker and die somewhere in the back of their minds. A toddler shrieks by, and a lighter flares in the dark, fades out, replaced with an ember floating detached in the darkness before bobbing into the background.
The moon floats between the clouds, unveiled suddenly, a butterfly skipping in the sky, a garden of flowers, and then disappears. The air smells like rain, fresh earth and something cold and raw, the smell of spring shoots, and a firework arches up, flashes and explodes into blue stars. A child screams fear into the face of the explosion. Everything goes quiet. Mumble, cough, sigh.
“Why are people so fascinated by fireworks?”
Eyes glint in the dark, and fingers hold tight.
“Spectacle,” the body beside him whispers, eyes never leaving the sky. “It’s like safe war. Explosions and colours, but no blood. Hopeful.”
A red star fizzles and sparkles against the backdrop of the sky. He smiles.
“I don’t understand you sometimes,” he whispers back, turning his head to catch the outline of an upturned face, leaning to kiss the corner of a mouth.
“Neither do I,” he murmurs, turning his face into the contact, and a silver shower of sparkles illuminates the edges of the clouds. Everyone coos in appreciation and falls silent again. A dog barks, and the trees rustle in the breeze. “Neither do I.”
----------
now that you're burning in space, you try to remember her face and the crown of your heart. now you're fighting for the manacle girls and boys like a kettle of keys, one of which might unlock all of these...
It’s a long walk home. They keep reminding each other, but neither of them has the strength to move, so they just stay there, curled up underneath bleachers. There are only people here and there now, the rides are shutting down for the night, the fireworks have long since stopped flashing in the sky. They don’t check their watches, and if there’s a hint of light on the horizon, they ignore it.
The grass tickles up the back of his shirt, scratching at the skin on his hips, and he ignores it in favour of fingers dancing under the hem, drawing circles. Lips kiss, brush and open, and their mouths taste like cotton candy and nighttime, smooth and sweet. The hand on his hip burns, and he doesn’t dare move. He holds on.
It happens before he even realizes it, the angry voice coming from the shadows and the hands coming from nowhere, pulling and shouting and shoving, and then he’s marshaled like a prisoner, being led away, looking back over his shoulder with shadows in his eyes, mouthing I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll see you soon, I’m sorry until his lips must be parched. And then he’s gone.
And then he’s just laying there with nothing but the grass rubbing against his back, watching the stars dim through the slats in the bleachers, and wondering if anyone at home has even missed him yet.
----------
if these are the black gates of hell, then i'm sorry for the life i've wasted so. i forgot to fall in love, i forgot to call on the keystone clan. i never got to be a man at all.
When he gets home, the sun is almost up. The door is unlocked. When he walks in, the house is empty and silent. The curtains are drawn.
He expects his father to burst around the corner, tired-eyed, and say he got a very disturbing phone call from the Urie’s last night. He expects to hear ‘faggot’. He checks the messages and the caller’s list on the phone. He calls his dad’s name, and it just echoes back to him.
He puts a cup of coffee in the microwave, scarfing down a cold piece of pizza while it reheats, buzzing and whirring around, getting zapped. He sits on the couch and drinks the hot liquid, letting it sear a path down his throat, warming his insides.
He thinks of what Brendon must be doing now. Kneeling beside his parents in church, head down, afraid and ashamed, listening to some holier-than-thou idiot drone on about sin and redemption. Pumped full of guilt, but what the hell do they know about anything, anyways? What do they know about how it feels?
And his parents trying to fix him, to heal him, as if he’s broken and diseased, taking away all his contact with the outside world. With me, he thinks, and for the first time since he was left alone, it hurts, really fucking stings. For the first time, he lets it.
He takes another sip, lets the burn consume everything, digs his nails into his palms, and blinks, blinks, because he does not cry. He learned. He does not cry.
----------
your crocodile tears, your mannequin angel cage of fire is killing him so. now you're searching for life up in these cold casino clouds. with your panicking eyes, i am not alone.
It would have been easier if they’d screamed and yelled once they got him home, if they’d punched and slapped and kicked and screamed. Tears and this, it’s so much worse. Anger he can deal with. But his mother just keeps saying, “we’re so disappointed in you”, and he just keeps thinking that he wants to hate her, he wants to hate her so much. But he doesn’t.
They go to church, even though he hasn’t slept, they go to church and they kneel obediently and they sing and they pray. He can hear his mother to his left; save my son, save my son. He tries not to listen to the words, he tries to ignore the way it feels to have everyone staring at the back of his head contemptuously, seeing everything, knowing everything. He tries to be anywhere but here.
When it’s over, he emerges from the heavy wooden doors blinking like a newborn in the midday sun. He raises his eyes just enough to see across the street, to see the tall, thin boy on the other side, staring at him, sun glinting off his hair, crowning him in gold. His heart sticks in his chest, starts to pound, and everything spins. His mother’s jaw sets, her fingers close a vice-grip around his arm, and she tugs him down the sidewalk. He doesn’t dare look back over his shoulder, doesn’t dare to wave goodbye. He closes his eyes.
----------
now these are the angry jaws of death, now this is the calm while father grim is smiling so. i never got to fully say, i never got to really explain myself. i forgot to sing.
He just lays there. He lets the summer air drift lazily in the window, and he watches the shadows on the ceiling recede, geometric shapes on the ceiling finally giving into gray darkness. Everything black and white now, not enough light for his eyes to pick out colours, just gray and the fluorescent glow of the streetlight through the window. When he saw him today, he looked lost. Like someone else. And now he’s afraid he’s never going to get him back.
And more than he’d like to admit, that makes his throat seize up and makes him want to curl into himself and sleep until the sun burns out. Something ridiculous like that. Something fucking melodramatic and overplayed and cliché, like he feels like dying, like he feels like his heart has been ripped out of his chest and left under the tires of a semi-truck.
And he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t. But he guesses right now, he does. It tastes bitter on his lips, brackish and unwelcome, and his cheeks burn bright while he lays there in the thickening darkness.
He hears his dad banging around downstairs, but he never comes upstairs to check if he’s alive, which is probably for the best. He’s still waiting on the phone call, on the inevitable catastrophe. Anything.
----------
i got us here, i saw the sign, now breathe in the air, and you'll be fine.
He’s wasted an entire month of his summer in church now, instead of in the park with Ryan, the fair grounds with Ryan, watching movies with Ryan, with Ryan, with Ryan. He thinks he’s probably forgotten all about him, and he’s just here, reading the bible and forcing smiles when his parents pat him on the back. He hears them at night, talking about everything, his mother crying sometimes. My poor baby, my baby boy, he hears her, over and over. As if this doesn’t hurt more than before, the guilt, ever could. As if this isn’t a worse hell than anything he could imagine.
They finally trust him enough to go out for the night, to de-stress, to go out to dinner and try to forget about their damned, poor son. They trust him enough to leave him alone, and he knows the minute they’re out the door, he’s going to break their hearts again, and on the inside, he doesn’t even care.
He goes right out the front door. He locks it behind him. He doesn’t leave a note in case they come home early. They’ll know where he is.
He walks the blocks to Ryan’s house with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, staring at his feet and kicking rocks. He counts the streetlights and the perfectly manicured trees out of the corner of his eye. He climbs the tree in the backyard, slides across the roof, and knocks on Ryan’s bedroom window. For a second he thinks there’s no one home. There’s no car in the driveway. There are no lights on. There’s nothing.
It happens before he even realizes it, the curtains going up and the window’s open and they’re clinging, perfectly stuck to each other, murmuring strings of words that don’t even make sense, disconnected thoughts. They don’t need to say anything after a minute of Ryan hanging out the window and his shoes scratching on the shingles. He just curls his hand in the soft hair on the back of Ryan’s neck and breathes, breathes.
“What are you doing here? Your parents?”
And he just says, “I don’t care, I don’t care,” and lets Ryan pull him in the window. And they just fall on the bed, one person instead of two, and it’s just good, so good and warm and alright, to be together again.
“You didn’t forget about me,” Ryan says, twining his fingers with Brendon’s, nosing the crook of his neck.
“I could say the same to you,” Brendon whispers, fitting his arm in the perfectly shaped space of Ryan’s waist, until they’re so close they could maybe fuse their cells if they tried hard enough, Siamese lovers.
Everything’s alright.
----------
now i will never fall in love, now i will never really explain myself...but honey, i will sing.
And to say it now, The End with capital letters, to end it like a fairy tale, that’s what they wish for then. They don’t wish for Ryan’s dad to come up the stairs, demanding to know why Brendon’s mom is at the door dressed in her best clothes, asking for her son in a clipped, tight voice. They don’t wish for him standing in the door frame, overbearing, and staring at them, held hands and tangled legs.
Brendon wishes he really didn’t have to do it, didn’t have to walk down the stairs with his head up and holding Ryan’s hand. To watch the disappointment take over his mother’s face yet again, stronger than ever now, because he was so close, she says, so close to being healed.
“I am not,” he says, slowly, so she hears, “diseased, mother.” He looks down, fear creeping up his throat, and closes his eyes. When he lifts his head, his breathing hitches, and his eyes burn. “I’m happy. Wrong or not, I am. And I’m still your son.”
His father comes in the door, a looming shadow behind everyone.
“You need to leave our house, Brendon.”
And his mother catches a sob behind painted lips, covers her face with her hands, and turns away.
And this is maybe closer to the end, or the end of the beginning, at least. He watches the beacons from the front of the casinos sliding across the clouds a few blocks from their apartment, and he doesn’t wish for anything else.
a/n: oh, and when you're done, could you possibly read this and try and help a girl out? =]
AUTHOR: therecordskipsx Or, you know, me.
RATING: I’d give it a PG-13. You know what that means. No reading, little kiddies!
POV: Third.
PAIRING: It’s always Ryan/Brendon, guys. Seriously.
SUMMARY: “If these are the black gates of hell, then I'm sorry for the life I've wasted so.” Slightly AU in which there is church, fairgrounds, and muchos angstyfluff.
DISCLAIMER: Possibly, but probably not.
A/N: Title and lyrics © to Lovedrug, a band which you should know. Now.
you left tuesday, and by wednesday you were so alone. is this your nightmare, man? the millions of punch drunks and the cannibal king is taking control.
They walk out to the old fair grounds, really just a flat sea of drab gray concrete and scrub grass, now reborn, filled with people and alive with lights and the lightning bug softness of children’s glow sticks. The electric sounds of conversation fade in and out, and armies of paper-winged moths and blood-fattened mosquitoes dance around the yellow halo of the lights. Distracted, attracted, and repelled. Repeat.
It was hot today, the kind of close heat that’s unusual even for the desert, the kind that’s like the way lip balm lingers waxy on your lips for hours afterwards. From somewhere in the distance, music blares and bumps, too loud out of some kids speakers. They tap their fingers silently and smile.
A breeze is blowing, silent and silken, the last bow of the sun bringing a curtain of night and cold fingers of wind, curling around limbs. Sparklers crackle and flare in the hands of screaming children, writing names in letters broken and slanted and joined, before fizzling out and leaving charred metal bones and burnt fingers.
Here, in such a place, there is shadow. Security. Anonymity. Freedom. They stand in the bending shadows of the trees, bodies and eyes avoiding the lights like fledgling immortals, the fear of immolation, of recognition. They hold hands in the dark, letting the fear flicker and die somewhere in the back of their minds. A toddler shrieks by, and a lighter flares in the dark, fades out, replaced with an ember floating detached in the darkness before bobbing into the background.
The moon floats between the clouds, unveiled suddenly, a butterfly skipping in the sky, a garden of flowers, and then disappears. The air smells like rain, fresh earth and something cold and raw, the smell of spring shoots, and a firework arches up, flashes and explodes into blue stars. A child screams fear into the face of the explosion. Everything goes quiet. Mumble, cough, sigh.
“Why are people so fascinated by fireworks?”
Eyes glint in the dark, and fingers hold tight.
“Spectacle,” the body beside him whispers, eyes never leaving the sky. “It’s like safe war. Explosions and colours, but no blood. Hopeful.”
A red star fizzles and sparkles against the backdrop of the sky. He smiles.
“I don’t understand you sometimes,” he whispers back, turning his head to catch the outline of an upturned face, leaning to kiss the corner of a mouth.
“Neither do I,” he murmurs, turning his face into the contact, and a silver shower of sparkles illuminates the edges of the clouds. Everyone coos in appreciation and falls silent again. A dog barks, and the trees rustle in the breeze. “Neither do I.”
----------
now that you're burning in space, you try to remember her face and the crown of your heart. now you're fighting for the manacle girls and boys like a kettle of keys, one of which might unlock all of these...
It’s a long walk home. They keep reminding each other, but neither of them has the strength to move, so they just stay there, curled up underneath bleachers. There are only people here and there now, the rides are shutting down for the night, the fireworks have long since stopped flashing in the sky. They don’t check their watches, and if there’s a hint of light on the horizon, they ignore it.
The grass tickles up the back of his shirt, scratching at the skin on his hips, and he ignores it in favour of fingers dancing under the hem, drawing circles. Lips kiss, brush and open, and their mouths taste like cotton candy and nighttime, smooth and sweet. The hand on his hip burns, and he doesn’t dare move. He holds on.
It happens before he even realizes it, the angry voice coming from the shadows and the hands coming from nowhere, pulling and shouting and shoving, and then he’s marshaled like a prisoner, being led away, looking back over his shoulder with shadows in his eyes, mouthing I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll see you soon, I’m sorry until his lips must be parched. And then he’s gone.
And then he’s just laying there with nothing but the grass rubbing against his back, watching the stars dim through the slats in the bleachers, and wondering if anyone at home has even missed him yet.
----------
if these are the black gates of hell, then i'm sorry for the life i've wasted so. i forgot to fall in love, i forgot to call on the keystone clan. i never got to be a man at all.
When he gets home, the sun is almost up. The door is unlocked. When he walks in, the house is empty and silent. The curtains are drawn.
He expects his father to burst around the corner, tired-eyed, and say he got a very disturbing phone call from the Urie’s last night. He expects to hear ‘faggot’. He checks the messages and the caller’s list on the phone. He calls his dad’s name, and it just echoes back to him.
He puts a cup of coffee in the microwave, scarfing down a cold piece of pizza while it reheats, buzzing and whirring around, getting zapped. He sits on the couch and drinks the hot liquid, letting it sear a path down his throat, warming his insides.
He thinks of what Brendon must be doing now. Kneeling beside his parents in church, head down, afraid and ashamed, listening to some holier-than-thou idiot drone on about sin and redemption. Pumped full of guilt, but what the hell do they know about anything, anyways? What do they know about how it feels?
And his parents trying to fix him, to heal him, as if he’s broken and diseased, taking away all his contact with the outside world. With me, he thinks, and for the first time since he was left alone, it hurts, really fucking stings. For the first time, he lets it.
He takes another sip, lets the burn consume everything, digs his nails into his palms, and blinks, blinks, because he does not cry. He learned. He does not cry.
----------
your crocodile tears, your mannequin angel cage of fire is killing him so. now you're searching for life up in these cold casino clouds. with your panicking eyes, i am not alone.
It would have been easier if they’d screamed and yelled once they got him home, if they’d punched and slapped and kicked and screamed. Tears and this, it’s so much worse. Anger he can deal with. But his mother just keeps saying, “we’re so disappointed in you”, and he just keeps thinking that he wants to hate her, he wants to hate her so much. But he doesn’t.
They go to church, even though he hasn’t slept, they go to church and they kneel obediently and they sing and they pray. He can hear his mother to his left; save my son, save my son. He tries not to listen to the words, he tries to ignore the way it feels to have everyone staring at the back of his head contemptuously, seeing everything, knowing everything. He tries to be anywhere but here.
When it’s over, he emerges from the heavy wooden doors blinking like a newborn in the midday sun. He raises his eyes just enough to see across the street, to see the tall, thin boy on the other side, staring at him, sun glinting off his hair, crowning him in gold. His heart sticks in his chest, starts to pound, and everything spins. His mother’s jaw sets, her fingers close a vice-grip around his arm, and she tugs him down the sidewalk. He doesn’t dare look back over his shoulder, doesn’t dare to wave goodbye. He closes his eyes.
----------
now these are the angry jaws of death, now this is the calm while father grim is smiling so. i never got to fully say, i never got to really explain myself. i forgot to sing.
He just lays there. He lets the summer air drift lazily in the window, and he watches the shadows on the ceiling recede, geometric shapes on the ceiling finally giving into gray darkness. Everything black and white now, not enough light for his eyes to pick out colours, just gray and the fluorescent glow of the streetlight through the window. When he saw him today, he looked lost. Like someone else. And now he’s afraid he’s never going to get him back.
And more than he’d like to admit, that makes his throat seize up and makes him want to curl into himself and sleep until the sun burns out. Something ridiculous like that. Something fucking melodramatic and overplayed and cliché, like he feels like dying, like he feels like his heart has been ripped out of his chest and left under the tires of a semi-truck.
And he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t. But he guesses right now, he does. It tastes bitter on his lips, brackish and unwelcome, and his cheeks burn bright while he lays there in the thickening darkness.
He hears his dad banging around downstairs, but he never comes upstairs to check if he’s alive, which is probably for the best. He’s still waiting on the phone call, on the inevitable catastrophe. Anything.
----------
i got us here, i saw the sign, now breathe in the air, and you'll be fine.
He’s wasted an entire month of his summer in church now, instead of in the park with Ryan, the fair grounds with Ryan, watching movies with Ryan, with Ryan, with Ryan. He thinks he’s probably forgotten all about him, and he’s just here, reading the bible and forcing smiles when his parents pat him on the back. He hears them at night, talking about everything, his mother crying sometimes. My poor baby, my baby boy, he hears her, over and over. As if this doesn’t hurt more than before, the guilt, ever could. As if this isn’t a worse hell than anything he could imagine.
They finally trust him enough to go out for the night, to de-stress, to go out to dinner and try to forget about their damned, poor son. They trust him enough to leave him alone, and he knows the minute they’re out the door, he’s going to break their hearts again, and on the inside, he doesn’t even care.
He goes right out the front door. He locks it behind him. He doesn’t leave a note in case they come home early. They’ll know where he is.
He walks the blocks to Ryan’s house with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, staring at his feet and kicking rocks. He counts the streetlights and the perfectly manicured trees out of the corner of his eye. He climbs the tree in the backyard, slides across the roof, and knocks on Ryan’s bedroom window. For a second he thinks there’s no one home. There’s no car in the driveway. There are no lights on. There’s nothing.
It happens before he even realizes it, the curtains going up and the window’s open and they’re clinging, perfectly stuck to each other, murmuring strings of words that don’t even make sense, disconnected thoughts. They don’t need to say anything after a minute of Ryan hanging out the window and his shoes scratching on the shingles. He just curls his hand in the soft hair on the back of Ryan’s neck and breathes, breathes.
“What are you doing here? Your parents?”
And he just says, “I don’t care, I don’t care,” and lets Ryan pull him in the window. And they just fall on the bed, one person instead of two, and it’s just good, so good and warm and alright, to be together again.
“You didn’t forget about me,” Ryan says, twining his fingers with Brendon’s, nosing the crook of his neck.
“I could say the same to you,” Brendon whispers, fitting his arm in the perfectly shaped space of Ryan’s waist, until they’re so close they could maybe fuse their cells if they tried hard enough, Siamese lovers.
Everything’s alright.
----------
now i will never fall in love, now i will never really explain myself...but honey, i will sing.
And to say it now, The End with capital letters, to end it like a fairy tale, that’s what they wish for then. They don’t wish for Ryan’s dad to come up the stairs, demanding to know why Brendon’s mom is at the door dressed in her best clothes, asking for her son in a clipped, tight voice. They don’t wish for him standing in the door frame, overbearing, and staring at them, held hands and tangled legs.
Brendon wishes he really didn’t have to do it, didn’t have to walk down the stairs with his head up and holding Ryan’s hand. To watch the disappointment take over his mother’s face yet again, stronger than ever now, because he was so close, she says, so close to being healed.
“I am not,” he says, slowly, so she hears, “diseased, mother.” He looks down, fear creeping up his throat, and closes his eyes. When he lifts his head, his breathing hitches, and his eyes burn. “I’m happy. Wrong or not, I am. And I’m still your son.”
His father comes in the door, a looming shadow behind everyone.
“You need to leave our house, Brendon.”
And his mother catches a sob behind painted lips, covers her face with her hands, and turns away.
And this is maybe closer to the end, or the end of the beginning, at least. He watches the beacons from the front of the casinos sliding across the clouds a few blocks from their apartment, and he doesn’t wish for anything else.
a/n: oh, and when you're done, could you possibly read this and try and help a girl out? =]