Title: Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating Faster, Faster
Type: Bandom, One-shot
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
Word Count: 1742
Time: an hour, off and on
Rating: PG-13 (aha, I almost rated it G before I looked at the first line XD;;)
Author's Note: For
hopefulgenius , because she's being really... patient, in her own special way, about me getting my Nutcracker stuff out. ilu ♥
Summary: "Today is shit."
Today is shit.
Okay, Ryan knows that there are just some days where everything is wrong and where you can’t get the beat right and where the neighbor’s cat throws up on your shoe. That’s an average, run of the mill bad day. Everyone gets those. You really can’t avoid them. But today has absolutely been the shittiest day ever in the history of the Earth.
Let’s elaborate because this is a day that deserves elaboration. Really, it’s that shitty. First, Ryan wakes up and he’s late, but he was expecting to be because he’d stayed up all night doing Ms. Shryer’s Math homework. In his rush to get to school he forgets not only his report on The Great Gatsby which he’d meant to print out before he left for school, but he also forgot Ms. Shryer’s assignment and he sort of hates her and the feeling is sort of mutual so he gets yelled at in two different classes.
Okay, so then he goes to his job at an animal shelter where he’s almost positive he’ll feel better. He loves little animals and the shelter generally has a lot of abandoned puppies and kittens for him to play with in between cleaning out kennels and feeding everyone. Today, though, he gets bitten by some little brat Pomeranian and it doesn’t even draw blood, but it hurts like a bitch anyway.
They let him go home early, but he wishes they hadn’t when he finds his dad passed out on the couch. It wouldn’t have been so bad, not abnormal anyway, except that it’s not even five yet and that means he didn’t go into work. Ryan knows his dad is on the verge of losing his job and, damn it, what are they going to do if he does?
So he storms up to his room where he is currently moping, praying that this day will just get the hell over with already because, fuck, no one deserves this crap.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he wants to chuck it across the room, but just answers it instead, voice muffled into his pillow. “Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
Ryan flips on his bed and drops his arm over his eyes. He doesn’t really want to talk to Spencer right now, not when Spencer sounds like he wants to chew him up and spit him out anyway. “Nowhere, why?”
“Nowhere.” Ryan can hear a giant intake of breath and a loud accompanying exhale. “You’re supposed to be at the studio, remember?”
God, not this too. Ryan didn’t think he could handle something else going wrong today. He couldn’t have missed band practice. He didn’t. They practice Tuesday and Thursday nights after school and late Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights when Brendon gets off work. “It’s Monday.”
“It’s Tuesday, Ryan. You go to school, you go to work, you come here, you go home. You’ve done it an entire semester now.”
Ryan groans. “I’m sick, just tell everyone to go home.”
There’s a pause over the phone and Ryan knows he said the wrong wrong wrong thing, but he can’t take it back now.
“Are you seriously being a baby over what happened in Math? I already sent Brendon over to get you anyway so get off your lazy ass and wait for him outside.”
Ryan sits up quickly, his bangs flying into his eyes with the sudden movement. He shakes them out, blinking hard. “What! Do you want to get me killed or something?”
He can almost see Spencer’s shrug. “You’re the one that forgot practice.”
Ryan growls and grabs his wallet, shoving it into his back pocket. “Yeah, but just this one time. Brent’s missed way more and you never send crazy maniac sugar high drivers out to go pick him up.”
“I don’t think he’s had more than one Red Bull since he got here. You might get lucky, you never know.”
Ryan cradles the phone between his ear and shoulder as he struggles to put his shoes and socks back on, nearly falling over in the process. “Come on, Spence, it was a really fucking shitty day, just. Call Brendon and tell him I’m sick or something. I can’t deal with… with all that hyper right now.”
“Or, you know, the fact that you want to bang him so bad you can’t see straight?”
Ryan makes a noise of disapproval just as he hears one over the phone, probably Brent’s. “Spence.”
“Oh, come on, Ryan, it hurts to watch.”
And Spencer’s not even laughing when he says that. He’s not kidding or anything. Ryan’s cheeks burn. “Shut up; you’re dead to me.”
“Ugh, whatever. Just keep your legs crossed on the ride over and you’ll be fine.”
Ryan ducks his head, gnawing viciously at his bottom lip. “Asshole.”
“Ingrate.”
“Me, ungrateful? I- what the hell?” He looks over at his window as it clicks, or, well, as a pebble clicks against the glass a second time. And a third.
Almost stiff with disbelief, he slowly walks over to the window and glances down. Brendon is on his hand and knees, looking, Ryan supposes, for another rock to throw at the glass. Ryan really can’t believe it, but his fingers pry the lock open and slide the window up.
“Bren- fuck, ow!” He draws back quickly, breathing sharp as a pebble hits him just below the eye.
Brendon looks up with wide, blinking eyes, grinning when he sees Ryan. “Hey!”
“What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” Ryan hisses down at him, pressing the heel of his palm hard over what had to be a bruise in the making, he can feel it.
Brendon’s smile wilts and Ryan can’t help but feel a little bad. “I came to get you. Are you okay?”
“You hit me in the eye with a rock.” Ryan pulls away his hand, swiping away the tears that had formed in his eyes at the sudden pain. “Do you think I’m okay?”
“Oh, sorry.” Brendon bounces a little on the balls of his feet, his hands tucked deep inside his red hoodie. “Why didn’t you come to practice? It was all boring and stuff without you. I mean, no one tried to lunge at me when I opened my Red Bull or anything.” His grin is back, lopsided and retarded as he straightens his dorky glasses.
It’s adorable. Damn it.
“I was sick,” he answers simply.
“Liar,” Spencer mutters into his ear, making Ryan jump. He’d almost forgotten he was still on the phone.
Ryan sighs. “I’ll be there in a few, Spence.” He snaps the cell shut and shoves it into his other back pocket.
“Do you want me to just tell Spencer you don’t feel good?” Brendon asks, squinting up at him.
Ryan shakes his head, tilting it a little. “No, that’d be suicide. Why didn’t you just come to the door?”
Brendon shrugs, toeing the ground with his well-worn sneakers. Mud scuffs the already dingy white tips. “I did. No one came.” Crap, Ryan thinks, his dad must be really, really out of it to have not heard Brendon knocking. “So I figured I’d try to find your room and get you to come out. Since this one was the only one with posters on the walls that I could see from here, I guessed it was yours.”
Ryan can’t help the smile that twitches at his lips, and Brendon’s smile gets a little brighter because of it. “Whatever, I’ll be down there in a second. And get out of the garden, Mom’s going to be pissed at you.”
Brendon jumps out of the flowerbed like a monster is about to come out of one of the half-dead daisies and swallow him whole. He mournfully looks down at the flowers he’s trampled. “Tell her I said I’m really sorry and that I’ll get her some more whenever I can afford to buy more than Top Ramen.”
Ryan nods and disappears from the window, snapping it shut and grabbing his guitar before bolting out the door without so much as a goodbye. If they aren’t used to his schedule at this point then it’s their fault for not knowing where he is. Besides, if he isn’t at his house, he’s at Spencer’s house or Brendon’s apartment or the studio they rented to practice with anyway.
He slides into the passenger’s seat of Brendon’s ever-on-the-verge-of-breaking-down car, resting his guitar on the floorboard, safely pressed against his shin.
“Hey,” Brendon greets, starting the car. It gives a deep grumble before revving that can’t mean anything good, but it starts and that’s all that matters for the moment. It’ll only have to last Brendon a little longer if their plans work out right anyway, though, right then, Ryan’s pretty sure that any plan he’s ever had is going to fail miserably.
“Hey.” Ryan shifts in his seat and really wishes that Brendon’s radio at least worked. “So, how’s the apartment?”
Brendon laughs as he pulls out of the driveway too fast and Ryan knows, just knows that Spencer lied to him about Brendon having only one Red Bull. “Uh, well, it still doesn’t produce hot water and the stove still sparks if you leave it on too long, so no cakes or lasagna. Other than that, I guess it’s okay. Oh! I almost forgot.” When the car gets to a stop sign, Brendon leans over into the back seat and produces a cardboard holding tray with two drinks in it. “I got you hot chocolate. Spencer said you might’ve had a bad day, something about Math class sucking, so I figured you needed a pick-me-up.”
Ryan stares at the little lidded cup for a minute, looks up at Brendon, and then back down at the cup. Brendon can’t afford to get his fucking fire hazard of a stove looked at, but he bought Ryan a cup of hot chocolate. Just to make him feel better about his shitty day from hell.
He numbly takes the drink and sips it when Brendon won’t stop staring at him. Apparently satisfied, Brendon takes his own cup and takes a deep drink of it before starting to drive again.
Ryan doesn’t really mind the effects of Brendon’s immediate sugar high, for now, anyway. He just nods in between Brendon’s bursts of meaningless chatter and smiles crookedly and wonders if hot chocolate can actually warm someone up this fast.