Fic: Fallout, Brendon/Ryan, NC-17
Title: Fallout [1/1]
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, hints of Spencer/Jon
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, only the plot.
No one really cared whose fault it was. Of course, everyone knew, but it’s not like they hadn’t seen it coming from miles, years, decades, wars away. It only made sense. And Brendon knew that, in a sick way, there were millions of people that would have been disappointed if it all hadn’t come to this, these panicked reporters in countries all over, screaming into the camera over the deafening sound of atoms colliding in the background, or the clatter of canned fruits and tinned meat ripped from the shelves of every ravaged supermarket (none of it paid for, guns bought so much more than money these days).
And everyone just kind of knew this would happen. Brendon had been waiting for it, anticipating it, but never really planning for it. He didn’t see how he would be able to live if all the other civilians got bombed out, knew it wasn’t just another apocalypse movie where no one but the protagonists survived. He wasn’t like Spencer. Spencer, who thought that, even if everyone else got struck down, he would live. Even if all the world’s land mass got dissolved by radiation and blown into dust, buoyant on the waves an infinite ocean of salt, he would be the captain of the only boat left floating.
Jon was less delusional. He was jittery, watching Spencer run in and out of the front door, seeing him peel his gas mask on and off every time. Brendon didn’t think Jon really believed Spencer would save anyone in this, probably thought he would die on one of his hasty trips out to a small town somewhere that maybe had a corner store everyone else had forgotten about. Jon, he thought, was one of the ones that had already given up, but was being held hostage by a tiny part of him that still believed this could all end before everyone died, and perhaps everyone would get together and repopulate. Then, in another thousand years, someone else would seize power, and someone else would fight him for it, and then everyone that could would go underground once more and it would all happen again.
Ryan was different. Ryan knew the facts, knew how to hear them, process them, and accept them. Brendon watched him sit in the chair by the big window every day, the one Spencer had boarded up, and look through the small gap where dull light shone through. Ryan would watch the outside, stare into the distance, and Brendon knew he was waiting for the cascade of firepower and bombs made of stuff none of them had even heard of to arrive. There were rumors that the wave had already hit the east coast, but no one really knew what to believe anymore.
And Brendon was content just sitting back and watching. He didn’t see the point in running if the world was round. He was just living in a sphere of fallout now, where everyplace to run to was really just the next place to disappear.
-
“I have a place, Bren.”
Ryan whispered it quiet and low, in the same tone he said everything in these days. It was the middle of the night, and he and Ryan were sitting together on the moldy couch beneath one of three blankets in the house. They did this most nights, sitting there while Spencer and Jon feigned sleep in the other room, watching the light sift through Ryan’s gap in the window, green and yellow and tainted with bits of the atmosphere that had been torn down and ripped to shreds by man made chemicals. It reminded Brendon of the glow sticks kids might have waved at some of their concerts before all this.
“I want you to come with me.”
Brendon turned, his mouth partially open, eyes glossed over and pupils open and adjusted to the darkness, and caught Ryan’s soft stare before the other man looked away again, his focus back to the diseased rays of light.
“It was my uncle’s,” Ryan continued, silently prompted by Brendon’s will to listen. “He had it built during the Cold War. Never had to use it.”
He picked at his nails a tiny bit, the cuticles rough and flaky for the first time in Ryan’s short life.
“It’s pure lead and concrete. Ten feet underground.” When he brought his gaze back to Brendon’s again, it was harder than before, more serious, and Brendon knew that Ryan had been thinking about this since the very beginning. He had just been holding off until it wasn’t safe to do so anymore.
He spoke up. “What about Spencer and Jon?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“There’s only room-”
“-for two,” Brendon finished. “That’s kind of what I thought.”
They were both silent for a while. Brendon thought of what Spencer would think, or if Jon would feel like they were abandoning him. He remembered all those years ago when they asked him to be in their band, and how easy it had been to assimilate him into their little fucked up family. Brendon recalled a time when he thought they would all die playing music together.
“Why me, Ry,” he whispered, low, avoiding Ryan’s hazelnut eyes. “Why not Spencer, or Jon?”
He didn’t get an answer immediately, and if Brendon knew him at all, Ryan was searching his own head and putting together all the words he could find to describe it the way he needed to.
“You know damn well I’ve always needed you the most, Brendon.”
And Brendon knew what that meant. It wasn’t that Ryan loved him the most, or that he believed Brendon was most valuable. He didn’t even think that Ryan wanted him to live the most, because really, living didn’t matter anymore, just living a little bit longer. It was that, if Ryan’s life came down to living those few extra weeks, months maybe, he needed Brendon there to remind him why everyone wanted to live in the first place.
“Alright.”
-
Brendon let Ryan be the one to tell Spencer. He did it away from him and Jon, in a way that did twenty years of being best friends some kind of justice. Spencer understood as well as either them could have expected.
Of course, Ryan didn’t tell him all the details. In fact, he told him almost none at all. What Spencer knew was that Ryan was leaving, that he was taking Brendon with him, and if it hadn’t have been the situation it was, the whole thing would have reminded Brendon of newly divorced parents deciding on the custody of a child. It made him feel safe.
Jon, being Jon, guessed everything after he saw Spencer and Ryan emerge from the kitchen. No one really had to explain it to him, but Brendon offered a smile, far from apologetic but full of the sort of regret that wasn’t really regretful at all. Jon nodded and looked down.
“I hate this,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. Brendon took a step in his direction, but stopped when he realized he’d gone as far as he could ever go.
“I know, me too.”
-
Leaving was hard. Brendon and Ryan packed faster than any of them would have liked, and Spencer gave them almost half of his rations, the ones he had been stocking up and stealing for nearly a year. Brendon thought Ryan might have had tears in his eyes when he thanked him, but that could have just been the tainted air getting to his brain.
A part of Brendon felt disgusting that he and Ryan were leaving without telling the other two where they were going, that they were lying to what amounted to the only friends that had left in all the war-torn world, but Brendon also knew it was for the best. That way, they didn’t have to tell them that he and Ryan had a better chance of living than they did, that they wouldn’t die as soon, and Spencer and Jon wouldn’t ever have to know. That way, they could make up whatever truth they felt best believing.
They took Ryan’s car, since Brendon’s was in better shape and they were only driving a hundred miles or so. This left Spencer and Jon the means to leave and go as far as they wanted, if they wanted.
The goodbyes were bittersweet. Spencer embraced Brendon and told him he loved him, thanked him for completing a band that would have been shit without him. He and Jon hugged for a good four minutes, and then shared one last secret handshake before Brendon kissed him full on the lips and whispered a goodbye onto the soft skin of Jon’s face. Ryan nuzzled Jon’s neck and thanked him like Spencer had thanked Brendon, and then stood in front of Spencer and extended a long fingered hand. Brendon could tell by looking that it was a firm shake, and that their palms were completely dry. There had been too many nights of thirteen year old boys crying and holding each other in Ryan’s room for them to try and sum it up in one farewell anyways.
Brendon didn’t look back when they drove off, but he imagined Spencer had gone inside before Ryan had even put the car into gear, not able to handle it, while Jon probably stood on that hilltop for a half hour, hoping as always that maybe this would all be a joke, and that eventually he’d see the car climbing back up towards their house, laughter in their faces, and ask Jon to help them unpack the car. Then the sky might clear up, and the birds would come out, and they would sing like Jon hadn’t heard them sing since before all the tours had been cancelled and the all the guitar strings had been broken.
-
It wasn’t a long drive. Brendon had tried to make conversation at first, but Ryan just kept his eyes on the road ahead and gave one word answers, and Brendon knew his mind was back at the house with Spencer and Jon. He half expected Ryan to turn around at some point, but when he saw his knuckles white with his grip on the steering wheel, he knew differently.
-
Ryan’s uncle’s house was on the edge of the Sierra Nevada, and it reminded Brendon of a ranch. He tried to imagine that it held cattle or sheep or something at one point in the past, but with the dull gray sky hanging overhead, he found it hard to imagine any more life than he already knew existed. Just Ryan and himself.
Ryan drove the car straight over the grassy fields and to a little spot next a wooden fence, where he parked. He had told Brendon before that his dad had showed him the shelter once when he was a little kid, and how cool he had thought it was then. Now he said it was the only good thing his dad had ever done for him.
They got out, and Ryan padded over to a little wooden square in the ground, where he grabbed the rusty little metal handle and pulled up. There was another door beneath, made of even more rusted metal, and he watched Ryan bust the padlock with the Mag-lite he kept in his car. The tunnel down was long and lined with dozens of little latter rungs, and Brendon knew it would take several trips to get everything down.
Ryan turned and lowered himself in, grasping one handle at a time, and Brendon watched him go, following shortly after. It wasn’t entirely dark, between the faded sunlight emanating from above and the electric lamplight down below. Solar power, Ryan had said, the whole thing was wired to a set of solar panels a mile or so off. Brendon wondered briefly how much time and effort Ryan’s uncle had put into building all this.
A minute or so later, they reached the bottom, and the world above them had disappeared into nothing but a tiny circle of light at the top of the tunnel. Brendon looked around. It was small, like Ryan had said. Very small. There was one room, the size of his bedroom back home, with a sheetless twin bed against one wall and a rack of shelves against the other. There was a tiny television on the bedside table and an old radio on the floor, and while the TV was cabled to the wall, Brendon was pretty sure the radio was hopeless, as he doubted anything would be able to penetrate the concrete walls around them. Lastly, there was a little closet door to his right labeled ‘WASH’. Brendon laughed at that little luxury of privacy the room afforded them.
Ryan turned to face him. The expression he wore reminded Brendon of the one he had given him in the moments before they played that first acoustic set for Pete what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“This is meant to be for one person, isn’t it?” Brendon asked quietly. He face didn’t show much surprise even as he thought of the place where he was supposed to be, might have been, back at the house where Spencer and Jon were probably curled up together in the bedroom.
“Yes,” Ryan answered. “My uncle was single his entire life.”
Brendon nodded and looked down at his feet. He heard rather than saw Ryan glide up to him, leaning in close enough to take in all the pheromones floating off of Brendon’s salty skin. He shivered just a tiny bit when he felt Ryan brush his lips against his neck.
“Welcome home, Bren.”
-
Three days in and Brendon had already gotten over his claustrophobia. Ryan had closed the vault, because somehow the air inside their little concrete hole breathed cleaner than the air outside. Ryan had also gotten their television to work, and Brendon had been surprised to find that instead of black and white, it shone vivid color. They kept it on the only channel they could get, the American network that carried the only license in the nation to broadcast any sort of news. Of course, they both knew it was dirty, filthy with propaganda, lies and deceit designed to brainwash a country of dead and dying people to rally behind the government that killed them all in the first place. T hey kept it on mute.
After unpacking, the room seemed even smaller. The once empty shelves were now lined with canned pears and Spam and other non perishables. Their portable electric stove sat in the corner, and the bags they had never bothered to unpack were pushed carelessly under the bed.
The bed. Brendon was glad there was only one. At night, it gave him the closeness he knew they both needed, turning them into a tangle of arms and legs, their shirtless torsos touching and keeping each other warm. Sometimes they would kiss goodnight, closed mouthed and innocent pecks that always lasted longer than they had with Jon or Spencer.
Sunlight was a distant memory inside the shelter, and so was the defining line between day and night. They slept when they were tired and they ate when they were hungry. Brendon noticed that Ryan would touch him as often as possible, tiny, fleeting touches to remind him that the world wasn’t over yet, that they were still in the land of the living, walking and talking and breathing.
Sometimes Ryan would turn off the overhead light, and the room would be lit only by the blue-white glow of the television. He’d lie on the bed and pat the bare spot next to him, an invitation for Brendon to come and join. They would talk, sometimes for hours, remembering the life they had, the life even before the band, recalling times when the whole world was in front of them, when they had dreams and goals and the means to accomplish them. Ryan said he felt like they were living that time all over again, except empty, so empty, because again, all they had was each other. Only this time, they had no where to go.
-
One night (or rather, the time they had designated ‘night’), Brendon woke up cold. Ryan was turned away from him, pressed to the edge of the bed, his breathing erratic and fast. He saw Ryan’s arm moving, up and down in a rhythmic motion, maybe the drum beat to one of their songs playing in his head, his hips bucking occasionally.
Brendon scooted closer. Spooning behind Ryan, he nuzzled his nose into Ryan’s neck, dropping tiny butterfly kisses on his shoulder.
Ryan shuddered and came.
-
Three and half weeks in, Ryan started having trouble sleeping.
Brendon knew it would happen eventually, he remembered when Ryan would have the same problem towards the second half of most their tours. Those times, Ryan would stuff his iPod in his ears, and maybe he would fall asleep a few hours later. But of course, everyone’s iPods had expired ages ago, batteries fried and no big corporation to send them to for replacements.
And since a part of Ryan knew that Brendon would do anything for him, he took to asking Brendon to sing him to sleep. It was therapy for them both, a little part of their old life revisiting them, soothing and reminiscent of a time when Brendon would sing the lyrics of a brand new song in the studio, or when they would all pick up their acoustic guitars and return to playing Blink 182 covers, just for the sake of memories. Brendon thought that maybe there was always something to remember, a place in your head to return to.
But then, that was the thing with dying. There would never be a time when he would get to look back and remember singing Ryan to sleep in the safety of a concrete room.
-
Two months passed, and Brendon began to notice the shelves looking more and more bare as each day wore on.
-
With two fingers inside him already and Ryan’s chapped lips on his, he couldn’t keep his eyes open if he tried. Brendon bent his knee and pulled it into his own chest more, allowing more room for Ryan to settle, and right there, with their bodies almost as close as they could get, Brendon considered whispering something along the lines of, “Don’t you ever fucking leave me, Ryan,” but then he remembered that Ryan couldn’t ever do that, not even if he had wanted to.
A soft, velvet tongue invaded Brendon’s mouth, and he embraced it with his own, coaxing them into a dance as Ryan swallowed his moans and digested them, living and feeding off them. He felt a third finger tease at his entrance, ready and wet from the little bottle of hand lotion Ryan had stuck in his pocket before they left, and bucked up into it. Ryan obliged, pushing it in slowly along side his other two fingers, and Brendon hissed in pleasure at the burn. Ryan smiled into the kiss and pulled away, thrusting slowly with his hand and watching Brendon’s eyes flutter open and closed.
He dipped his head to kiss the spot just below Brendon’s ear. “You like this?” he whispered, voice sultry and heavy with something Brendon couldn’t place. It took all he had to choke out an answer.
“Yeah- fuck. Yes.”
Ryan trailed his lips back to Brendon’s, hovering above them and stilling his hand, fingertips almost completely out and teasing at the swollen, red pucker of Brendon’s ass. He expected Ryan to take them away and replace them with his cock, but instead, he felt them push back in, wider in girth than before, and Brendon felt that fourth finger slip in with the rest.
His body went a little rigid as he adjusted to the stretch, and he shot Ryan a questioning look.
“Relax, Bren,” he said, before softening his voice a bit. “Please. Let me do this?”
Brendon didn’t know if he could do it, but it wasn’t like he could tell Ryan no, not when he had never, ever told him no before, hadn’t even trained himself in the art of refusal. So he nodded his head, his face set in a way that told Ryan, I trust you.
Ryan grinned, pressed his lips to Brendon’s, and pushed his fingers all the way to the knuckle.
Brendon groaned loudly. He’d certainly never taken anything that wide before, four fingers side by side, and the pressure was incredible. Ryan allowed him a moment to adjust before dragging them almost all the way out again and then sliding them back in. The burn was dull and sweet and it made Brendon’s blood thrum loudly in his veins.
He pulled Ryan down for another kiss, their lips searing and hot together, scorching heat as they devoured each other, tasting and touching while Ryan finger fucked him. Brendon thought it was probably the pain that made it feel this good, although it maybe it was the pleasure, maybe Ryan brushing his prostate with his rough fingertips while they kissed, but probably the pain. He wasn’t quite sure, but he did know that there was never a time he remembered feeling so human. So alive.
Ryan pulled away as Brendon loosened a little, had to literally tear their lips apart, and began to slowly remove his fingers again. His head fell into the crook of Brendon’s neck, where he lapped sweetly at the sweat and whispered hushed words into Brendon’s skin.
“Do you think heaven can hear us breathing, Bren? Here, under all the lead and dirt and fallout?”
Brendon’s breath hitched as he felt a thumb press together with the rest of Ryan’s hand, ready and poised to take him, all of him.
“Yes.”
Ryan smiled, wistfully, and leaned down to peck Brendon’s lips again.
“Good,” he whispered, and Brendon swallowed his knuckles down.
-
The pictures on the television got scarier soon, but Brendon didn’t know if he was supposed to believe them.
-
One day, Ryan started crying. Brendon had let him, held him and kissed away the tears that ran down his splotchy red cheeks, but didn’t say anything. Brendon had known Ryan long enough to know that if Ryan was going to talk, he’d do it when he felt like it.
So twenty minutes later, with his head resting on Brendon’s chest and his breathing calm again, he spoke quietly into Brendon’s neck.
“I’m sorry I can’t save you, Bren.”
-
Brendon was sweaty, Ryan’s hands sliding along his hips, trying to find a firm grip, but it was hard when they were both getting so much thinner, flesh slowly disappearing and bones rising to the surface. It wasn’t too bad yet, but Brendon pretty much thought everything was going to happen a lot faster from here on out.
Ryan sat on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor and Brendon’s arms locked around his neck as the younger boy bounced up and down in his lap, exertion evident in their heavy breathing. Brendon reveled in the feeling of Ryan inside him, full and swollen and red, tried to imagine what it would look like if he could just watch the place where their bodies were joined. He pulled away from Ryan’s lips and took a deep breath, dusty oxygen reentering his lungs, and watched the room around them. It was dark, like it usually was these days, and it was just him and Ryan and the glow of the television next to them.
The pictures were different than they had been before. All the same things, all the same explosions, but different places. It was New York now, New York and Atlanta and what Brendon thinks looked like Boston. He watched the screen while Ryan fucked him, and he thought, this is it, it’s finally here, the moment everyone had been waiting for, the moment everyone wanted to escape but couldn’t. Brendon watched people dying, women and children and men of all ages, and he thinks that it doesn’t really matter how old anyone is anymore. That stupid notion that the kids should be saved first because they haven’t had the chance to live yet is all gone, because no one is going to live, not the eight year olds or the eighty years olds or anyone. Everyone is all the same now, and every human life is worthless. It’s ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and everyone’s going to spend the rest of eternity floating in little vaporized particles in the stratosphere high above their heads.
Ryan followed Brendon’s gaze to the television and stilled his upward thrusts. They both looked on, motionless for a second, and the room felt smaller and more distant from Earth than it ever had. Brendon noted that the colors looked different than they had with Vienna and London and Bangkok, looked brighter now. The mushroom clouds looked less dirty more luminescent, greens and golds and yellows everywhere, blinding and brilliant as North America fell to bits. The flashes of light danced across the black surface of Brendon’s eyes, like little dying stars that burned brightest in the moments right before they burst into flames.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered, to Ryan, to himself, to God, even.
Ryan slid his hand up the sweaty column of Brendon’s spine.
“Yeah. It is.”
-
After that, they both stopped counting the days. They spent their time sleeping and fucking, making love.
They wondered what happened to Spencer and Jon, if they had ever left or ran like they themselves had, or if they had just stayed in the house, eating Spencer’s food and waiting. Brendon liked to think the best had happened, and maybe Spencer really had found a boat, and they were on some desert island in the Pacific, living off the land and building straw huts and smiling.
And sometime towards the end, with the lights and the television both off, and the pitch black darkness of their hole in the ground surrounding them and swallowing them, Brendon lay naked on top of Ryan, spent and tired. He let his body mold with Ryan’s like they were two pieces of clay that couldn’t be separated until they dried and someone dropped them on the ground and they shattered.
“I’m glad I’m dying with you,” he whispered. He heard Ryan’s heart skip a beat or two.
“Me too, Bren.”
And even though the television was off and their eyes were closed, and there wasn’t anything left on Earth to actually see, Brendon thought he had a pretty nice view of the world ending.
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, hints of Spencer/Jon
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, only the plot.
No one really cared whose fault it was. Of course, everyone knew, but it’s not like they hadn’t seen it coming from miles, years, decades, wars away. It only made sense. And Brendon knew that, in a sick way, there were millions of people that would have been disappointed if it all hadn’t come to this, these panicked reporters in countries all over, screaming into the camera over the deafening sound of atoms colliding in the background, or the clatter of canned fruits and tinned meat ripped from the shelves of every ravaged supermarket (none of it paid for, guns bought so much more than money these days).
And everyone just kind of knew this would happen. Brendon had been waiting for it, anticipating it, but never really planning for it. He didn’t see how he would be able to live if all the other civilians got bombed out, knew it wasn’t just another apocalypse movie where no one but the protagonists survived. He wasn’t like Spencer. Spencer, who thought that, even if everyone else got struck down, he would live. Even if all the world’s land mass got dissolved by radiation and blown into dust, buoyant on the waves an infinite ocean of salt, he would be the captain of the only boat left floating.
Jon was less delusional. He was jittery, watching Spencer run in and out of the front door, seeing him peel his gas mask on and off every time. Brendon didn’t think Jon really believed Spencer would save anyone in this, probably thought he would die on one of his hasty trips out to a small town somewhere that maybe had a corner store everyone else had forgotten about. Jon, he thought, was one of the ones that had already given up, but was being held hostage by a tiny part of him that still believed this could all end before everyone died, and perhaps everyone would get together and repopulate. Then, in another thousand years, someone else would seize power, and someone else would fight him for it, and then everyone that could would go underground once more and it would all happen again.
Ryan was different. Ryan knew the facts, knew how to hear them, process them, and accept them. Brendon watched him sit in the chair by the big window every day, the one Spencer had boarded up, and look through the small gap where dull light shone through. Ryan would watch the outside, stare into the distance, and Brendon knew he was waiting for the cascade of firepower and bombs made of stuff none of them had even heard of to arrive. There were rumors that the wave had already hit the east coast, but no one really knew what to believe anymore.
And Brendon was content just sitting back and watching. He didn’t see the point in running if the world was round. He was just living in a sphere of fallout now, where everyplace to run to was really just the next place to disappear.
-
“I have a place, Bren.”
Ryan whispered it quiet and low, in the same tone he said everything in these days. It was the middle of the night, and he and Ryan were sitting together on the moldy couch beneath one of three blankets in the house. They did this most nights, sitting there while Spencer and Jon feigned sleep in the other room, watching the light sift through Ryan’s gap in the window, green and yellow and tainted with bits of the atmosphere that had been torn down and ripped to shreds by man made chemicals. It reminded Brendon of the glow sticks kids might have waved at some of their concerts before all this.
“I want you to come with me.”
Brendon turned, his mouth partially open, eyes glossed over and pupils open and adjusted to the darkness, and caught Ryan’s soft stare before the other man looked away again, his focus back to the diseased rays of light.
“It was my uncle’s,” Ryan continued, silently prompted by Brendon’s will to listen. “He had it built during the Cold War. Never had to use it.”
He picked at his nails a tiny bit, the cuticles rough and flaky for the first time in Ryan’s short life.
“It’s pure lead and concrete. Ten feet underground.” When he brought his gaze back to Brendon’s again, it was harder than before, more serious, and Brendon knew that Ryan had been thinking about this since the very beginning. He had just been holding off until it wasn’t safe to do so anymore.
He spoke up. “What about Spencer and Jon?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“There’s only room-”
“-for two,” Brendon finished. “That’s kind of what I thought.”
They were both silent for a while. Brendon thought of what Spencer would think, or if Jon would feel like they were abandoning him. He remembered all those years ago when they asked him to be in their band, and how easy it had been to assimilate him into their little fucked up family. Brendon recalled a time when he thought they would all die playing music together.
“Why me, Ry,” he whispered, low, avoiding Ryan’s hazelnut eyes. “Why not Spencer, or Jon?”
He didn’t get an answer immediately, and if Brendon knew him at all, Ryan was searching his own head and putting together all the words he could find to describe it the way he needed to.
“You know damn well I’ve always needed you the most, Brendon.”
And Brendon knew what that meant. It wasn’t that Ryan loved him the most, or that he believed Brendon was most valuable. He didn’t even think that Ryan wanted him to live the most, because really, living didn’t matter anymore, just living a little bit longer. It was that, if Ryan’s life came down to living those few extra weeks, months maybe, he needed Brendon there to remind him why everyone wanted to live in the first place.
“Alright.”
-
Brendon let Ryan be the one to tell Spencer. He did it away from him and Jon, in a way that did twenty years of being best friends some kind of justice. Spencer understood as well as either them could have expected.
Of course, Ryan didn’t tell him all the details. In fact, he told him almost none at all. What Spencer knew was that Ryan was leaving, that he was taking Brendon with him, and if it hadn’t have been the situation it was, the whole thing would have reminded Brendon of newly divorced parents deciding on the custody of a child. It made him feel safe.
Jon, being Jon, guessed everything after he saw Spencer and Ryan emerge from the kitchen. No one really had to explain it to him, but Brendon offered a smile, far from apologetic but full of the sort of regret that wasn’t really regretful at all. Jon nodded and looked down.
“I hate this,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. Brendon took a step in his direction, but stopped when he realized he’d gone as far as he could ever go.
“I know, me too.”
-
Leaving was hard. Brendon and Ryan packed faster than any of them would have liked, and Spencer gave them almost half of his rations, the ones he had been stocking up and stealing for nearly a year. Brendon thought Ryan might have had tears in his eyes when he thanked him, but that could have just been the tainted air getting to his brain.
A part of Brendon felt disgusting that he and Ryan were leaving without telling the other two where they were going, that they were lying to what amounted to the only friends that had left in all the war-torn world, but Brendon also knew it was for the best. That way, they didn’t have to tell them that he and Ryan had a better chance of living than they did, that they wouldn’t die as soon, and Spencer and Jon wouldn’t ever have to know. That way, they could make up whatever truth they felt best believing.
They took Ryan’s car, since Brendon’s was in better shape and they were only driving a hundred miles or so. This left Spencer and Jon the means to leave and go as far as they wanted, if they wanted.
The goodbyes were bittersweet. Spencer embraced Brendon and told him he loved him, thanked him for completing a band that would have been shit without him. He and Jon hugged for a good four minutes, and then shared one last secret handshake before Brendon kissed him full on the lips and whispered a goodbye onto the soft skin of Jon’s face. Ryan nuzzled Jon’s neck and thanked him like Spencer had thanked Brendon, and then stood in front of Spencer and extended a long fingered hand. Brendon could tell by looking that it was a firm shake, and that their palms were completely dry. There had been too many nights of thirteen year old boys crying and holding each other in Ryan’s room for them to try and sum it up in one farewell anyways.
Brendon didn’t look back when they drove off, but he imagined Spencer had gone inside before Ryan had even put the car into gear, not able to handle it, while Jon probably stood on that hilltop for a half hour, hoping as always that maybe this would all be a joke, and that eventually he’d see the car climbing back up towards their house, laughter in their faces, and ask Jon to help them unpack the car. Then the sky might clear up, and the birds would come out, and they would sing like Jon hadn’t heard them sing since before all the tours had been cancelled and the all the guitar strings had been broken.
-
It wasn’t a long drive. Brendon had tried to make conversation at first, but Ryan just kept his eyes on the road ahead and gave one word answers, and Brendon knew his mind was back at the house with Spencer and Jon. He half expected Ryan to turn around at some point, but when he saw his knuckles white with his grip on the steering wheel, he knew differently.
-
Ryan’s uncle’s house was on the edge of the Sierra Nevada, and it reminded Brendon of a ranch. He tried to imagine that it held cattle or sheep or something at one point in the past, but with the dull gray sky hanging overhead, he found it hard to imagine any more life than he already knew existed. Just Ryan and himself.
Ryan drove the car straight over the grassy fields and to a little spot next a wooden fence, where he parked. He had told Brendon before that his dad had showed him the shelter once when he was a little kid, and how cool he had thought it was then. Now he said it was the only good thing his dad had ever done for him.
They got out, and Ryan padded over to a little wooden square in the ground, where he grabbed the rusty little metal handle and pulled up. There was another door beneath, made of even more rusted metal, and he watched Ryan bust the padlock with the Mag-lite he kept in his car. The tunnel down was long and lined with dozens of little latter rungs, and Brendon knew it would take several trips to get everything down.
Ryan turned and lowered himself in, grasping one handle at a time, and Brendon watched him go, following shortly after. It wasn’t entirely dark, between the faded sunlight emanating from above and the electric lamplight down below. Solar power, Ryan had said, the whole thing was wired to a set of solar panels a mile or so off. Brendon wondered briefly how much time and effort Ryan’s uncle had put into building all this.
A minute or so later, they reached the bottom, and the world above them had disappeared into nothing but a tiny circle of light at the top of the tunnel. Brendon looked around. It was small, like Ryan had said. Very small. There was one room, the size of his bedroom back home, with a sheetless twin bed against one wall and a rack of shelves against the other. There was a tiny television on the bedside table and an old radio on the floor, and while the TV was cabled to the wall, Brendon was pretty sure the radio was hopeless, as he doubted anything would be able to penetrate the concrete walls around them. Lastly, there was a little closet door to his right labeled ‘WASH’. Brendon laughed at that little luxury of privacy the room afforded them.
Ryan turned to face him. The expression he wore reminded Brendon of the one he had given him in the moments before they played that first acoustic set for Pete what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“This is meant to be for one person, isn’t it?” Brendon asked quietly. He face didn’t show much surprise even as he thought of the place where he was supposed to be, might have been, back at the house where Spencer and Jon were probably curled up together in the bedroom.
“Yes,” Ryan answered. “My uncle was single his entire life.”
Brendon nodded and looked down at his feet. He heard rather than saw Ryan glide up to him, leaning in close enough to take in all the pheromones floating off of Brendon’s salty skin. He shivered just a tiny bit when he felt Ryan brush his lips against his neck.
“Welcome home, Bren.”
-
Three days in and Brendon had already gotten over his claustrophobia. Ryan had closed the vault, because somehow the air inside their little concrete hole breathed cleaner than the air outside. Ryan had also gotten their television to work, and Brendon had been surprised to find that instead of black and white, it shone vivid color. They kept it on the only channel they could get, the American network that carried the only license in the nation to broadcast any sort of news. Of course, they both knew it was dirty, filthy with propaganda, lies and deceit designed to brainwash a country of dead and dying people to rally behind the government that killed them all in the first place. T hey kept it on mute.
After unpacking, the room seemed even smaller. The once empty shelves were now lined with canned pears and Spam and other non perishables. Their portable electric stove sat in the corner, and the bags they had never bothered to unpack were pushed carelessly under the bed.
The bed. Brendon was glad there was only one. At night, it gave him the closeness he knew they both needed, turning them into a tangle of arms and legs, their shirtless torsos touching and keeping each other warm. Sometimes they would kiss goodnight, closed mouthed and innocent pecks that always lasted longer than they had with Jon or Spencer.
Sunlight was a distant memory inside the shelter, and so was the defining line between day and night. They slept when they were tired and they ate when they were hungry. Brendon noticed that Ryan would touch him as often as possible, tiny, fleeting touches to remind him that the world wasn’t over yet, that they were still in the land of the living, walking and talking and breathing.
Sometimes Ryan would turn off the overhead light, and the room would be lit only by the blue-white glow of the television. He’d lie on the bed and pat the bare spot next to him, an invitation for Brendon to come and join. They would talk, sometimes for hours, remembering the life they had, the life even before the band, recalling times when the whole world was in front of them, when they had dreams and goals and the means to accomplish them. Ryan said he felt like they were living that time all over again, except empty, so empty, because again, all they had was each other. Only this time, they had no where to go.
-
One night (or rather, the time they had designated ‘night’), Brendon woke up cold. Ryan was turned away from him, pressed to the edge of the bed, his breathing erratic and fast. He saw Ryan’s arm moving, up and down in a rhythmic motion, maybe the drum beat to one of their songs playing in his head, his hips bucking occasionally.
Brendon scooted closer. Spooning behind Ryan, he nuzzled his nose into Ryan’s neck, dropping tiny butterfly kisses on his shoulder.
Ryan shuddered and came.
-
Three and half weeks in, Ryan started having trouble sleeping.
Brendon knew it would happen eventually, he remembered when Ryan would have the same problem towards the second half of most their tours. Those times, Ryan would stuff his iPod in his ears, and maybe he would fall asleep a few hours later. But of course, everyone’s iPods had expired ages ago, batteries fried and no big corporation to send them to for replacements.
And since a part of Ryan knew that Brendon would do anything for him, he took to asking Brendon to sing him to sleep. It was therapy for them both, a little part of their old life revisiting them, soothing and reminiscent of a time when Brendon would sing the lyrics of a brand new song in the studio, or when they would all pick up their acoustic guitars and return to playing Blink 182 covers, just for the sake of memories. Brendon thought that maybe there was always something to remember, a place in your head to return to.
But then, that was the thing with dying. There would never be a time when he would get to look back and remember singing Ryan to sleep in the safety of a concrete room.
-
Two months passed, and Brendon began to notice the shelves looking more and more bare as each day wore on.
-
With two fingers inside him already and Ryan’s chapped lips on his, he couldn’t keep his eyes open if he tried. Brendon bent his knee and pulled it into his own chest more, allowing more room for Ryan to settle, and right there, with their bodies almost as close as they could get, Brendon considered whispering something along the lines of, “Don’t you ever fucking leave me, Ryan,” but then he remembered that Ryan couldn’t ever do that, not even if he had wanted to.
A soft, velvet tongue invaded Brendon’s mouth, and he embraced it with his own, coaxing them into a dance as Ryan swallowed his moans and digested them, living and feeding off them. He felt a third finger tease at his entrance, ready and wet from the little bottle of hand lotion Ryan had stuck in his pocket before they left, and bucked up into it. Ryan obliged, pushing it in slowly along side his other two fingers, and Brendon hissed in pleasure at the burn. Ryan smiled into the kiss and pulled away, thrusting slowly with his hand and watching Brendon’s eyes flutter open and closed.
He dipped his head to kiss the spot just below Brendon’s ear. “You like this?” he whispered, voice sultry and heavy with something Brendon couldn’t place. It took all he had to choke out an answer.
“Yeah- fuck. Yes.”
Ryan trailed his lips back to Brendon’s, hovering above them and stilling his hand, fingertips almost completely out and teasing at the swollen, red pucker of Brendon’s ass. He expected Ryan to take them away and replace them with his cock, but instead, he felt them push back in, wider in girth than before, and Brendon felt that fourth finger slip in with the rest.
His body went a little rigid as he adjusted to the stretch, and he shot Ryan a questioning look.
“Relax, Bren,” he said, before softening his voice a bit. “Please. Let me do this?”
Brendon didn’t know if he could do it, but it wasn’t like he could tell Ryan no, not when he had never, ever told him no before, hadn’t even trained himself in the art of refusal. So he nodded his head, his face set in a way that told Ryan, I trust you.
Ryan grinned, pressed his lips to Brendon’s, and pushed his fingers all the way to the knuckle.
Brendon groaned loudly. He’d certainly never taken anything that wide before, four fingers side by side, and the pressure was incredible. Ryan allowed him a moment to adjust before dragging them almost all the way out again and then sliding them back in. The burn was dull and sweet and it made Brendon’s blood thrum loudly in his veins.
He pulled Ryan down for another kiss, their lips searing and hot together, scorching heat as they devoured each other, tasting and touching while Ryan finger fucked him. Brendon thought it was probably the pain that made it feel this good, although it maybe it was the pleasure, maybe Ryan brushing his prostate with his rough fingertips while they kissed, but probably the pain. He wasn’t quite sure, but he did know that there was never a time he remembered feeling so human. So alive.
Ryan pulled away as Brendon loosened a little, had to literally tear their lips apart, and began to slowly remove his fingers again. His head fell into the crook of Brendon’s neck, where he lapped sweetly at the sweat and whispered hushed words into Brendon’s skin.
“Do you think heaven can hear us breathing, Bren? Here, under all the lead and dirt and fallout?”
Brendon’s breath hitched as he felt a thumb press together with the rest of Ryan’s hand, ready and poised to take him, all of him.
“Yes.”
Ryan smiled, wistfully, and leaned down to peck Brendon’s lips again.
“Good,” he whispered, and Brendon swallowed his knuckles down.
-
The pictures on the television got scarier soon, but Brendon didn’t know if he was supposed to believe them.
-
One day, Ryan started crying. Brendon had let him, held him and kissed away the tears that ran down his splotchy red cheeks, but didn’t say anything. Brendon had known Ryan long enough to know that if Ryan was going to talk, he’d do it when he felt like it.
So twenty minutes later, with his head resting on Brendon’s chest and his breathing calm again, he spoke quietly into Brendon’s neck.
“I’m sorry I can’t save you, Bren.”
-
Brendon was sweaty, Ryan’s hands sliding along his hips, trying to find a firm grip, but it was hard when they were both getting so much thinner, flesh slowly disappearing and bones rising to the surface. It wasn’t too bad yet, but Brendon pretty much thought everything was going to happen a lot faster from here on out.
Ryan sat on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor and Brendon’s arms locked around his neck as the younger boy bounced up and down in his lap, exertion evident in their heavy breathing. Brendon reveled in the feeling of Ryan inside him, full and swollen and red, tried to imagine what it would look like if he could just watch the place where their bodies were joined. He pulled away from Ryan’s lips and took a deep breath, dusty oxygen reentering his lungs, and watched the room around them. It was dark, like it usually was these days, and it was just him and Ryan and the glow of the television next to them.
The pictures were different than they had been before. All the same things, all the same explosions, but different places. It was New York now, New York and Atlanta and what Brendon thinks looked like Boston. He watched the screen while Ryan fucked him, and he thought, this is it, it’s finally here, the moment everyone had been waiting for, the moment everyone wanted to escape but couldn’t. Brendon watched people dying, women and children and men of all ages, and he thinks that it doesn’t really matter how old anyone is anymore. That stupid notion that the kids should be saved first because they haven’t had the chance to live yet is all gone, because no one is going to live, not the eight year olds or the eighty years olds or anyone. Everyone is all the same now, and every human life is worthless. It’s ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and everyone’s going to spend the rest of eternity floating in little vaporized particles in the stratosphere high above their heads.
Ryan followed Brendon’s gaze to the television and stilled his upward thrusts. They both looked on, motionless for a second, and the room felt smaller and more distant from Earth than it ever had. Brendon noted that the colors looked different than they had with Vienna and London and Bangkok, looked brighter now. The mushroom clouds looked less dirty more luminescent, greens and golds and yellows everywhere, blinding and brilliant as North America fell to bits. The flashes of light danced across the black surface of Brendon’s eyes, like little dying stars that burned brightest in the moments right before they burst into flames.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered, to Ryan, to himself, to God, even.
Ryan slid his hand up the sweaty column of Brendon’s spine.
“Yeah. It is.”
-
After that, they both stopped counting the days. They spent their time sleeping and fucking, making love.
They wondered what happened to Spencer and Jon, if they had ever left or ran like they themselves had, or if they had just stayed in the house, eating Spencer’s food and waiting. Brendon liked to think the best had happened, and maybe Spencer really had found a boat, and they were on some desert island in the Pacific, living off the land and building straw huts and smiling.
And sometime towards the end, with the lights and the television both off, and the pitch black darkness of their hole in the ground surrounding them and swallowing them, Brendon lay naked on top of Ryan, spent and tired. He let his body mold with Ryan’s like they were two pieces of clay that couldn’t be separated until they dried and someone dropped them on the ground and they shattered.
“I’m glad I’m dying with you,” he whispered. He heard Ryan’s heart skip a beat or two.
“Me too, Bren.”
And even though the television was off and their eyes were closed, and there wasn’t anything left on Earth to actually see, Brendon thought he had a pretty nice view of the world ending.