Revival (Standalone)
Title: Revival (standalone)
Author: ivesia19
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
POV: 3rd limited
Summary: He turns back to look at Brendon, and Brendon is staring straight at him, eyes only darting away momentarily every couple of seconds to keep account of the road, but he keeps coming back to Ryan. “I can’t help but ruin the best things that happen to me.”
Disclaimer: The boys belong to themselves (and possibly each other)
Author Notes: *sigh* These boys need to talk to each other! ~3,000 words.
---
---
Ryan realizes when he lands in LAX after flying back from a couple of days of sleeping on Alex’s couch and hopping from art warehouse to art warehouse in Brooklyn that he forgot to call someone ahead of time to pick him up.
He waits for his bag, standing around the carousel with the rest of the people from his flight, huge sunglasses hiding half his face, and he scrolls through his contacts on his cell. The tint of the sunglasses make it a little difficult to read the scrolling names, and when Ryan looks up every couple of seconds to see if his bag is rounding the corner, they slide down the bridge of his nose, but he loves these sunglasses, damnit, so he doesn’t take them off.
He calls Kate’s number, and it rings a couple of times before going to her voicemail. He listens to her light, breathy voice, but figures that she’s probably off in the studio or something and forgot her phone, so he doesn’t leave a message.
Next, he tries Chad, but when the phone goes straight to the beep, Ryan remembers that Chad has jury duty all week. He huffs and ends the call.
Pete is out of town, so is Eric, Jon is in Chicago, and Ryan knows that not a lot of the other people in his phone would actually come get him at the airport (have a party at his house, sure, but picking him up from the airport isn’t something that he would expect from them).
He calls Spencer.
The phone rings once, twice, and then it picks up. “Hello?” Spencer says when he answers.
Ryan frowns, causing the sunglasses to slide down the bridge of his nose again. Since when did Spencer answer his calls with a question? Ryan brushes off any sort of implication he could draw from that, pushes his sunglasses up with one long finger, and takes a deep breath.
“Hey, Spence.” Ryan looks around at the people in the airport. At the groups of people, at the families and friends. “I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”
Ryan’s known Spencer a long time. Favors are things that people who’ve known each other for a long time do. It’s expected. Plus, Spencer has picked Ryan up from the airport before. Well, usually he was with Ryan, eyes heavy with lack of sleep, leaning against Ryan or Jon or Brendon, but still, Ryan knows that Spencer is reliable.
“A favor?” Spencer repeats. His voice sounds rusty through the phone. A little confused, too, and his words slide through their pitch, up and up like a slide whistle. It breaks a little at the end.
“Um, yeah.” Ryan turns away from the carousel, from the other people waiting for their bags, and he walks over toward an empty space near the rental carts. “Could you come pick me up at the airport?”
There’s a beat, and then Spencer asks, “Why are you at the airport?”
Something about the way that Spencer says that is off, but Ryan doesn’t know what it is, so he just answers, “I went to visit Alex in New York. Just got back.”
On the other end of the phone, there’s another moment of silence, but then Spencer says, “I didn’t know you were gone.” He coughs, and suddenly, standing in the middle of baggage claim in LAX under the bright fluorescent lights, Ryan feels awkward. He feels like he’s done something wrong, and something harsh and heavy settles in his stomach.
“Yeah,” he says. Says it because he doesn’t know what else to say, but he can’t say nothing. Not to Spencer. “I forgot to arrange a pick up. Do you think you can swing by?”
There was a time when Ryan could rely on Spencer for anything, but now Spencer answers with a ‘sorry’. “I have plans in, like, twenty minutes. Meeting up with some friends.” There’s another slightly awkward pause, one that makes Ryan think back and remember when he could read every little nuance of Spencer. When Spencer seemed to just know everything that Ryan needed. Even when Ryan didn’t.
Ryan swallows. “That’s fine,” he says, leaning against the row of carts for some sort of support. He figures they’re probably dirty, but it’s not like the seats on the airplane are all that sanitary, either, so he just slumps against them further. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find someone else to help. Thanks.” He plays with his glasses for a second before just pushing them up to rest on the top of his head, annoyed. “Uh, have fun with your friends.”
“Thanks,” Spencer says, the word drawn out. “Call me sometime this week, though. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. Across the way, Ryan watches as people make their way down into the baggage claim. There’s a girl to the side holding a sign, and as a new wave of people come down the escalator, she holds it up high. Ryan turns away. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
“I miss you,” Spencer says.
Ryan nods, it’s automatic, but it’s stupid because Spencer isn’t there, so he makes some sort of noise in the back of his throat before he croaks out, “Well, I better try to find someone else. See you later.”
He hangs up the phone and looks toward the carousel. The crowd has thinned to only a couple of people, but his bag still isn’t in sight and he needs to find a way home, so he looks back down to his phone.
Ryan’s scrolling through the numbers, trying to think of who could be sober enough to pick him up (even though it was only two), when his phone buzzes in his hand and Brendon’s name pops up.
He watches as the phone brightens and dims for a second, moves in his hand, displaying Brendon’s name, and then he hits the accept key.
“Hello.”
“Spencer says that you need someone to pick you up from the airport,” Brendon says, not even bothering to throw in a “Hey” for good measures. Ryan knows, though, that he shouldn’t be expecting any sort of familiarities. Not anymore.
Ryan looks around him. Outside, visible through the glass windows, there’s a bunch of taxis lined up. He could, theoretically, take one back to Topanga Canyon. Sure, it’d be expensive as fuck, but he could. “Yeah,” he says, instead. “I do.”
He’s about to tell Brendon not to worry about it, then, back out, about to tell him that he’ll find someway else to get home, but Brendon rushes with a, “Okay, good. I’m already on my way. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Before he can suppress the thought, the words are coming out of his mouth. “Really? Are you sure that you want-” and then he manages to get his voice under control. He coughs, trying to cover up the slip, and for the split second it takes him to say something else, he can hear the static-silence from Brendon’s end. “I mean, thanks. That’s great.”
“Okay. See you soon, then.”
The phone goes dead, and when Ryan turns around, he can see his bag, circling by itself on the conveyer belt. He goes over, long strides, and grabs it before it rounds the corner again.
---
It’s a little bit longer than twenty minutes when Brendon pulls up along the curb near the baggage claim, but considering the traffic in Los Angeles, Ryan’s impressed. Brendon must have been pretty close.
When the car comes to a stop, Brendon turns toward the airport, toward Ryan, but he doesn’t roll down the window. A noise sounds, though, and the trunk pops open, so Ryan carries his bag and throws it in the back next to a pair of worn sneakers and a scratched up tennis racket.
Already, Ryan knows that the ride home is going to be strange. As he rounds the car, heading toward the passenger seat, Ryan just wishes that Brendon turns up the music loud enough to drown out some of the awkwardness. Plus, it’s been awhile since Ryan’s heard Brendon singing, really singing, live and not through a replay song of when times were different. He sort of misses it.
“Hey,” Ryan says when he opens the door. He slides in, buckles his seat belt, and watches Brendon not watch him. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Yeah,” Brendon responds. He turns his signal on and pulls out into the line of cars.
In the car, the music is on, but it’s not playing very loud. The noise of the cars around them, of the people and of shuffling feet, can still be heard, and Ryan has an urge to turn the dial up, but he doesn’t.
“Did you have fun in New York?” Brendon asks, eyes straight ahead. He shakes his head once, an old habit from when his hair was long, but when he stills his hair is still in place.
“What?” Ryan asks.
“New York,” Brendon repeats. “Spence said you went to visit Alex. Didn’t know that you still talked to him.”
Underneath Brendon’s words, Ryan tries not to hear anything else, but he’s never been really good at not over thinking things. “It was good,” he answers. “The couch was hell for my back, but-” He shrugs, and for a second, Brendon’s eyes flicker over at the movement. “Got to see some pretty crazy art over there.”
Brendon lets out a puff of air, one that might be a little laugh, but he doesn’t say anything about it, just says, “You’re pretty into art these days, huh.”
“And you surf,” Ryan says, and for some reason, it almost comes out like an accusation. He meant for it to be just a fact, something that is new, something that was done without him, but even as he thinks that, Ryan knows that no matter what, more was bound to come out than he had meant. “You any good?” he asks, trying to smooth over the fray.
Pressing his lips together, Brendon hums. “I guess,” he says. “Better than Shane, at least. Or Sarah and Regan. It’s easier right now than trying to make music. It’s easier than dealing with this.” He licks his bottom lip, Ryan watches as he does it, and through the window, just past Brendon’s familiar features, Ryan watches as the cars fly past him. “I think we should talk.”
Ryan’s eyes slide back from the scenery outside to focus again on Brendon. “Talk,” he repeats. The word sticks in his throat. “About what?”
One of Brendon’s hands come up to scratch at his forehead, a nervous habit that Ryan’s known but hasn’t seen for years, and he says, “About us. About what’s happening with all of us. About what’s happening with you and me.”
Ryan doesn’t want to talk about this. He wants to be back in his home surrounded by colors and laughter, he wants to be in New York with people who know everything about things worthwhile, about things worth doing, he wants to escape, because he knows that it’s what he’s been doing, and he’s fine with that, he really is. He doesn’t need to talk about it. “And what’s happening with you and me?” Or maybe he does.
The answer is immediate. Brendon doesn’t take any time to ponder over his words, no. The way he answers is automatic, and Ryan wonders just how long Brendon’s been thinking about this. “We’re drifting,” he says. “We’re drifting apart.” To Ryan, the way that Brendon says it sounds like how Brendon used to sound back on their first tour when he would talk to his parents. Once a week he would call them. Once a week his voice would get small and meek, and once a week he would say something that always sounded like “I’m sorry”, but more like he was sorry for them.
When Brendon says that, says they’re drifting, the car doesn’t stop. Brendon doesn’t slam on the breaks, and no one crashes into the side of the car, but Ryan feels shaken all the same. He doesn’t really know what to say, but he does. At least, he knows how to start. With Brendon’s words still echoing in his ears, Ryan says, “I know.”
Brendon nods at what Ryan says. He tightens the grip on his steering wheel, and Ryan hasn’t seen Brendon look this tense, this worn out, since he was working double shifts at the Smoothie Hut, coming home to share a tattered mattress with him, a boy he hardly knew - the reason, the catapult, for everything.
“I don’t know how to go from here,” Ryan admits. He and Brendon have never really been the type of people who could talk about their feelings, their relationship. They took things as they came. For a while, that philosophy seemed to work - nights wrapped around each other, tucked into one another, breathing hot against sweaty skin - but that time is long over.
“I don’t either.”
Outside the window, just past Brendon, Ryan watches as the scenery changes. Brendon turns off the highway, driving toward the winding mountain roads that lead up to Ryan’s house. Concrete dividers give way to trees, and that seems to help a little. “It’s not like I don’t miss you,” Ryan says. “I do.”
Ryan’s not looking at Brendon now. He turns, looking out his own window, watching the tress go past, but he can hear Brendon answer. “Music reminds me of you.” He laughs something like a cough and says, “I can’t even pick up my fucking guitar because you haven’t talked to me since Africa. And it’s not like even then we said anything worth anything.”
Africa was strange, Ryan won’t deny it. There was this constant gulf, and while before they went, Ryan had had the strangest, stupidest fantasy that everything would work itself out, it didn’t. If anything, it made coming home, going back to lives without each other, that much more horribly real.
“I think-” Ryan starts, but he has to take a second to pause. The words are raw. “I think that sometimes I fuck things up because I don’t know what else to do,” he admits. “I could see what I was doing. With you,” he clarifies. He turns back to look at Brendon, and Brendon is staring straight at him, eyes only darting away momentarily every couple of seconds to keep account of the road, but he keeps coming back to Ryan. “I can’t help but ruin the best things that happen to me.”
There are times, many times, actually, when Ryan thinks about it. When he’s with his friends, his new friends - the ones that weren’t there for the beginning, the ones that weren’t there for the long nights and the bruises and the anger and the pain, the ones that weren’t there for the desperation and the confusion - he thinks about Brendon.
He thinks about the early days when they would circle around each other, neither one really knowing what the other one was thinking. Those were the days of fumbling flirtations, constant second guessing, and eventually, those were the days of hesitant kisses, sweet and hidden. He thinks about when they first made it - thinks about just how much trust Brendon put into him, how much faith. He thinks about days of heated kisses and sliding bodies and low, whispered words. He thinks about when he knew what it all meant and how he never said anything, never let Brendon get to a point when he could say anything.
There are times when he thinks about when Brendon was a constant in his life, but more often than not now, Ryan thinks about how it’s all falling apart.
“I want it back,” Ryan says, and it takes him a second to realize that he said it out loud, takes Brendon’s hitched breath to bring him back to the moment. He almost flushes red, but doesn’t, because he means it. “You’re right. We should talk.”
Brendon pulls into the lane up to Ryan’s house, and when he gets to the driveway, he pulls in, putting the car into park, but he doesn’t turn the car off.
“Do you want to come in?” Ryan asks.
Brendon has been to Ryan’s house a couple of times, but never alone. Whenever he came, it was for some hastily organized and executed practice with the rest of the band. Now, Ryan knows that they’d be alone. It’d just be the two of them.
“Are you sure?” Brendon asks.
Ryan nods. “I want to fix this, Bren.” He knows that Brendon could interpret the word ‘this’ a couple of different ways. It could mean the band, because yes, that’s important. The band is Ryan’s dream, something he’s worked hard for, and he doesn’t want it to fall apart. He wants to fight for it. It could mean the band, Brendon could take it that way, but Ryan knows, hopes, that he gets it, hopes that Brendon understands that Ryan means them.
“I don’t have anything else planned for today,” Brendon says, and Ryan watches as Brendon reaches to turn the keys to his car, turning it off. He smiles, for a brief second, and Brendon mirrors it. It’s the first time in far too long that Brendon smiles at him like that - like he means it, and something loosens in Ryan’s chest.
He gets out of the car, grabbing his bag from the trunk when Brendon opens it for him, holding the hood up and closing it as Ryan’s hands clear the path, and for a second, they just stand there.
Then Ryan turns and walks toward the front door, Brendon in step right behind him.
Other Stories
Author: ivesia19
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
POV: 3rd limited
Summary: He turns back to look at Brendon, and Brendon is staring straight at him, eyes only darting away momentarily every couple of seconds to keep account of the road, but he keeps coming back to Ryan. “I can’t help but ruin the best things that happen to me.”
Disclaimer: The boys belong to themselves (and possibly each other)
Author Notes: *sigh* These boys need to talk to each other! ~3,000 words.
---
---
Ryan realizes when he lands in LAX after flying back from a couple of days of sleeping on Alex’s couch and hopping from art warehouse to art warehouse in Brooklyn that he forgot to call someone ahead of time to pick him up.
He waits for his bag, standing around the carousel with the rest of the people from his flight, huge sunglasses hiding half his face, and he scrolls through his contacts on his cell. The tint of the sunglasses make it a little difficult to read the scrolling names, and when Ryan looks up every couple of seconds to see if his bag is rounding the corner, they slide down the bridge of his nose, but he loves these sunglasses, damnit, so he doesn’t take them off.
He calls Kate’s number, and it rings a couple of times before going to her voicemail. He listens to her light, breathy voice, but figures that she’s probably off in the studio or something and forgot her phone, so he doesn’t leave a message.
Next, he tries Chad, but when the phone goes straight to the beep, Ryan remembers that Chad has jury duty all week. He huffs and ends the call.
Pete is out of town, so is Eric, Jon is in Chicago, and Ryan knows that not a lot of the other people in his phone would actually come get him at the airport (have a party at his house, sure, but picking him up from the airport isn’t something that he would expect from them).
He calls Spencer.
The phone rings once, twice, and then it picks up. “Hello?” Spencer says when he answers.
Ryan frowns, causing the sunglasses to slide down the bridge of his nose again. Since when did Spencer answer his calls with a question? Ryan brushes off any sort of implication he could draw from that, pushes his sunglasses up with one long finger, and takes a deep breath.
“Hey, Spence.” Ryan looks around at the people in the airport. At the groups of people, at the families and friends. “I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”
Ryan’s known Spencer a long time. Favors are things that people who’ve known each other for a long time do. It’s expected. Plus, Spencer has picked Ryan up from the airport before. Well, usually he was with Ryan, eyes heavy with lack of sleep, leaning against Ryan or Jon or Brendon, but still, Ryan knows that Spencer is reliable.
“A favor?” Spencer repeats. His voice sounds rusty through the phone. A little confused, too, and his words slide through their pitch, up and up like a slide whistle. It breaks a little at the end.
“Um, yeah.” Ryan turns away from the carousel, from the other people waiting for their bags, and he walks over toward an empty space near the rental carts. “Could you come pick me up at the airport?”
There’s a beat, and then Spencer asks, “Why are you at the airport?”
Something about the way that Spencer says that is off, but Ryan doesn’t know what it is, so he just answers, “I went to visit Alex in New York. Just got back.”
On the other end of the phone, there’s another moment of silence, but then Spencer says, “I didn’t know you were gone.” He coughs, and suddenly, standing in the middle of baggage claim in LAX under the bright fluorescent lights, Ryan feels awkward. He feels like he’s done something wrong, and something harsh and heavy settles in his stomach.
“Yeah,” he says. Says it because he doesn’t know what else to say, but he can’t say nothing. Not to Spencer. “I forgot to arrange a pick up. Do you think you can swing by?”
There was a time when Ryan could rely on Spencer for anything, but now Spencer answers with a ‘sorry’. “I have plans in, like, twenty minutes. Meeting up with some friends.” There’s another slightly awkward pause, one that makes Ryan think back and remember when he could read every little nuance of Spencer. When Spencer seemed to just know everything that Ryan needed. Even when Ryan didn’t.
Ryan swallows. “That’s fine,” he says, leaning against the row of carts for some sort of support. He figures they’re probably dirty, but it’s not like the seats on the airplane are all that sanitary, either, so he just slumps against them further. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find someone else to help. Thanks.” He plays with his glasses for a second before just pushing them up to rest on the top of his head, annoyed. “Uh, have fun with your friends.”
“Thanks,” Spencer says, the word drawn out. “Call me sometime this week, though. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. Across the way, Ryan watches as people make their way down into the baggage claim. There’s a girl to the side holding a sign, and as a new wave of people come down the escalator, she holds it up high. Ryan turns away. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
“I miss you,” Spencer says.
Ryan nods, it’s automatic, but it’s stupid because Spencer isn’t there, so he makes some sort of noise in the back of his throat before he croaks out, “Well, I better try to find someone else. See you later.”
He hangs up the phone and looks toward the carousel. The crowd has thinned to only a couple of people, but his bag still isn’t in sight and he needs to find a way home, so he looks back down to his phone.
Ryan’s scrolling through the numbers, trying to think of who could be sober enough to pick him up (even though it was only two), when his phone buzzes in his hand and Brendon’s name pops up.
He watches as the phone brightens and dims for a second, moves in his hand, displaying Brendon’s name, and then he hits the accept key.
“Hello.”
“Spencer says that you need someone to pick you up from the airport,” Brendon says, not even bothering to throw in a “Hey” for good measures. Ryan knows, though, that he shouldn’t be expecting any sort of familiarities. Not anymore.
Ryan looks around him. Outside, visible through the glass windows, there’s a bunch of taxis lined up. He could, theoretically, take one back to Topanga Canyon. Sure, it’d be expensive as fuck, but he could. “Yeah,” he says, instead. “I do.”
He’s about to tell Brendon not to worry about it, then, back out, about to tell him that he’ll find someway else to get home, but Brendon rushes with a, “Okay, good. I’m already on my way. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Before he can suppress the thought, the words are coming out of his mouth. “Really? Are you sure that you want-” and then he manages to get his voice under control. He coughs, trying to cover up the slip, and for the split second it takes him to say something else, he can hear the static-silence from Brendon’s end. “I mean, thanks. That’s great.”
“Okay. See you soon, then.”
The phone goes dead, and when Ryan turns around, he can see his bag, circling by itself on the conveyer belt. He goes over, long strides, and grabs it before it rounds the corner again.
---
It’s a little bit longer than twenty minutes when Brendon pulls up along the curb near the baggage claim, but considering the traffic in Los Angeles, Ryan’s impressed. Brendon must have been pretty close.
When the car comes to a stop, Brendon turns toward the airport, toward Ryan, but he doesn’t roll down the window. A noise sounds, though, and the trunk pops open, so Ryan carries his bag and throws it in the back next to a pair of worn sneakers and a scratched up tennis racket.
Already, Ryan knows that the ride home is going to be strange. As he rounds the car, heading toward the passenger seat, Ryan just wishes that Brendon turns up the music loud enough to drown out some of the awkwardness. Plus, it’s been awhile since Ryan’s heard Brendon singing, really singing, live and not through a replay song of when times were different. He sort of misses it.
“Hey,” Ryan says when he opens the door. He slides in, buckles his seat belt, and watches Brendon not watch him. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Yeah,” Brendon responds. He turns his signal on and pulls out into the line of cars.
In the car, the music is on, but it’s not playing very loud. The noise of the cars around them, of the people and of shuffling feet, can still be heard, and Ryan has an urge to turn the dial up, but he doesn’t.
“Did you have fun in New York?” Brendon asks, eyes straight ahead. He shakes his head once, an old habit from when his hair was long, but when he stills his hair is still in place.
“What?” Ryan asks.
“New York,” Brendon repeats. “Spence said you went to visit Alex. Didn’t know that you still talked to him.”
Underneath Brendon’s words, Ryan tries not to hear anything else, but he’s never been really good at not over thinking things. “It was good,” he answers. “The couch was hell for my back, but-” He shrugs, and for a second, Brendon’s eyes flicker over at the movement. “Got to see some pretty crazy art over there.”
Brendon lets out a puff of air, one that might be a little laugh, but he doesn’t say anything about it, just says, “You’re pretty into art these days, huh.”
“And you surf,” Ryan says, and for some reason, it almost comes out like an accusation. He meant for it to be just a fact, something that is new, something that was done without him, but even as he thinks that, Ryan knows that no matter what, more was bound to come out than he had meant. “You any good?” he asks, trying to smooth over the fray.
Pressing his lips together, Brendon hums. “I guess,” he says. “Better than Shane, at least. Or Sarah and Regan. It’s easier right now than trying to make music. It’s easier than dealing with this.” He licks his bottom lip, Ryan watches as he does it, and through the window, just past Brendon’s familiar features, Ryan watches as the cars fly past him. “I think we should talk.”
Ryan’s eyes slide back from the scenery outside to focus again on Brendon. “Talk,” he repeats. The word sticks in his throat. “About what?”
One of Brendon’s hands come up to scratch at his forehead, a nervous habit that Ryan’s known but hasn’t seen for years, and he says, “About us. About what’s happening with all of us. About what’s happening with you and me.”
Ryan doesn’t want to talk about this. He wants to be back in his home surrounded by colors and laughter, he wants to be in New York with people who know everything about things worthwhile, about things worth doing, he wants to escape, because he knows that it’s what he’s been doing, and he’s fine with that, he really is. He doesn’t need to talk about it. “And what’s happening with you and me?” Or maybe he does.
The answer is immediate. Brendon doesn’t take any time to ponder over his words, no. The way he answers is automatic, and Ryan wonders just how long Brendon’s been thinking about this. “We’re drifting,” he says. “We’re drifting apart.” To Ryan, the way that Brendon says it sounds like how Brendon used to sound back on their first tour when he would talk to his parents. Once a week he would call them. Once a week his voice would get small and meek, and once a week he would say something that always sounded like “I’m sorry”, but more like he was sorry for them.
When Brendon says that, says they’re drifting, the car doesn’t stop. Brendon doesn’t slam on the breaks, and no one crashes into the side of the car, but Ryan feels shaken all the same. He doesn’t really know what to say, but he does. At least, he knows how to start. With Brendon’s words still echoing in his ears, Ryan says, “I know.”
Brendon nods at what Ryan says. He tightens the grip on his steering wheel, and Ryan hasn’t seen Brendon look this tense, this worn out, since he was working double shifts at the Smoothie Hut, coming home to share a tattered mattress with him, a boy he hardly knew - the reason, the catapult, for everything.
“I don’t know how to go from here,” Ryan admits. He and Brendon have never really been the type of people who could talk about their feelings, their relationship. They took things as they came. For a while, that philosophy seemed to work - nights wrapped around each other, tucked into one another, breathing hot against sweaty skin - but that time is long over.
“I don’t either.”
Outside the window, just past Brendon, Ryan watches as the scenery changes. Brendon turns off the highway, driving toward the winding mountain roads that lead up to Ryan’s house. Concrete dividers give way to trees, and that seems to help a little. “It’s not like I don’t miss you,” Ryan says. “I do.”
Ryan’s not looking at Brendon now. He turns, looking out his own window, watching the tress go past, but he can hear Brendon answer. “Music reminds me of you.” He laughs something like a cough and says, “I can’t even pick up my fucking guitar because you haven’t talked to me since Africa. And it’s not like even then we said anything worth anything.”
Africa was strange, Ryan won’t deny it. There was this constant gulf, and while before they went, Ryan had had the strangest, stupidest fantasy that everything would work itself out, it didn’t. If anything, it made coming home, going back to lives without each other, that much more horribly real.
“I think-” Ryan starts, but he has to take a second to pause. The words are raw. “I think that sometimes I fuck things up because I don’t know what else to do,” he admits. “I could see what I was doing. With you,” he clarifies. He turns back to look at Brendon, and Brendon is staring straight at him, eyes only darting away momentarily every couple of seconds to keep account of the road, but he keeps coming back to Ryan. “I can’t help but ruin the best things that happen to me.”
There are times, many times, actually, when Ryan thinks about it. When he’s with his friends, his new friends - the ones that weren’t there for the beginning, the ones that weren’t there for the long nights and the bruises and the anger and the pain, the ones that weren’t there for the desperation and the confusion - he thinks about Brendon.
He thinks about the early days when they would circle around each other, neither one really knowing what the other one was thinking. Those were the days of fumbling flirtations, constant second guessing, and eventually, those were the days of hesitant kisses, sweet and hidden. He thinks about when they first made it - thinks about just how much trust Brendon put into him, how much faith. He thinks about days of heated kisses and sliding bodies and low, whispered words. He thinks about when he knew what it all meant and how he never said anything, never let Brendon get to a point when he could say anything.
There are times when he thinks about when Brendon was a constant in his life, but more often than not now, Ryan thinks about how it’s all falling apart.
“I want it back,” Ryan says, and it takes him a second to realize that he said it out loud, takes Brendon’s hitched breath to bring him back to the moment. He almost flushes red, but doesn’t, because he means it. “You’re right. We should talk.”
Brendon pulls into the lane up to Ryan’s house, and when he gets to the driveway, he pulls in, putting the car into park, but he doesn’t turn the car off.
“Do you want to come in?” Ryan asks.
Brendon has been to Ryan’s house a couple of times, but never alone. Whenever he came, it was for some hastily organized and executed practice with the rest of the band. Now, Ryan knows that they’d be alone. It’d just be the two of them.
“Are you sure?” Brendon asks.
Ryan nods. “I want to fix this, Bren.” He knows that Brendon could interpret the word ‘this’ a couple of different ways. It could mean the band, because yes, that’s important. The band is Ryan’s dream, something he’s worked hard for, and he doesn’t want it to fall apart. He wants to fight for it. It could mean the band, Brendon could take it that way, but Ryan knows, hopes, that he gets it, hopes that Brendon understands that Ryan means them.
“I don’t have anything else planned for today,” Brendon says, and Ryan watches as Brendon reaches to turn the keys to his car, turning it off. He smiles, for a brief second, and Brendon mirrors it. It’s the first time in far too long that Brendon smiles at him like that - like he means it, and something loosens in Ryan’s chest.
He gets out of the car, grabbing his bag from the trunk when Brendon opens it for him, holding the hood up and closing it as Ryan’s hands clear the path, and for a second, they just stand there.
Then Ryan turns and walks toward the front door, Brendon in step right behind him.
Other Stories