that long in darkness pined
Title: that long in darkness pined
Author: Telis (theaerosolkid)
Rating: R
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
Summary: Brendon and Ryan and BrendonandRyan and the bitch of living.
Word Count: 1905
Disclaimer: Fake, fake, fake.
A/N: Thanks to castoffstarter and disarm_d for their fabulous beta help. An inexcusably late birthday offering to the glorious notshybutsly. This was a real challenge for me, writing something with an overtly unhappy ending. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm something of a romantic ;) but here goes nothin'.
*
"I think sometimes that I've forgotten how to pray," Brendon says quietly. Ryan's breath hitches.
"I don't think I ever knew," Ryan says.
*
Ryan's kissing him, the kind of kisses that are private and a little desperate. He's taller than Brendon but still it feels like he's smaller; fragile, maybe. Brendon's fingers tighten, one hand in Ryan's hair, the other tangled at his hip. Ryan arches up into him, and Brendon pulls back a bit, tries to slow them down.
Ryan just follows him, kissing him harder and drawing him down.
*
Brendon's stretched on his side, watching Ryan tap away at his Sidekick with music playing on his laptop. It's a playlist of mostly-bootleg covers of "Hallelujah", beginning and ending with Jeff Buckley's rendition.
"Do you even know what hallelujah means?" he asks.
"No," Ryan says after a beat.
"It means 'let us praise the Lord'," Brendon says.
"Oh," Ryan says. "I always just thought it sounded pretty. I didn't think it actually meant anything."
"Amen means 'so be it'," Brendon offers.
"That's depressing," Ryan says, flipping his phone open and shut. Brendon scrunches up his face in confusion. "You know. 'So be it'. Like, 'that's the way it is, I can't change anything'."
"Change isn't always good," Brendon says. "I don't think."
*
Time passes. He starts talking to his parents again, and certain things are understood and left unspoken. His mother doesn't wake him up for church anymore, doesn't check and see if he's said his prayers, never asks him to say grace when he's home for meals. Brendon lies in bed and can't sleep. His patterns are so completely thrown off, have been for a long time.
He tilts his head back, stretching his neck painfully, and sees the embroidered sampler, framed and hanging over his bed.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," he reads aloud slowly, tasting and shaping the words like he never has before. He turns them over in his mind and traces their shapes into his palm with his fingertips.
And feels nothing.
*
When he's packing for the next tour, he sneaks down to the living room bookcase and chokes on his racing heartbeat until he finds a battered copy of The Screwtape Letters. He reads it all that night, instead of folding undershirts and checking to make sure that he has everything, and when they get on the bus for the first time, he realizes that he's forgotten to pack underwear.
*
"Music is my religion," he says proudly to anyone who'll listen, but doesn't say that he looked through his Bible before he made the decision, went through the Psalms until he found a line about making songs in praise of the Lord. He ignores the bit about praise, and remembers that the bishop of the ward he's left behind used to say that all things are about God, whether they want to be or not, and rationalizes it that way.
When he pounds on the piano keys with summer's sweat decorating his flesh he imagines that he's bashing something more important. Himself, maybe.
*
Brendon starts staying up all night twisted up in Ryan or himself or old verses that he used to cling to like talismans. He only ever sleeps by way of accident now and develops a Red Bull addiction that makes his hands shake and his voice slide wetly up and down scales. He's too jittery to stay still long, was never good at it anyway. Except now it's not that he's just naturally energetic, it's that he's barely able to keep himself from flying to pieces.
He grinds down hard into Ryan, fucks him roughly, with force enough to leave ugly bruises and kisses Ryan's marks instead of his mouth, tells himself they aren't really there.
*
He gets a letter from his sister, a normal letter that's just a big sister checking in on him and she ends it with God bless and he leaves it in the hotel room with Ryan's sleeping form as he heads down to the parking lot, an economy-size box of matches in tow. He sits out there in the chilled night air and lights matches one right after another, sometimes two at a time, lets them burn and fall, extinguish themselves as they hit the pavement. Brendon digs in his pocket until he finds a lighter, stops striking them against the box and uses the lighter instead, watching the matches flare up, breathing the sulfur in.
Zack comes out at one point - Brendon's not entirely sure when - and sits beside him, rests his hand heavily on Brendon's shoulder and watches him flick the lighter on and off when he runs out of matches, watches Brendon rub his thumb over the heated metal.
He doesn't say anything, and Brendon is torn between wishing fervently that he would, and being grateful that he doesn't.
*
"Funerals should probably be happier for people who believe in God," Ryan says one night, when they get back on the road after his father's death. Brendon keeps his eyes tightly shut, doesn't respond. "If you believe in God, then you believe in Heaven. So when someone's dead, you should be happy for them, because they get to go to Heaven."
"Maybe," Brendon says, and gets up to take another shower.
*
Time passes. It starts blurring together, now, show after show after show is just a mess of flashing lights and more sweat, always sweat. He takes first and last shower, every time, can never get clean. He rolls away from Ryan as soon as he can and scrubs his skin until it's red and tender, and sleeps on top of the covers, even though he's cold. Ryan tries to warm him, and Brendon just shifts to the side and pushes him away, pretends in the morning that he did it in sleep.
*
Ryan and Spencer start writing lyrics, and Brendon plays with composing music. He keeps it obscure and strange, fiddles with instruments he's never heard the names of, stops listening to anything with words. He calls his parents, asks them to send in as much classical music as they can, sticks to the Requiems.
The first batch of lyrics that Ryan passes along to him are more of the same and Brendon's glad of it. It's familiar territory. He writes for the cello and includes bells and some plinking piano, follows the pattern that's been set in his mind.
The song comes out almost hideously dark, even before he's sung the demo, and after an awkward pregnant pause Jon suggests they scrap it and start over. Brendon sings into the cheap microphone on his laptop and mixes it with all the instrumental tracks together in a hodgepodge demo, hides it in a labyrinthine series of sub-folders.
*
Brendon's mother catches him drinking and doesn't say anything.
"Is this okay?" he asks. He can almost hear her say, Your body is a temple.
"Fine," she says, "Your choice," and three weeks later he'll get a tattoo because he can, now.
*
The downtime is the worst, until they get to the cabin.
In the cabin is too much like Maryland. Brendon can't remember how he fell into Ryan. He woke up one day and they were -- they were they. It was BrendonandRyan, with Brendon holding tightly to him, and Ryan was always letting himself be held and held down and hurt and sometimes cared for and maybe loved. Maybe. Brendon isn't too sure about that last one. They were BrendonandRyan but there was RyanandKeltie and for a while it had been AudreyandBrendon and RyanandJac and once it had been AudreyandBrendonandRyanandJac maybe that had been best of all because they were all three at the same time, and he really wasn't ruling out the idea that there had been AudreyandJac, that might have happened, that would have fit, but it wouldn't have mattered because they each had someone to wrap themselves up in except now it wasn't exactly equal and the downtime is really starting to look good.
*
When he can sleep, Brendon still gets up early all the time, without trying. He actively tries to make himself sleep in late, resorts to sleeping pills. He sticks with the old family doctor, but tells her that the rockstar lifestyle is starting to drag him down. "I'm clean, you know," he says. "I don't drink or take drugs."
And she beams at him, "I'm so proud of you. I bet your parents are really proud, too, Brendon."
He's not entirely certain about that. If they're anything, they're accepting, and that's the best he can hope for. His father will special-order stickers with the best of intent and still they will end up looking like a mockery of the stupid honour roll announcements he never managed.
The sleeping pills mess with him. He sleeps late, as late as Jon, even, sometimes, but he'll be groggy and thrown off all day.
It's not really worth it.
*
Ryan hands him lyrics to a new song. They're - simple. Easy. On and on about love and true love and love is real. Brendon glances up at him skeptically.
"True love is not a fairytale?"
"Just give it a shot," Ryan insists.
"Dude," Brendon says. "I don't really think that this is going to impress her."
"It's not about her. Or for her," Ryan tells him. "Come on. Music."
*
Singing the stupid song really does make him smile, because it's just so innocent. He remembers reading the lyrics to Build God, and wondering if he could sing about something like that. Now he wonders if he can make it believable, the idea that he believes in true love. It occupies his time, crafting a solid drum cadence - he prefers to build songs from the rhythm up - and when he's happy with it he tells Ryan who tells Jon and Spencer.
Jon and Spencer hadn't seen the lyrics or even heard them, and they're clearly unsure.
"We're doing this song," Ryan says firmly. He has his I Am Not Going To Budge face on, and Brendon's secretly thrilled that they won, that BrendonandRyan get this silly dorky little love song that he gets to sing.
*
"I wrote it for you," Ryan says one night.
Brendon goes still.
"I know you're having. A hard time," Ryan says carefully. "With. With everything, actually. And I tried to pray for you, and. I don't know. I can't pretend to believe in something I don't."
"I don't know that I believe in God anymore," Brendon says in a small voice.
"Do you have to decide right now?" Ryan asks after a beat.
"Maybe," is all Brendon says before he goes to take his shower.
*
They perform the song exactly once, in front of a live audience at Summerfest, and when the album will be released, every single interviewer will ask them why they didn't include the true love song. They will have a different answer every single time, but never once will it be the truth. Pete will try to convince them to include it as a B-side and will eventually give in when Brendon absolutely refuses.
Ryan doesn't protest.
*
http://theaerosolkid.livejournal.com/91998.html
Author: Telis (theaerosolkid)
Rating: R
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
Summary: Brendon and Ryan and BrendonandRyan and the bitch of living.
Word Count: 1905
Disclaimer: Fake, fake, fake.
A/N: Thanks to castoffstarter and disarm_d for their fabulous beta help. An inexcusably late birthday offering to the glorious notshybutsly. This was a real challenge for me, writing something with an overtly unhappy ending. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm something of a romantic ;) but here goes nothin'.
*
"I think sometimes that I've forgotten how to pray," Brendon says quietly. Ryan's breath hitches.
"I don't think I ever knew," Ryan says.
*
Ryan's kissing him, the kind of kisses that are private and a little desperate. He's taller than Brendon but still it feels like he's smaller; fragile, maybe. Brendon's fingers tighten, one hand in Ryan's hair, the other tangled at his hip. Ryan arches up into him, and Brendon pulls back a bit, tries to slow them down.
Ryan just follows him, kissing him harder and drawing him down.
*
Brendon's stretched on his side, watching Ryan tap away at his Sidekick with music playing on his laptop. It's a playlist of mostly-bootleg covers of "Hallelujah", beginning and ending with Jeff Buckley's rendition.
"Do you even know what hallelujah means?" he asks.
"No," Ryan says after a beat.
"It means 'let us praise the Lord'," Brendon says.
"Oh," Ryan says. "I always just thought it sounded pretty. I didn't think it actually meant anything."
"Amen means 'so be it'," Brendon offers.
"That's depressing," Ryan says, flipping his phone open and shut. Brendon scrunches up his face in confusion. "You know. 'So be it'. Like, 'that's the way it is, I can't change anything'."
"Change isn't always good," Brendon says. "I don't think."
*
Time passes. He starts talking to his parents again, and certain things are understood and left unspoken. His mother doesn't wake him up for church anymore, doesn't check and see if he's said his prayers, never asks him to say grace when he's home for meals. Brendon lies in bed and can't sleep. His patterns are so completely thrown off, have been for a long time.
He tilts his head back, stretching his neck painfully, and sees the embroidered sampler, framed and hanging over his bed.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," he reads aloud slowly, tasting and shaping the words like he never has before. He turns them over in his mind and traces their shapes into his palm with his fingertips.
And feels nothing.
*
When he's packing for the next tour, he sneaks down to the living room bookcase and chokes on his racing heartbeat until he finds a battered copy of The Screwtape Letters. He reads it all that night, instead of folding undershirts and checking to make sure that he has everything, and when they get on the bus for the first time, he realizes that he's forgotten to pack underwear.
*
"Music is my religion," he says proudly to anyone who'll listen, but doesn't say that he looked through his Bible before he made the decision, went through the Psalms until he found a line about making songs in praise of the Lord. He ignores the bit about praise, and remembers that the bishop of the ward he's left behind used to say that all things are about God, whether they want to be or not, and rationalizes it that way.
When he pounds on the piano keys with summer's sweat decorating his flesh he imagines that he's bashing something more important. Himself, maybe.
*
Brendon starts staying up all night twisted up in Ryan or himself or old verses that he used to cling to like talismans. He only ever sleeps by way of accident now and develops a Red Bull addiction that makes his hands shake and his voice slide wetly up and down scales. He's too jittery to stay still long, was never good at it anyway. Except now it's not that he's just naturally energetic, it's that he's barely able to keep himself from flying to pieces.
He grinds down hard into Ryan, fucks him roughly, with force enough to leave ugly bruises and kisses Ryan's marks instead of his mouth, tells himself they aren't really there.
*
He gets a letter from his sister, a normal letter that's just a big sister checking in on him and she ends it with God bless and he leaves it in the hotel room with Ryan's sleeping form as he heads down to the parking lot, an economy-size box of matches in tow. He sits out there in the chilled night air and lights matches one right after another, sometimes two at a time, lets them burn and fall, extinguish themselves as they hit the pavement. Brendon digs in his pocket until he finds a lighter, stops striking them against the box and uses the lighter instead, watching the matches flare up, breathing the sulfur in.
Zack comes out at one point - Brendon's not entirely sure when - and sits beside him, rests his hand heavily on Brendon's shoulder and watches him flick the lighter on and off when he runs out of matches, watches Brendon rub his thumb over the heated metal.
He doesn't say anything, and Brendon is torn between wishing fervently that he would, and being grateful that he doesn't.
*
"Funerals should probably be happier for people who believe in God," Ryan says one night, when they get back on the road after his father's death. Brendon keeps his eyes tightly shut, doesn't respond. "If you believe in God, then you believe in Heaven. So when someone's dead, you should be happy for them, because they get to go to Heaven."
"Maybe," Brendon says, and gets up to take another shower.
*
Time passes. It starts blurring together, now, show after show after show is just a mess of flashing lights and more sweat, always sweat. He takes first and last shower, every time, can never get clean. He rolls away from Ryan as soon as he can and scrubs his skin until it's red and tender, and sleeps on top of the covers, even though he's cold. Ryan tries to warm him, and Brendon just shifts to the side and pushes him away, pretends in the morning that he did it in sleep.
*
Ryan and Spencer start writing lyrics, and Brendon plays with composing music. He keeps it obscure and strange, fiddles with instruments he's never heard the names of, stops listening to anything with words. He calls his parents, asks them to send in as much classical music as they can, sticks to the Requiems.
The first batch of lyrics that Ryan passes along to him are more of the same and Brendon's glad of it. It's familiar territory. He writes for the cello and includes bells and some plinking piano, follows the pattern that's been set in his mind.
The song comes out almost hideously dark, even before he's sung the demo, and after an awkward pregnant pause Jon suggests they scrap it and start over. Brendon sings into the cheap microphone on his laptop and mixes it with all the instrumental tracks together in a hodgepodge demo, hides it in a labyrinthine series of sub-folders.
*
Brendon's mother catches him drinking and doesn't say anything.
"Is this okay?" he asks. He can almost hear her say, Your body is a temple.
"Fine," she says, "Your choice," and three weeks later he'll get a tattoo because he can, now.
*
The downtime is the worst, until they get to the cabin.
In the cabin is too much like Maryland. Brendon can't remember how he fell into Ryan. He woke up one day and they were -- they were they. It was BrendonandRyan, with Brendon holding tightly to him, and Ryan was always letting himself be held and held down and hurt and sometimes cared for and maybe loved. Maybe. Brendon isn't too sure about that last one. They were BrendonandRyan but there was RyanandKeltie and for a while it had been AudreyandBrendon and RyanandJac and once it had been AudreyandBrendonandRyanandJac maybe that had been best of all because they were all three at the same time, and he really wasn't ruling out the idea that there had been AudreyandJac, that might have happened, that would have fit, but it wouldn't have mattered because they each had someone to wrap themselves up in except now it wasn't exactly equal and the downtime is really starting to look good.
*
When he can sleep, Brendon still gets up early all the time, without trying. He actively tries to make himself sleep in late, resorts to sleeping pills. He sticks with the old family doctor, but tells her that the rockstar lifestyle is starting to drag him down. "I'm clean, you know," he says. "I don't drink or take drugs."
And she beams at him, "I'm so proud of you. I bet your parents are really proud, too, Brendon."
He's not entirely certain about that. If they're anything, they're accepting, and that's the best he can hope for. His father will special-order stickers with the best of intent and still they will end up looking like a mockery of the stupid honour roll announcements he never managed.
The sleeping pills mess with him. He sleeps late, as late as Jon, even, sometimes, but he'll be groggy and thrown off all day.
It's not really worth it.
*
Ryan hands him lyrics to a new song. They're - simple. Easy. On and on about love and true love and love is real. Brendon glances up at him skeptically.
"True love is not a fairytale?"
"Just give it a shot," Ryan insists.
"Dude," Brendon says. "I don't really think that this is going to impress her."
"It's not about her. Or for her," Ryan tells him. "Come on. Music."
*
Singing the stupid song really does make him smile, because it's just so innocent. He remembers reading the lyrics to Build God, and wondering if he could sing about something like that. Now he wonders if he can make it believable, the idea that he believes in true love. It occupies his time, crafting a solid drum cadence - he prefers to build songs from the rhythm up - and when he's happy with it he tells Ryan who tells Jon and Spencer.
Jon and Spencer hadn't seen the lyrics or even heard them, and they're clearly unsure.
"We're doing this song," Ryan says firmly. He has his I Am Not Going To Budge face on, and Brendon's secretly thrilled that they won, that BrendonandRyan get this silly dorky little love song that he gets to sing.
*
"I wrote it for you," Ryan says one night.
Brendon goes still.
"I know you're having. A hard time," Ryan says carefully. "With. With everything, actually. And I tried to pray for you, and. I don't know. I can't pretend to believe in something I don't."
"I don't know that I believe in God anymore," Brendon says in a small voice.
"Do you have to decide right now?" Ryan asks after a beat.
"Maybe," is all Brendon says before he goes to take his shower.
*
They perform the song exactly once, in front of a live audience at Summerfest, and when the album will be released, every single interviewer will ask them why they didn't include the true love song. They will have a different answer every single time, but never once will it be the truth. Pete will try to convince them to include it as a B-side and will eventually give in when Brendon absolutely refuses.
Ryan doesn't protest.
*
http://theaerosolkid.livejournal.com/91998.html