The Witness [Standalone]
Title: The Witness
Author: distractionz
Rating: R
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
POV: Keltie
Summary: "Who would you rather be?" Ryan asked. "The murderer, the victim, or the witness?"
Disclaimer: I doubt famous people have time for philosophy.
A/N: This is very heavily based on Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Hey, if Ryan can plagiarize, why can't I? Because I'm not a sexy dude? I guess that makes sense.
***
There is no fire. There is no rifle. There is no blood.
There is only Keltie, standing in the middle of the hotel room, drenched from head to toe in the self-pity that is steadily dripping onto the hardwood floor.
The only other character is Ryan Ross, standing blithely next to her.
"Tell me. Tell me everything."
***
Keltie Colleen's agent, Janis, had been leaving her messages on her sidekick all day but she refused to pick up. Relationships were a big deal. Jason had been a big deal. Four years of her life wasted had been a big deal.
As she entered the corner Starbucks for her lunch break, her phone buzzed in her purse for the umpteenth time.
Farley, Janis.
She sighed, ordering a Mint Mocha and finally clicking the talk button.
"Yes?"
"You remember that boy, Ryan Ross?"
Sigh.
"Well, his manager contacted me. He wants to set up a meeting."
Sigh.
"Should I pencil him in for Saturday?"
Sigh.
"All right, then. Saturday it is."
Click.
***
I'm not going to fall for him.
A fidgety young boy sat at a booth, tongue in cheek, accompanied by a heavy set man she knew must be Ryan's manager.
Her mantra stopped mid-sentence as she and Janis sat to join them and Ryan smiled bashfully.
***
Ryan is the one that had suggested the book to her. During one of their late night pseudo-book clubs. Her, curled into the sheets in Seattle (for a gig), him sipping his tea in Germany (for a tour). Widdling the night away with philosophic gibberish that both would forget in the morning.
"Have you read Invisible Monsters yet?"
"No, I still have to buy it."
"It's really incredible."
He never said why.
***
"Who would you rather be?" Ryan asked. "The murderer, the victim, or the witness?"
He wasn't asking her. He was asking Brendon.
"Whoever survives," the boy whispered without reservation. Brendon never seemed to contemplate anything before letting it spill from his mouth. Maybe he thought the answer would be less pure, less genuine if he did.
"I don't think you understand," he said. "It's so much deeper than that. Sometimes survival becomes pointless when no one wants you. Sometimes you just want someone to look at you. To think you're the most important person in the room."
As Keltie closed the bedroom door as quietly as possible, she sighed.
She thought that maybe Brendon understood more than Ryan gave him credit for.
***
Jeff Dodson had been Keltie's best friend since before she could remember. Elementary school to college to phone calls from across the country. She would have married the guy if he hadn't been gay.
She couldn't recall when they had started it but there was a journal. "The book," as they had generically referred to it, had been all over the world. Asia, Africa, Europe, Antarctica even. Filled with tiny scribbles and photographs and lyrics and thoughts about everything imaginable. It was almost like a child that they shared custody of. Jeff would take it for a year, Keltie would take it for a year, each of them reviewing the others' accounts and adding their own.
Keltie loved this book, this method of communicating. She had even discussed getting it published one day. It felt good to have something, someone, to confide in because she had never been able to do so before. The journal her mother had bought her for her thirteenth birthday was left blank. Keltie had been so scared that if she were to pour her heart out to the lifeless pages, no one would ever read it.
***
She knew from the first time she saw them together. Not together, but together. The closeness. The laughter at jokes that weren't funny. The lingering glances into the others' eyes. Ryan and Brendon might not have known it just then but there was absolutely no question that the two were madly in love with each other.
The sickest part was that Keltie couldn't stop watching it. Despite the Buddhism, despite the "inner peace" Keltie strived for each day, she still yearned for punishment. Maybe, just as Brandy Alexander had punished herself by becoming a woman, Keltie chose to watch the man she loved love someone else. Perhaps she could think of nothing worse she could do, no greater mistake than to witness someone she would die for slowly give themselves to another.
Keltie wasn't sure what it was that Brendon had that she didn't. Probably a penis.
She thought of the camera men, directing her, telling her exactly who to be.
"Give me sad realization."
Flash.
"Give me jealousy."
Flash.
"Give me revenge."
Flash.
Really, she had no choice but to give the director exactly what he wanted.
***
The day that Keltie contemplated putting estrogen tablets into Brendon's food was the day that she decided to visit a therapist.
She just wanted someone to look at her while she was talking. Someone to say "you're welcome" when she said "thank you" for something that didn't deserve thanks. Someone to say "there's nothing to be sorry about" when she apologized for something she didn't do.
"You're confusing fiction with reality," the man said.
What did he know? He was just another man who thought with his dick instead of with his head.
"You can't base your life on something you read," he said.
He was talking again, "You're your own person."
"Don't let people tell you who to be," he continued.
Give me disobedience.
Flash.
***
Keltie had turned to Buddhism in search of peace.
Her parents had been Catholic. They had dragged her to church every Sunday morning and every Sunday night. It was always the same. Prayer, communion, worship, prayer, repeat. Kind of like the directions on the back of your organic shampoo bottle but without the attractive blonde girl faking an orgasm.
Keltie believed because she was told to and she always did what she was told.
This new religion, however, had marked the start of a new life. A life where it would be okay to be happy again. A life where people's comments about her being "trashy" and "needy" and "a fucking clone" wouldn't matter anymore. The only person's approval she needed was her own.
But she soon came to realize that the ceremonial aspect of Catholicism was a part of believing in any higher power. Fast, pray, meditate, smile, repeat.
***
"What would you do if you didn't have a face?"
Ryan was finally asking her this time.
Stop worrying what people thought of me.
"Would you miss the attention?" he was saying.
What attention?
"Would you miss being in front of a camera?"
I'd still be photographed. Newspapers, television, all of it. The same subject shot from a different angle. Except this time, no one would tell me what to do or how to pose. No matter which way I moved, what emotion I gave them, I'd still be hideous.
"You're confusing fiction with reality," she told him.
***
When Ryan suggested Keltie read The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, she felt crushed. Literally crushed under all the anvil-weighted hints Ryan was steadily piling on top of her fragile body.
It was another gay-themed novel. Even in its subtlety, Ryan's cowboy scarves and Brendon's checkered shirts clashed elegantly with their Buddhism beads.
Bringing the pile of waste suffocating her to a pinnacle was the fact that Ryan's alter-ego had vanished. The confident boy with the guitar and the bumbling child from the restaurant had become one somewhere down the line. Those blushing smiles could have been nothing but genuine as Brendon sung about Ryan's "love" for someone that could have been anyone but her.
***
August 30th, 2007. Cue the girls, cue the music, cue the alcohol.
Cue the invite list that didn't include Ryan's fellow band members.
"I figured you needed some time away from the guys," she told him, happily. "It'll just be me, you, the girls, and whoever else decides to show up."
He nodded, eyes glazed, staring at something Keltie couldn't see.
She hadn't eaten for days and the five lines she did only minutes before she was to wheeled into the bar were the only thing keeping her awake.
The outfit she had on was revealing and Ryan's smile felt deserved as she slithered seductively out of the box.
His eyes roamed all over her creamy skin, his long fingers reaching out to caress her small hips. She felt sexy and beautiful and she hoped to whatever fucked up God she prayed to these days that someone was filming her.
Still though, what with all the shouts and jeers coming from their audience and the heat radiating from her boyfriend's body, she felt more alone than she'd done in her life.
Ryan's eyes, so greedily inspecting her every curve, never wandered to her own.
***
The time that she "fell" down the stairs of the Palms was ironically close to the time she heard them fucking.
The loud moans and grunts and slaps were still heavy in her ears as she painfully plummeted down six flights of marble stairs. They had wanted her to hear, she was sure of it.
When she woke up in a hospital, body numb and the sound of her vital signs drowning out her thoughts, she saw him. Ryan was leaning over her, cautiously, worriedly. She knew because tears fell from this stranger's eyes as they met her own. She wished he'd look away.
Keltie was never really in love with Ryan. In all honesty, she was just head over heels for herself.
***
Here she was again, in the dimly lit hotel room, reccounting memories and secrets and feelings until her throat became too dry to continue.
Ryan was still there, sitting beside her on the bed now, eyes nowhere near her bruised, bandaged face.
Keltie wasn't sure if he had listened to a word she had said but it didn't faze her. The words had been given even if no one wanted them. Like the Christmas gift you spent years working on until it was just right. The one that you handed to your lover. The one they opened expectantly, jubilantly until their face fell and they gave a fake smile. There was nothing you could do but let them hate it, let them break it.
The only thing he couldn't do was return it.
As Ryan gave his fake, sad smile and held her close, she knew.
She had never been the main character. Only the narrator in a story that wasn't hers to tell. An invisible beauty that had all the juicy details about someone else's struggle.
Just the witness.
***
Author: distractionz
Rating: R
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
POV: Keltie
Summary: "Who would you rather be?" Ryan asked. "The murderer, the victim, or the witness?"
Disclaimer: I doubt famous people have time for philosophy.
A/N: This is very heavily based on Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Hey, if Ryan can plagiarize, why can't I? Because I'm not a sexy dude? I guess that makes sense.
***
There is no fire. There is no rifle. There is no blood.
There is only Keltie, standing in the middle of the hotel room, drenched from head to toe in the self-pity that is steadily dripping onto the hardwood floor.
The only other character is Ryan Ross, standing blithely next to her.
"Tell me. Tell me everything."
***
Keltie Colleen's agent, Janis, had been leaving her messages on her sidekick all day but she refused to pick up. Relationships were a big deal. Jason had been a big deal. Four years of her life wasted had been a big deal.
As she entered the corner Starbucks for her lunch break, her phone buzzed in her purse for the umpteenth time.
Farley, Janis.
She sighed, ordering a Mint Mocha and finally clicking the talk button.
"Yes?"
"You remember that boy, Ryan Ross?"
Sigh.
"Well, his manager contacted me. He wants to set up a meeting."
Sigh.
"Should I pencil him in for Saturday?"
Sigh.
"All right, then. Saturday it is."
Click.
***
I'm not going to fall for him.
A fidgety young boy sat at a booth, tongue in cheek, accompanied by a heavy set man she knew must be Ryan's manager.
Her mantra stopped mid-sentence as she and Janis sat to join them and Ryan smiled bashfully.
***
Ryan is the one that had suggested the book to her. During one of their late night pseudo-book clubs. Her, curled into the sheets in Seattle (for a gig), him sipping his tea in Germany (for a tour). Widdling the night away with philosophic gibberish that both would forget in the morning.
"Have you read Invisible Monsters yet?"
"No, I still have to buy it."
"It's really incredible."
He never said why.
***
"Who would you rather be?" Ryan asked. "The murderer, the victim, or the witness?"
He wasn't asking her. He was asking Brendon.
"Whoever survives," the boy whispered without reservation. Brendon never seemed to contemplate anything before letting it spill from his mouth. Maybe he thought the answer would be less pure, less genuine if he did.
"I don't think you understand," he said. "It's so much deeper than that. Sometimes survival becomes pointless when no one wants you. Sometimes you just want someone to look at you. To think you're the most important person in the room."
As Keltie closed the bedroom door as quietly as possible, she sighed.
She thought that maybe Brendon understood more than Ryan gave him credit for.
***
Jeff Dodson had been Keltie's best friend since before she could remember. Elementary school to college to phone calls from across the country. She would have married the guy if he hadn't been gay.
She couldn't recall when they had started it but there was a journal. "The book," as they had generically referred to it, had been all over the world. Asia, Africa, Europe, Antarctica even. Filled with tiny scribbles and photographs and lyrics and thoughts about everything imaginable. It was almost like a child that they shared custody of. Jeff would take it for a year, Keltie would take it for a year, each of them reviewing the others' accounts and adding their own.
Keltie loved this book, this method of communicating. She had even discussed getting it published one day. It felt good to have something, someone, to confide in because she had never been able to do so before. The journal her mother had bought her for her thirteenth birthday was left blank. Keltie had been so scared that if she were to pour her heart out to the lifeless pages, no one would ever read it.
***
She knew from the first time she saw them together. Not together, but together. The closeness. The laughter at jokes that weren't funny. The lingering glances into the others' eyes. Ryan and Brendon might not have known it just then but there was absolutely no question that the two were madly in love with each other.
The sickest part was that Keltie couldn't stop watching it. Despite the Buddhism, despite the "inner peace" Keltie strived for each day, she still yearned for punishment. Maybe, just as Brandy Alexander had punished herself by becoming a woman, Keltie chose to watch the man she loved love someone else. Perhaps she could think of nothing worse she could do, no greater mistake than to witness someone she would die for slowly give themselves to another.
Keltie wasn't sure what it was that Brendon had that she didn't. Probably a penis.
She thought of the camera men, directing her, telling her exactly who to be.
"Give me sad realization."
Flash.
"Give me jealousy."
Flash.
"Give me revenge."
Flash.
Really, she had no choice but to give the director exactly what he wanted.
***
The day that Keltie contemplated putting estrogen tablets into Brendon's food was the day that she decided to visit a therapist.
She just wanted someone to look at her while she was talking. Someone to say "you're welcome" when she said "thank you" for something that didn't deserve thanks. Someone to say "there's nothing to be sorry about" when she apologized for something she didn't do.
"You're confusing fiction with reality," the man said.
What did he know? He was just another man who thought with his dick instead of with his head.
"You can't base your life on something you read," he said.
He was talking again, "You're your own person."
"Don't let people tell you who to be," he continued.
Give me disobedience.
Flash.
***
Keltie had turned to Buddhism in search of peace.
Her parents had been Catholic. They had dragged her to church every Sunday morning and every Sunday night. It was always the same. Prayer, communion, worship, prayer, repeat. Kind of like the directions on the back of your organic shampoo bottle but without the attractive blonde girl faking an orgasm.
Keltie believed because she was told to and she always did what she was told.
This new religion, however, had marked the start of a new life. A life where it would be okay to be happy again. A life where people's comments about her being "trashy" and "needy" and "a fucking clone" wouldn't matter anymore. The only person's approval she needed was her own.
But she soon came to realize that the ceremonial aspect of Catholicism was a part of believing in any higher power. Fast, pray, meditate, smile, repeat.
***
"What would you do if you didn't have a face?"
Ryan was finally asking her this time.
Stop worrying what people thought of me.
"Would you miss the attention?" he was saying.
What attention?
"Would you miss being in front of a camera?"
I'd still be photographed. Newspapers, television, all of it. The same subject shot from a different angle. Except this time, no one would tell me what to do or how to pose. No matter which way I moved, what emotion I gave them, I'd still be hideous.
"You're confusing fiction with reality," she told him.
***
When Ryan suggested Keltie read The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, she felt crushed. Literally crushed under all the anvil-weighted hints Ryan was steadily piling on top of her fragile body.
It was another gay-themed novel. Even in its subtlety, Ryan's cowboy scarves and Brendon's checkered shirts clashed elegantly with their Buddhism beads.
Bringing the pile of waste suffocating her to a pinnacle was the fact that Ryan's alter-ego had vanished. The confident boy with the guitar and the bumbling child from the restaurant had become one somewhere down the line. Those blushing smiles could have been nothing but genuine as Brendon sung about Ryan's "love" for someone that could have been anyone but her.
***
August 30th, 2007. Cue the girls, cue the music, cue the alcohol.
Cue the invite list that didn't include Ryan's fellow band members.
"I figured you needed some time away from the guys," she told him, happily. "It'll just be me, you, the girls, and whoever else decides to show up."
He nodded, eyes glazed, staring at something Keltie couldn't see.
She hadn't eaten for days and the five lines she did only minutes before she was to wheeled into the bar were the only thing keeping her awake.
The outfit she had on was revealing and Ryan's smile felt deserved as she slithered seductively out of the box.
His eyes roamed all over her creamy skin, his long fingers reaching out to caress her small hips. She felt sexy and beautiful and she hoped to whatever fucked up God she prayed to these days that someone was filming her.
Still though, what with all the shouts and jeers coming from their audience and the heat radiating from her boyfriend's body, she felt more alone than she'd done in her life.
Ryan's eyes, so greedily inspecting her every curve, never wandered to her own.
***
The time that she "fell" down the stairs of the Palms was ironically close to the time she heard them fucking.
The loud moans and grunts and slaps were still heavy in her ears as she painfully plummeted down six flights of marble stairs. They had wanted her to hear, she was sure of it.
When she woke up in a hospital, body numb and the sound of her vital signs drowning out her thoughts, she saw him. Ryan was leaning over her, cautiously, worriedly. She knew because tears fell from this stranger's eyes as they met her own. She wished he'd look away.
Keltie was never really in love with Ryan. In all honesty, she was just head over heels for herself.
***
Here she was again, in the dimly lit hotel room, reccounting memories and secrets and feelings until her throat became too dry to continue.
Ryan was still there, sitting beside her on the bed now, eyes nowhere near her bruised, bandaged face.
Keltie wasn't sure if he had listened to a word she had said but it didn't faze her. The words had been given even if no one wanted them. Like the Christmas gift you spent years working on until it was just right. The one that you handed to your lover. The one they opened expectantly, jubilantly until their face fell and they gave a fake smile. There was nothing you could do but let them hate it, let them break it.
The only thing he couldn't do was return it.
As Ryan gave his fake, sad smile and held her close, she knew.
She had never been the main character. Only the narrator in a story that wasn't hers to tell. An invisible beauty that had all the juicy details about someone else's struggle.
Just the witness.
***