this is the worst thing ive ever written because a) its fucking ryden, b) i wrote it in less than two hours while listening to halsey, c) its not beta’d, and d) i don’t know when to stop using commas
pg-13, ~1k words, set sometime this november ? maybe ? idk
tw for a dub-con kiss, blood
Ryan knows that this is a bad idea. That’s why he parks his car a few blocks from Brendon’s house and walks the rest of the way, pulling his jacket tighter around him in the night chill.
He doesn’t mean to do it, not really, but when Brendon opens the door Ryan is suddenly kissing him, crowding him back into the house and against the wall, and it’s only when Brendon bites his lip hard enough that he can feel the skin break that Ryan pulls back. He’s pretty sure he’s bleeding, but when Brendon wipes the back of his hand over his mouth like he wishes he could erase every taste of Ryan, it doesn’t really seem to matter.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Ryan? What the fuck do you want?” Brendon looks angry, so angry, angry the way he didn’t in Cape Town, not desperate, just hateful, and Ryan feels a sick sort of relief. Because it’s putting a face to all these years apart, to the way he left and only looked back when he was too far away to come home. To how he took Jon with him and never came back for Spencer when he needed his best friend. To the way they’ve been singing about each other for six years now and never talking to each other, never even trying. To the fact they Ryan was too scared for this then and still feels too scared now.
He swallows and closes his eyes, opens them again. “I-,” he starts, swallows again. “I came to say I’m sorry.” Brendon looks confused for a fraction of a second, but then his face clouds with stormy anger again. “I don’t want to hear it, Ross,” he spits and it feels like a punch to the gut, a perfect mirror of that night in South Africa when Ryan had said almost the same thing to Brendon, in almost the same voice.
“Please,” Ryan says, and he knows it’s unfair because he knows Brendon has always been a better person than him. “Please just let me - just give me five minutes.”
Brendon leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. “Three,” he says, and it sounds resigned. “You can talk for three minutes, and then if you don’t get out of my house I’m calling the cops.”
“Thank you,” Ryan says quietly, recognizing that Brendon is giving him the chance he never got. And then, suddenly, everything wells up out of him, like a tidal wave, like the ocean that night at Myrtle Beach. Its messy and he fucks up his words, but writing with ink does that. You never have a chance to go back and fix it - you can scratch it out or cover it up or even start a whole new sheet of paper, but you can never erase that mistake. You just have to find a way to fix it.
He hopes that’s what he’s doing as he talks, tripping over himself for what he knows is more than three minutes, although Brendon never stops him. He apologizes for that night and every night after, for never telling Brendon why he was scared of them, together. He apologizes for ignoring voicemail after voicemail after voicemail, for never responding to that last text (when r u coming back?), for never even looking at Brendon when they signed the papers. Ryan apologizes for every damn song lyric he’s ever written for Brendon when he never ever took the time to send a Christmas card, for buying copies of Panic’s new CDs and then smashing them when he hears something he knows is meant for him, for going out and getting more. Every thing that has nagged at the back of his head for the last six years comes rushing out and filling up the space between them.
He apologizes, finally, for the moment he knew he’d made a mistake: when Brendon had asked him, so softly, if he had meant what he said. Ryan had spat yes and hadn’t watched Brendon’s face crumple as he walked out the door. He apologizes for it over and over until he runs out of breath and falls silent, waiting for Brendon to tell him to leave.
“I never stopped loving you,” Brendon says, breaking the silence, and it sounds like I forgive you. He takes a huge breath, and then lets it out slowly. “I- I love Sarah, but. I still love you. She knows that, and we’ve talked about it, but. Yeah,” he finishes, so quietly, and Ryan comes to the sudden realization that this is really why he’s here. Because he knows what Brendon sounds like when he’s talking about someone he hates, and Brendon has never talked about him that way, not once in six years.
Ryan reaches forward, unsure, but Brendon launches himself at him and suddenly Ryan is being hugged more tightly than he can ever remember. He doesn’t realize that they’re both crying until Brendon leans back just enough to kiss the tear tracks on Ryan’s cheeks, even though his own eyes are shining too bright. Ryan chokes, because it’s something that Brenson used to do when they were younger, and he pulls him back in so he can bury his face in Brendon’s hair.
“Hey,” Brendon murmurs after a few minutes, “We never finished The Little Mermaid.” Ryan makes an incredulous noise, but Brendon is already halfway into his living room, digging through movies and coming up with a battered DVD case that Ryan would recognize anywhere, mostly because Pete once outlined a dick on the front in silver Sharpie. He makes his way over to the couch, and Brendon soon joins him, snuggling into his side. Ryan thinks that probably they should talk about this more, but for now he follows Brendon’s lead, because Ryan trusts him with everything he has.
They sit there in the flickering light, curled together like half-kept promises that no longer matter in the face of new ones that will be kept, and Ryan breathes, and breathes, and breathes.
