Symphony of Sound.

It’s Rian’s seventeenth birthday the next day, on the eighteenth. His plan for the day is to spend almost all of it in bed, apart from when he has to get up to get food. And while he’s in bed, he’ll call various members of his family, and Zack, and then open the letter the younger boy had left him.

This plan is, however, scuppered almost immediately after he finishes thinking of it, which is when Alex and Jack come crashing through the door of his room, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the tops of their voices and sit themselves on his sleep dazed form.

“Rian! You’re one year closer to legality!” Alex exclaims, bouncing on the boy’s bed. Rian sits up a little, hair sticking up at every angle imaginable. He grunts softly, pushing at Alex’s shoulder until the older boy slides off the bed and lands with a resounding thud.

“Jack! Tell him off, he just pushed me off!” Alex says with a pout, standing up and rubbing at his ass overdramatically.

“It’s his birthday, Alex. He can do what he likes.” Jack says with a shrug, laughing quietly when Alex’s jaw drops and his eyes narrow.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Anyway, it might be your birthday, but you do need to get up. Cassadee wants to see you and she’s not allowed up into the boys dorm corridor.” Alex says, suddenly becoming serious.

“Yeah, you might want to make yourself look a little bit more presentable. Because God knows if you leave her there any longer she might kill or seriously injure someone.”

Rian sighs, kicking back his duvet and stumbling around his room while he gets dressed, somewhat reluctant to do so.

He finally looks slightly less like he was dragged through a hedge backwards about twenty minutes later –now clothed neatly in a pair of ripped pale blue jeans and a white and black plaid shirt of Zack’s that he ‘borrowed’ and forgot to give back.

He runs a brush quickly through his wild, mousy brown curls and begrudgingly decides that he looks okay enough to be in Cassadee’s company.

He’s barely taken three steps into the common room when the girl is quite literally upon him, having run at him and full force and latched on to him, almost koala like.

“Happy birthday, baby.” She says with a wide grin, wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging to him like a needy child.

Someone (Rian presumes Alex, Jack or David) makes a loud, obnoxious retching noise at the sight of the two of them, and he rolls his eyes and tugs his girlfriend into a tighter hug.

He watches a movie in the common room with most of his grade (although he doesn’t actually know which movie it is) until about an hour in when he realizes that he has yet to call anyone –not even his mom. Or, perhaps more importantly, Zack.

He stands, muddles his way through everyone until he can get to the small set of stairs that lead into the boys dorm room corridor. His plan this time is to hide out in his room and read the letter Zack left for him, and then call everyone up.

Cassadee, of course, follows behind him like a lost little puppy, and it’s as they’re about to take the few steps up the stairs that Alex is (for once in his life) observant and cries out ‘mistletoe!’

Rian looks up above them at the top of the archway and sees the offending plant suspended a few feet above their heads. He suppresses a groan, tugs Cassadee closer and kisses her gently despite his previous distaste in the idea.

She seems to overlook that fact that this is kind of their first real kiss, and the fact that they’re in a room filled with their friends, and just focuses on kissing him until he concedes that it’s a great idea to make out.

This takes less than a minute, and Alex whoops for his friend, while Jack looks on with an expression somewhere between disdain and concern.

When Zack hears about this, it’s going to rip him in half.

Recently, Jack has almost made it his personal mission to look after Zack and avoid him getting hurt where he can, but when the poor boy has a crush on Rian Dawson, the whole situation is easier said than done.

Rian finally pulls away from her and smirks a little, tugging her closer and into a tighter embrace.

He has, of course, forgotten completely about Zack and his letter, which still sits unopened somewhere deep within one of the drawers of his nightstand.

Jack pulls his cell phone from his pocket and seriously considers texting Zack to inform him of what has just happened, before deciding against it after a good five minutes of thought.

Zack went home because he needed a break from school, and from Rian. Reminding him of both is something that will more than likely do more harm than good.

“So has he called you yet?” Holly asks Zack, who sits across the table from her.

Zack shakes his head, looking down at his cell phone, which sits beside his placemat, mainly so that if the birthday boy does decide to call, he can pick up quickly.

“Nope.”

Holly smiles sadly at him, because she knows how much it sucks to fall for someone and for them to never notice.

Holly is Zack’s older cousin from his father’s side –his aunt’s first and only daughter. She’s twenty one now, and she lives with her long term boyfriend (or recently turned fiancé) John up in Washington, but drives down for family functions.

They’ve been told they look alike before, but neither of them really see it. Granted, they have the same wavy blonde hair and very similar green eyes, but that’s about it. Zack is quite tall, while Holly is fairly small in stature. They are both fairly easy to annoy, however, but neither of them notice that.

“Has your idiot called you yet?” Andy asks as he appears in the doorway, before marching through the room and dropping down into the empty seat beside Zack.

“If you’re trying to ask if Rian has called yet, then no. He hasn’t.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” Andy says with a melodramatic shrug.

“And why is that?”

“Because he’s a prize idiot, Zee. He has no idea that he’s hurting you. He’s a dick to you.”

“No, he isn’t. You don’t know him, Andy.”

“I’ve met him, though. And he was a dick to you then. If that’s anything to go by, then I’d say you’re better than him. And besides, he irritates me.”

“He’s no more irritating than you are, Andy. And anyway, who are you to judge if he’s irritating or not? I basically live with him for eight or nine months of the year.”

“And that’s done nothing to deter you? Oh God, there really is no hope for you, is there?”

Zack glares harshly at the older boy and Holly reaches across the table to pet at the back of his hand in what she hopes is a soothing way.

“Andy, you can’t judge him because you don’t know him. I do, and by now I’m pretty sure that for every shitty quality he has, he has ten great qualities that you’d never know about.”

“How long have you been waiting for him to call?”

Zack pushes a button on his phone, illuminating the screen so he can read the time. It’s eight in the evening.

He knows that Maine is three hours ahead of California, so it is at least eleven, probably closer to midnight where Rian is.

“... All day. I’ve been waiting for him to call all day.”

Holly squeezes his hand gently.

“Zee, I don’t... I don’t think he’s going to call.” Andy says quietly, voice softer than usual, so much so that Zack is almost confused.

“He’ll call.” Zack snaps, wrenching himself away from his cousins. “He promised. He always keeps promises.”

Except this time, this time Rian doesn’t keep his promise.

Zack spends his night watching his phone, waiting for it to light up and for Rian’s picture to be displayed, the custom ringtone he’d set in a moment of madness just desperate to play out.

He hardly even stops when his father arrives home from work –after he’s run at him and engulfed him in a tight hug, he resumes watching his phone and waiting for some form of contact from the other side of the country.

He keeps his phone switched on beside the mattress and quilt he has set up on the floor of Andy’s room (the older boy’s idea of a bed, he thinks) which is unlike him, but he’s desperate now. It might be one in the morning but he’s not about to give up on Rian. He promised, after all.

Rian jolts awake in the middle of the night, somewhere around half past two am, fumbling around in the half light of his freezing cold room for his phone.

It’s as he presses a button to force the screen to light that he sees his wallpaper and the guilt smacks him in the face.

It’s a photograph of him and Zack from summer, when they’d found each other by accident in Sacramento and had hung out for a while. They’re smiling, Zack’s more tan than usual and the pale blue of the Chargers jersey that he tends to always wear works perfect with his skin tone.

Rian swallows, runs his fingers almost nervously through his short, unkempt curls as the guilt starts to engulf him from the outside in.

He forgot to call Zack.

He knows that the younger boy is probably ripping himself apart over it, wondering what he’s done wrong that has meant he hasn’t called.

He sighs quietly to himself, setting his phone back on his nightstand and shuffling back down into bed.

He’ll call him tomorrow.