From The Edge Of A Cliff

Ryan had been at the studio for too fucking long. His back and hands ached and he just felt tired. His eyes felt heavy and his mind seemed foggy. He hadn’t been feeling well for months. He had been sleeping late into the afternoons and he couldn’t remember the last time he had had three proper meals in a day. He was ruining himself, his body, his mind, he could feel it. He could feel it when he pulled himself from under his blankets each morning and he could feel it when he sat down to write a song and nothing ever came out.

There were so many songs he wanted to write, words he wanted to sing, but he just couldn’t seem to pull it out of himself the way he used to.

He was just tired, he told himself. He was smoking too much pot or drinking too much or staying up too late, that’s all. But he knew it was something that had dug into his bones and he wouldn’t be rid of it just by resting. He knew what he needed to do to take the weight off his chest, but he wasn’t willing to do it. He wasn’t willing to drive all the way out to Brendon’s place to have him shout at him and tell him to fuck off.

He took his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and stood from his chair in recording room. Jon looked up at immediately and watched him stride from the room.

“Where you going?” he called after him.

“I need a smoke.”

Jon looked at their producer, Rob Mathes apologetically. Ryan had been disappearing from the studio like that often the past couple months. Jon didn’t know when he would come back; he could stand out there in the dark under the stars for anything close to twenty minutes.

Jon felt sick whenever Ryan acted this way. Simple uncertainty and concern had quickly turned into a gnawing feeling in his stomach that tormented him for days and a feeling he didn’t know how to ignore. He just wanted it to go away, but he knew that it wouldn’t until he helped Ryan get out of this fucking hole he had dug for himself.

With a sigh, he stood from his chair and started towards the door Ryan had just left through. “Excuse me,” he mumbled.

It was cold out, well as cold as California got and the heavy clouds swallowed every star in the sky. Ryan liked the cold, he liked the stinging feeling it traced across his cheeks and hands. He thought it made him feel like a child making snow forts with his friends in his backyard with hot chocolate waiting inside—if he knew that feeling, he was sure that this would be it. The streetlights and the red-hot ember of his cigarette were the only lights that broke through the thick darkness.

Ryan heard the door behind him crack open and looked over his shoulder as Jon stepped outside. A lit cigarette already lay in his hand and a wry smile adorned his face. The wind blew his stringy hair over his forehead. He looked like a kid. Ryan imagined he would always look like a carefree kid and his behaviour would always probably lag not far behind. Ryan hated how old he felt when he was with Jon and when he watched him laugh and appreciate every fucking moment, he resented his mother and his father and Brendon for prohibiting him from enjoying anything anymore.

“Hey,” Jon muttered and stuffed his hand deeply into his pockets. The cold constantly pierced his skin like many small needles. He had moved away from The Windy City for a reason.

“Hey,” Ryan answered.

He could hear Jon’s breathing and the smoke that floated from his cigarette intertwined with Ryan’s like a couple holding hands, but he still felt so fucking alone. As many parties he went to, as many shallow conversations and shallow fucks, he couldn’t stop feeling lonely, he couldn’t stop hating the empty house and bed he had to come home to.

“You okay, Ry?” Jon asked.

Ryan had been so enveloped by the darkness and emptiness around him that he barely heard Jon’s voice break through the tarry night. He felt indifferent and apathetic and barely looked in Jon’s direction because he had been asked the same fucking question so many times that he couldn’t even keep count. His answer was always the same: “Yeah, of course.” He had hoped that, at some point, those words would be burnt into the memory of those around him the way they were engraved on his tongue so he wouldn’t have to answer that goddamn question again.

“Are you sure? You seem a bit off,”

“Off?”

“Or lost, rather,” Jon corrected.

“Who isn’t?” Ryan asked huskily, exhaling a mouthful of smoke.

“See, that’s what I mean, man” Jon started. “You’ve got all these philosophical ideas weighing you down. You don’t have to think about that shit right now, you’re still fucking young, just go out and live, will you?”

Silence fell between them but Ryan knew that Jon wasn’t quite finished. He knew exactly what would finish this conversation.

“It’s like your living a fucking song you haven’t written yet,” he finally concluded. Ryan could tell Jon had been searching for those words for so long and he could hear the relief in his voice when he finally said them. “And if you wouldn’t mind putting all this shit on paper for once so we can release another single, that would be great,” he added, a cheeky half-smile slowly appearing. Ryan scoffed but he could feel a smile of his own tugging at his lips.

“But seriously,” Jon started once more. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I’m freaking you out?” Ryan asked with a laugh.

“Yes!” Jon interjected, putting his hand roughly on Ryan’s shoulder. Somehow it felt reassuring. But it had to be because he wasn’t sure how Ryan would handle what he was going to say next. Silence draped over them.

Ryan felt his breath catch in his throat and his fingers and stomach tingled as though he were standing at the edge of a cliff. His head became lighter as though he were starting to teeter over the edge, about ready to fall.

“You should go see him.”

And he fell. But as he felt his body race feely through the open air, he felt relieved, relieved that he wasn’t just standing anymore, he had done something, whether or not this decision haunt him didn’t seem to matter because at least he was doing something. He had been waiting for so long, for just one person to fucking tell him to do something that he had wanted to do since the moment he left Brendon in that hotel room in Las Vegas. He felt the emptiness and heaviness start to leave and for the first time in months, when he took a deep breath, he could actually feel the air flowing angelically through his lungs.

“You think so?”

Jon nodded and shoved him. “Sack up and go, Ross. He’s probably fucking waiting for you anyway.”

Ryan laughed and took his keys from his pocket, showing them to Jon for approval. Jon gave him a thumbs-up and watched as Ryan clambered into his small car. He could see the nerves trying to break the young man down, but he also saw a smile that he had been missing for months. He was going; Jon knew he wouldn’t give up now. He knew this could mean that he was out of a job and he would have to find another band, but maybe Ryan and Brendon deserved each other more than he deserved a record deal. He waved as Ryan pulled out of the deserted parking lot.

---

Brendon sat at the table alone, tracing along the top of his wine glass. He was already on his third. He had been drinking a lot lately, but he never threw up and he always drank from his crystal wine and scotch glasses so he didn’t feel as though he might have a problem. He used to hate the smell of wine when he was a kid. The table lined with red and white wine at the Urie family parties used to disgust him but now it just turned him on. He had never drunk like this. It was only in the last couple months that he was no longer able to count the drinks he had had each day on one hand. It was only after Ryan had left him.

The television played in the other room. It played quietly, but Brendon could tell it was just some old eighties movie that he had seen a thousand times. It was only on because Brendon hated the dead silence that filled his empty house. It was sad, Brendon knew it.

Groggily, he picked up his glass and went to the television room and laid himself down on the couch. The images on the screen flicked like a fire and the warm feeling from the wine eased through his body, lulling him to sleep at only eight o’clock in the evening.

---

He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping but a knocking on his door tore him from a dream. His eyes fluttered open and for a moment, he forgot where he was. Begrudgingly, he lifted himself from the couch and trod to the door, mussing his hair at the back. He pulled the door open, a nasty expression on his face for whoever had woken him up from his drunken sleep. Instantly, his body turned to ice.

“Bren,” Ryan whispered. He stepped towards him, his hand held out desperately.

“What are you doing here?”

“I- I came to see you…”

Brendon stepped away from Ryan’s loving hand. It wouldn’t make him feel better. The only thing that could only make him feel warm anymore was the alcohol.

“You came to see me?” Brendon asked incredulously. “Hadn’t you seen enough of me? That’s why you left, isn’t it? Because I was too clingy, because you saw too much of me?”

“Bren, I made a mistake,” Ryan urged. “I shouldn’t have left. I was just being as asshole and I was fucking scared…”

“Scared?” Brendon interrupted, his eyes narrowed with contempt.

“Yes, I was scared!” Ryan defended. “And fuck you for not believing me!” Ryan ran his shaking hand through his hair. His face grew red and his mind raced as all the words just came flooding out. “I was scared because you were so serious. I shouldn’t have said ‘clingy’. I was just scared that we were gonna get past that ‘first couple month’ shit and you would get to know me, the real me, and you wouldn’t love who that is…”

Ryan could hear only the television inside and Brendon’s laboured breaths as he waited for him to speak. He watched as Brendon’s features, contorted with anger, slowly started to return to the manner Ryan knew best.

“I know who that is, Ry,” Brendon sighed. Ryan felt a rush run through his body. He had called him ‘Ry’. “I know who that is and I loved you anyway!”

Tears welled up in Ryan’s eyes. He knew he had made a mistake leaving Brendon, but he hadn’t realised how terrible it had been. He hid for so long that he couldn’t even see when someone was finding him.

“I know… I made a mistake,” Ryan repeated.

“I loved you and whatever you could have done wouldn’t have changed that… But…”

“But?” Ryan pressed, grabbing hold of Brendon’s hand like the child that he was.

“But too much has happened now…”

“Y-you don’t love me anymore?” Ryan stammered.

“No!” Brendon answered. “No, I do.”

Ryan reached out and touched Brendon’s cheek. Brendon closed his eyes. His stomach fluttered at the touch and he felt the warmth that only Dom Perignon seemed to be able to give him recently. A whimper escaped his dry lips and he stepped towards Ryan, their bodies fitting together two missing puzzle pieces.

“I love you too, Bren,” Ryan breathed through the kisses. “I should never have left you. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”

“You promise?” Brendon choked.

Ryan kissed him softly, running his slender fingers through Brendon’s matted hair. “I promise.”

Brendon rested his forehead against Ryan’s and put his hands on his chest gratefully. “Take me upstairs…”

---

Brendon had forgotten how much he loved sleeping with someone, not fucking them, just sleeping with them, their bodies touching each other with innocence found only in children and dreamers. Ryan’s soft breaths brushed against his neck. The boy was sound asleep. Carefully, he slipped from the bed and crept downstairs. The television was still on. He went to the kitchen and took a bottle of wine from his cabinet. He ran his hands over the silky glass and took it to the sink. A smile slowly formed and he opened it quickly, pouring the contents down the sink.

He had finally found another way to feel warm.