In My Bones

Brendon listened to the people downstairs; their voices ran up the stairway and broke through the bedroom door, nearly swallowing him whole. They were counting down to the New Year. Brendon hadn’t had someone to kiss when the ball dropped in years and though Ryan lay in the bed beside him, he had never felt this alone while ringing in the New Year.

He sighed and stared up at the ceiling, chewing on his bottom lip. The thick blanket in Ryan’s room was pulled right underneath his arms, though no one was there to see him, he felt too vulnerable lying alone and naked. He thought that Ryan might have felt just as shy and tense if he hadn’t had one too many shots of tequila earlier that evening.

Tears sprung into his eyes. This wasn’t how this was supposed to be. Ryan wasn’t supposed to have drank that much that much, he wasn’t supposed to say yes so easily, he wasn’t supposed to want to fuck, he was supposed to want to make love, even just sleep together, not fuck. And Brendon didn’t want to be fucked, he wanted to be held and he wanted to caress Ryan’s soft skin and show him that even though he couldn’t quite grasp every minute detail that made up Ryan’s heart and soul, he could just listen. It might have been naïve that Ryan wanted something like that too.

Brendon turned to look at Ryan’s sleeping body. The blanket draped over his waist and his head fell to the side. His mouth was slightly open and Brendon listened to his rugged breathing. Nothing about this moment felt romantic. Nothing was right, nothing was the way Brendon had imagined it. His stomach churned and he could feel his cheeks grow hot as embarrassment pricked his skin.

He felt so incredibly cheap. Ryan had made him feel cheap. He felt a tear roll down the side of his face and it dissolved into his pillow. He rolled onto his side and reached for his underwear that sat in a messy pile near the bedside table, where Ryan had tossed far more nonchalantly than he should have. Keeping himself buried beneath the blankets, he pulled his underwear on before peeling the heavy material, covered in his own sweat, from his body and standing up. His jeans and button-up shirt were on the floor near the foot of the bed. His shirt was terribly wrinkled.

He straightened himself up and tugged at his shirt before glancing back at Ryan. The moonlight spilt in through the window along with the dingy light from the streetlamps and fell over his face, tingeing his soft skin a marble color that reminded Brendon of a statue, perhaps David.

For a moment, he considered climbing back in bed and becoming a statue along with him and not ever having to move. Heavily, Brendon turned towards the door and opened it as silently as he could, though he didn’t particularly need to. The only thing that would wake Ryan tonight was a pounding headache. He dashed down the stairs, the music and the shouts barely audible over the wailing voice in his head that repeated over and over that every drunkard he passed could tell that he had just let the host of the party fuck him until he passed out. His heart was pounding in his throat and as he reached for the doorknob, he felt someone grab onto his hand.

“Bren?” It was Spencer.

His face was pulled into a concerned expression though his eyes were glazed over with drink. Brendon felt him squeeze his hand and wondered if he would have done the same if he hadn’t had drank anything. Brendon could tell that Spencer had had quite a bit, perhaps as much as Ryan had and, bitterly, Brendon wondered why Spencer hadn’t passed out as well.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you going?” He let go of his hand.

“I’m gonna go home,” Brendon said with a smile. Spencer made a small noise of disapproval in the back of his throat. “I’m just really tired. I was just gonna stay for the count-down and then get going anyway, so…”

“Oh.”

“Yeah…” Brendon shifted his weight awkwardly. “If you see Ryan, can you say bye for me and tell him I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, of course,” Spencer answered. “He’ll be disappointed, you know?”

Brendon laughed and looked down at his feet. “Yeah, I know.”

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you then…” He paused for a moment. “You should take an Advil, you look like shit.”

Brendon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, thanks.” It would take a lot more than Advil to make him feel right again.

He pulled the door open and stepped through it quickly, slamming it shut behind him. He sighed with relief when the door successfully blocked out some of that damned noise that was driving him crazy. It was cold out and the wind burrowed beneath his skin and tossed his hair in all directions. His car was parked around the corner. He had wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be double-parked. The car heated up quickly after he had started it. It felt good to be in his own car. He could only imagine how wonderful it would feel in his own bed with him own blankets, how wonderful it would be to feel safe again.

Tears threatened to fall down his cheeks and they blurred the streetlights around him. He wiped at them hurriedly, that embarrassment and childishness plaguing his stomach once more. He chewed on his lip and his jaw began to hurt because of how tensely he was holding it, it was the only thing that ever helped him keep from crying. He had discovered that as a young boy.

He had started to feel lost in the city that he had grown up in. Nothing seemed right; nothing seemed the way it had once been. The nights felt darker, like the black sky had effortlessly swallowed up the stars and the moon, and the days felt heavier and more suffocating, and not just from the Nevada heat.

The streets around him were mostly empty, everyone was still in a club or a house or a bar, celebrating the New Year and Brendon should have been among them. Bitterness tasted like salt on his tongue. One young couple, perhaps only a few years older that Brendon, was strolling hand-in-hand on the sidewalk. They were both smiling, because of each other, no doubt. Brendon wanted to be just like them, just like that boy. He wanted a girl’s hand to hold, he wanted to feel whole and common and he just wanted to stop waiting for Ryan to fucking make up his mind about something.

He had told himself countless times that he could just step away and move onto something different, but he just couldn’t ever keep to that. The small moment he shared with Ryan, alone in the studio or in a hotel room while he tried to write a song for him always dragged him back into that sunken, helpless feeling of longing and searching for some kind of approval that, recently, he had half-heartedly given up on attaining.

He pulled into his driveway and stepped out of his car. His house was dark the wind whistled playfully as it ran across the siding and through the eaves trough. He hated going home alone at night; he liked having someone to lean onto before the first light was turned on. He flicked on every light switch he passed as he strode towards his bedroom, even the ones he didn’t need. He wasn’t necessarily afraid of the darkness, he simply hated that short moment, the first moment after darkness had fallen around him, the moment where he imagined something might reach out for him, something inhuman, something not even real.

He dropped all of his clothes to the floor for the second time in one evening. He felt just as cheap and used as he stood naked in front of his bathroom mirror as he had in Ryan’s bedroom. He turned the shower on and made sure the temperature was as high as it could before stepping in. The heavy drops of water burned his skin and he could immediately see the steam rising from his peachy skin. It was refreshing to feel anything at all after having felt no passion, no pain, rush through his veins during what should have been something euphoric.

He let the hot water run through his hair and trace down his forehead and cheeks. He felt his body grow weak, his knees wobbled beneath him and his throat tightened, and above the sound of water splashing against his body, he heard himself whimper before allowing himself to be fully controlled by the sadness and desperation that had been threatening him since he lat under Ryan’s itchy blankets. He suddenly wondered how many other people, both men and women, had laid in his exact position and felt ill when he imagined the number.

And he simply let himself cry. He cried from himself, he cried for everyone else Ryan had made feel this way and for some reason, one he couldn’t quite comprehend yet, he cried for Ryan. He wouldn’t have cried in his bedroom but the shower allowed him to because his tears were no longer tears, they were just droplets of water that would follow the dirt beneath his skin and pool around his feet before disappearing down the drain, like they had never happened. He waited, long after he had stopped crying, he waited until the water began to turn cold before he climbed out and wrapped a towel around his waist and returned to his bedroom. He was grateful for the lights he had kept on.

Ryan had used that trick too, crying in the shower, countless times. Nothing could be real for Ryan, he couldn’t ever let his fears become something that he could touch as he wiped his tears from his cheeks or something he could see as he watched his own reflection shake uncontrollably in the mirror. If his fears were something physical, something more than an ache in the pit of his stomach or an itch in the back of his mind, he would have to cope with them and he didn’t know whether or not his paper-thin frame was strong enough to withhold them or if he would be knocked down and dragged in the wind like a dead leaf in the middle of fall.

Ryan awoke a couple hours after Brendon had gone. The noise downstairs was nearly gone; Spencer must have shown everyone out the way Ryan had always asked him to if he passed out early or if he disappeared upstairs for a couple hours. Ryan thought he could hear about five people with him, probably Jon and Pete and Patrick. They were getting high; Ryan could hear it in their voices. They were lethargic and almost whiny.

Usually, Ryan would be with them, but tonight, Ryan lay alone, unmoving, like a statue in his bed, only he surely didn’t feel like David. David would never be frozen by fear, scared of the tears that streaked endlessly down his cheeks. He gripped his blankets and pulled them up over his head, like he had as a child. For a moment, he thought that if he counted down from ten, everything would go away, the tears, the guilt, the confusion and he could start pretending that nothing bothered him again and that he was just too busy to feel anything.

He took four deep breaths before he pushed the blankets off of his naked body. He knew he was still crying only because he could taste the salty tears that fell too close to his lips. The people downstairs erupted with laughter the moment Ryan opened the bedroom door. He wished that tonight had ended the way most nights did where he was the one downstairs telling a story and laughing with all of his friends, instead he was alone, creeping through the darkness towards the bathroom, hiding his emotion for whatever was there to see him.

He shut the bathroom door behind him carefully, locking it too. He stripped off his underwear and before he stepped into the shower, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The tears had traced lines down his cheeks and his eyes were still red. If those tear tracks hadn’t been so prominent, Ryan might have told himself that he had only gotten high too, before he passed out on his bed, alone. He shook his head, erasing the image of himself from his memory and stood in the shower, letting the hot water beat down on his skin. His shower wasn’t long, he only gave himself time to rinse his hair and run a bar of soap over his withering body. When he returned to his bedroom, whoever sat around on his sofas were no longer laughing.

After pulling on a pair of sweat pants and throwing a shirt over his still-wet hair, Ryan went downstairs. A bong sat in the middle of the coffee table, like a Christmas centre-piece. Bits of hash scattered the table. Whoever had been chopping had done a poor job, though they were probably still drunk so Ryan let it go.

Jon wasn’t there, like Ryan had suspected, but Pete and Spencer were, along with three other guys Ryan had seen come in with Pete earlier. They all smiled and greeted him, one even gave him a high-five for getting laid, which Ryan returned half-heartedly, all except Spencer, who was eyeing him with an expression of concern and doubt. Ryan looked away and played with his hands until someone shoved the bong into his lap.

“There’s still some left, if you want some.”

Ryan smiled and twisted his long fingers around the stained glass. He turned to Spencer, who still wore the same concerned expression, but he handed him a lighter nonetheless.

Spencer hated it when Ryan got high or drank just to forget something. Smoking for the hell of it, he couldn’t judge because he did just that, but getting high as a fucking kite just to fly over reality was a problem, a problem that could easily escalate past taking shots of Jagger and hitting bowls. But sometimes, Spencer couldn’t help but let him. Over the years, he had been present for some of the things that went on to torment his best friend’s mind and when Spencer himself couldn’t fix it, he hated to see Ryan hurt so he let him smoke because, at least for an hour, he could be at ease and he could smile without any hidden emotion behind it.

Ryan tucked the bong between his legs and set the lighter to the pot, inhaling as long as he could, before his head would start dancing, removing the choke at a time only a seasoned smoker would know. He held his breath for a moment and leaned his head back against the couch, all muscles relaxed, before finally exhaling. He listened as someone else took a long hit. His head swam, though he had hardly smoked enough to get high.

His mind always floated back to Brendon. Where was he? When did he leave? Why did he leave? He shouldn’t care, but he did. He stood up, ignoring the looks from those around him and left the living room. The telephone hung on the kitchen wall, exactly where he had put it when he first moved in. He lifted the receiver, his finger nearly touching the key pad, someone walked in.

“Hey.” It was Spencer. Ryan turned to look at him quickly.

“Hey…”

“It’s four in the morning, who are you calling?”

“I, um,” he stuttered. “I didn’t see Brendon before he left so I wanted to make sure he got out alright.”

“I saw him,” Spencer answered. “He was okay.”

Ryan nodded. Slowly, Ryan put the phone back down on the receiver. “When did he leave?” He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know how long Brendon had laid there awake, alone, in that bed before he decided that leaving was the best option.

“Just after midnight.”

Ryan nodded again. A short laugh escaped his lips. “I missed the New Year…”
Spencer laughed too, a short, tight laugh that was as far from real as Ryan’s was. “You were too drunk.”

“Yeah…” Ryan mumbled, scratching the back of his head. “Like last year…”

The last year Ryan remembered was 2005. He had spent it with Brendon, just the two of them in that little apartment Brendon had had during his senior year at high school. Brendon was working two jobs to pay off the rent and he was so tight on cash that he couldn’t even afford to buy booze for the party Ryan had asked to go to, so he told him that he was just going to stay in.

It was at the last minute that Ryan decided to spend the night at Brendon’s. He was in the car, ready to drive to the address his friend from work had given him, when he turned right instead of left on Maple.

They didn’t do anything, Ryan hadn’t even brought in his 26 of vodka from the car. They just sat on the pull-out couch, watching whatever movies Brendon wanted to. When it got close to midnight, they watched the ball drop in New York City. Brendon had placed a soft kiss on Ryan’s cheek because he said it looked like he needed one, but it had really been Brendon all along who so desperately wanted it and just as desperately needed it.

Brendon had laid awake long after his shower. He felt tired and his eyes grew heavy, but he always forced them open. He wouldn’t admit what he was staying up for, he would probably blame it on the Red Bulls he had had at the party, but he knew it was because he was waiting for Ryan to awaken alone and to call him, maybe to ask him back over, or even apologize. He took a deep breath and intertwined his fingers behind his head.

He wondered what Ryan would think when he awoke. He imagined him getting up and heading towards the shower, dropping all of his clothes in a neat pile on the bathroom floor the way he had the night before with Brendon and then climbing in. He imagined the water cascading down his back seamlessly and running through his silky hair. After, he would wear those jeans that Brendon had bought for him, the ones that hugged his legs and rested precariously on his hips and he would drive over here and tell Brendon that all these years, he had wanted to show Brendon that he felt the same way and he would run his hands over Brendon’s shoulders and tangle his long fingers in Brendon’s hair and he would whisper soft words into his ear and take him upstairs and—

Brendon covered his face with his pillow. “Fuck…”