Cancer

Banner by ThunderLoser. <3

I was so surprised by Brendon's frankness that I could only stare at him in shock for a moment. Then, even after I recovered, I didn't know what to say, so I just rubbed his arm in what I hoped was a soothing gesture.

"I miss you so much, Kelsey," he said earnestly, his voice breaking. "I love you."

I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn't. There were tears in his eyes.

"I know..." My voice broke and I cleared my throat and tried again. "I know it's hard. But...sometimes, you just have to...put the past behind you and move on--"

"I can't move on," he insisted sharply. His gaze intensified. "I don't want to."

"Brendon..."

"Can't I just have one more chance?" he pleaded. "Just one? I swear to God, you won't regret it--"

"Brendon," I sighed. It was just too hard to listen to him beg; he would wear me down eventually if I let him go on that way. It was too dangerous. "Please don't..."

I guess he saw that he was only hurting me further because he fell silent, his expression softening as the determination drained from it. He reached up to spread his open hand over mine, and I just didn't have it in me to push him away.

"Will you at least stay for a while?" he whispered.

"I said I would."

Brendon was quiet for a while longer as he played with my fingers in silence. Then he murmured, "I haven't seen you in so long..."

I swallowed hard, struggling to keep my composure. "Well, I'm here now," I managed.

He looked up at me suddenly, and I wasn't prepared for the depth of emotion in his eyes--it knocked the breath out of me. "I really do miss you. I don't think you can even understand...how much... How different things are now..."

I nodded slightly, staring at his tattered bedspread to avoid his gaze. "Everything's changed," I agreed.

"I thought it would get better," he said miserably. "I thought... I thought if we could get famous, make it... I just thought... I mean, god damn it, Kelsey, we've released one album and we're already practically the biggest band in the whole fucking country! And I'm the lead singer!"

He was almost yelling now, his voice hysterical with rage and hurt and something like betrayel. "I'm on top of the world! This whole fucking scene belongs to me! Shouldn't I be happy?! Or at least not fucking suicidal?!"

As soon as the words spilled out of them, they died away and his face relaxed again. He closed his eyes, his expression pained--like he couldn't bear to open them--and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Brendon," I said, a little coldly--I couldn't help it. Did he really expect me to feel sorry for him when the dreams he had chosen over me hadn't turned out the way he had planned? "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you."

"I was a fool," he said. It was as if I hadn't even spoken. "Such a fucking idiot. It was all I ever wanted, and then it...wasn't there. It never was. It never existed."

He opened his eyes again abruptly, as if remembering me all at once. "I'm sorry, Kelsey. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I never should have left Vegas. There's nothing out there for me."

"But you're world-famous now, Brendon," I reminded him. "You have one of the biggest fan-bases ever. You did it. You made it."

He shook his head a little. "No. Panic made it. Brendon Urie...me and you...we didn't make it, Kelsey."

Brendon started to cry. I had only seen it once before--when he first told me Panic got signed and he was leaving, and I left him for a while--and it upset me even more now than it had the first time.

"Panic made it, so we never could. There was no way..." He squeezed his eyes shut again and more tears rolled out from between his lids, slid down his world-worn face. "There was no way we could have...we couldn't have stayed together, you would...you would have been...so unhappy..."

"You think I'm happy now?" I asked coldly.

His whole face crumpled into an expression of utter despair and he started to full-out sob. "No," he choked out. "That's why I...that's why I hate myself so much. I wish you were happy, Kelsey. I wish I was happy. I wish I hadn't...fucked everything up so much...but I thought it-it...I thought it was...the right thing..."

He was crying so hard he could barely form complete sentences. I scooted closer to him and pulled him into me. He wrapped his arms around me gratefully and sobbed into my shoulder.

"I was so stupid... I fucked everything up... It's all my fault, it's all my fault, I fucked it up..."

"Shhh," I murmured, stroking his hair comfortingly. "It's okay. It's okay now."

"No, it's not. It'll never be okay again," he swore.

I didn't know what to say to that, mostly because it seemed to me that he was right. So I just held him in silence until he stopped crying and pulled out of my embrace, slumping back against the headboard again.

He wiped his eyes sheepishly. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it." I bit my lip as I studied his lined, weary face. "You really should get some sleep."

"I don't want to sleep," said Brendon gruffly.

I sighed. I didn't want to argue with him. I was just too emotionally drained by now.

"Were you really going to jump?" I whispered after a moment. I was afraid to hear the answer.

"I don't know," he said bitterly, looking away, down at the floor. There were cigarette butts and burn marks all over the carpet. He didn't used to smoke. "I just... I'm just so tired of...of all of this... You know?"

I gripped his arm firmly now. "Brendon," I said sternly, "you can't ever do that. Never ever. Promise me you won't."

His dark eyes rolled back to meet my gaze again, and their steely, passionate stare was penetrating, terrifying. "Come back to me," he said.

My breath died in my throat. "I...I can't."

"Then I can't promise."

I leaned forward, pressing my face into his chest. His arms wrapped around me and he pulled me closer until I was lying on top of him, my body pressed against his at every point. And some small, feeble corner of my mind was crying out that this was wrong, this was wrong, I swore I would stay aware from him, forget him, I was floating out to sea again, but I never once moved away from him. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I lay there with him for a long time. After a while, his hand moved up to stroke my hair, his fingertips scraping against my scalp the way they used to. I missed the feeling and I let my eyes fall shut, and when they opened again, it was morning.

His chest rose and fell rhythmically beneath me. I propped myself up on my elbows on either side of him on the mattress. He was still half-sitting, his head slumped over at an uncomfortable angle; his dark hair fell carelessly in his face, over his closed eyes. In sleep, he looked younger, less tired and less unhappy.

The clock on the wall said it was only about eight o'clock; damp, gray sunlight flooded the room through the enormous windows in the far wall. The lamp on the bedside table was still on, so I climbed out of bed and turned it off. Carefully, gently, so as not to wake him, I slid one hand under Brendon's neck and one under his shoulders and moved him so that he was laying down flat in bed, so he wouldn't hurt his neck lying like that. His head flopped over to the side and his full lips fell open as he sighed in his sleep.

And then his left hand, which had been balled up in a fist ever since I had come here last night, fell open and something metallic sparkled in his palm.

I squinted at his hand, frowning. I hadn't realized he was holding something. As I moved closer, I saw what it was: a silver-banded ring, plain besides one large diamond framed by two smaller sapphires.

Fascinated, I picked it up without thinking and examined it more closely. I had never seen it before, and I couldn't figure out why Brendon had been holding it, or where he even got it.

It looked like an engagement ring.

-----

Before I left, I walked around Brendon's room and picked up all the trash for him. There were lots of Red Bull cans and cigarette butts, but even more beer cans and whiskey bottles. It made me sad to see all that, so I felt better once all of it was neatly bagged in big black trash bags and put away in the kitchen (which wasn't in much better shape than Brendon's room had been in, but, damn, I couldn't clean his whole apartment for him.)

I kissed him softly on the forehead and put the ring he'd been holding on the now-bare bedside table. And then I left.

-----

I didn't even go back to the hotel first. I called a cab and gave the cabbie the address that seemed as natural as any that had ever belonged to me, and the taxi drove me down familiar streets to the only solace I had left.

All I could see when I closed my eyes was Brendon's tortured expression, the tears sparkling in his eyes as he begged. And then his chilling words: "...Then I can't promise."

I was already crying by the time I stumbled into the elevator in Ryan's apartment building, stabbing blindly at the buttons to carry me to the right floor. I made it down the short stretch of hallway to Ryan's front door and tried the door myself, but of course it was locked; I rang the doorbell twice and then pounded on the door frantically.

I needed to talk to someone. Now.

The door cracked opened slowly, and I tried to push it open the rest of the way to no avail: the chain was still on.

"Ryan?!" I half shrieked. I was still bawling. "Ryan, Brendon--he--he--"

The door shut in my face, and for a second I was so bewildered that I stopped crying entirely. Then there was a metallic shuffling sort of noise on the other side of the door as the chain fell loose, and the door opened again.

"Ryan," I sighed in relief.

But the girl I was now standing face-to-face with was most definitely not Ryan.

She was tall and dark with regal features; her face was refined and classically beautiful. Her full, pink lips were pursed with concern, her soft brown eyes curious and worried beneath equally dark and flawlessly symmetrical brows.

"Ryan?" she called uncertainly over her shoulder. "I think there's someone here to see you."

Of course I was here to see Ryan. Who else would I be here to see? This was his apartment, wasn't it?

The mystery girl stepped aside to let me in, flashing me a small and blindingly white smile. She shut the door behind me, biting her lip in an embarrassed sort of way. She was wearing a short, silky pink robe and nothing else, as far as I could tell. "I'm sorry, he should be right here in a second--"

Even as she spoke, Ryan emerged from the open doorway that led into his bedroom. He was still in boxers and a T-shirt and his hair was sticking up in various directions; his chin was dotted with stubble.

His face relaxed as he recognized me and he almost smiled. Then, just as suddenly, he seemed to notice the girl standing beside me for the first time, and his expression tensed again.

"Oh--hi, Kelsey," he mumbled as he approached the two of us. He looked and sounded even more embarrassed than the girl had.

"Hi...?" In my confusion, the one word came out sounding like a question.

Who was she, and what the hell was she doing here? And why were they both turning so red?

"Uh--well--" he stammered. "Pam, this is my, uh...my friend, Kelsey," he said, gesturing to me awkwardly.

"Hi," she said to me, smiling warmly and extending one small hand. I shook it. It was cold and smooth. A single diamond ring on her other hand caught the light and glittered for a moment.

"Kelsey..." Ryan took a deep breath and said it: "This is my fiancé, Pam."