Ryden Oneshots

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There's A Good Reason The Victorians Were Fucked Up, Honey, You Just Haven't Realised It Yet.

It’s such a subtle shift of intention at first that Ryan feels he should have a problem pin-pointing the exact moment when it first started. He doesn’t. (The tenth of November, a little after midnight, Brendon’s shirt riding up an inch or two as he leaned forward to grab another handful of M&Ms to throw into the air and catch with his mouth.) Nothing dramatic occurs to make his world turn itself inside-out all of a sudden. There are no surges of jealousy towards a new girlfriend, no drunken revelations in the dead of the night and no near-death experiences to make him suddenly change his way of seeing things.

It’s just Brendon. And for some unfathomable reason, the fact that there isn’t a difference is what suddenly makes it all so clear.

***

They're on stage for yet another show. Brendon’s voice is a caress on each and every note, and no matter how hard he tries, Ryan can’t seem to focus on the audience. His fingers move. They always do. Dancing across the strings in his half-gloves, playing to Brendon, with Brendon, the notes creating a kind of taunting dialogue with his friend’s voice. He wonders how long he’s been delusional, kidding himself that he was writing lyrics about nameless girls (and not-so-nameless ones that he might or mightn’t have fucked against an amplifier in a backstage storage room at the last VMAs) when Brendon is so obviously in every twist of phrase, in every syllable.

How can you write poetry every day and not know you’re completely, overwhelmingly, stupidly in love with someone? It’s fucking ridiculous.

***

Once they both catch on, it’s a gradual process. An old-fashioned courting scheme, simmering in the background, staying just subtle enough to be all either of them are able to think about. It’s all very Victorian, a flash of the slightest suggestion of the beginnings of a vague thought twisted and sharpened, infused with meaning and implications. They don’t touch on stage anymore, enjoying the building energy from a distance, making every glance and accidental brush of skin as they pass each other that much more tantalising.

Ryan is surprised on the verge of mystified at how well Brendon manages it all, how well he plays the little game they have going. Having been rather constantly draped in his touchy-feely lead singer for the past years, he never suspected that Brendon would have the subtlety required to pull this off, or the manipulation skills needed to channel his need for contact into this—this perfect, torturous performance that has Ryan tethering on the edge of his self-control.

He wonders where the actor ends and Brendon begins, wonders how much of this deliberately teasing persona is an integral part of his best friend.

And he wonders what the sex will be like.

Not would. Because there really isn’t any plausible deniably left at this point. Ryan briefly wonders if there ever was any in the first place.

Brendon tilts his head a fraction to the side, and the sliver of exposed neck as his hair brushes away from it softly has Ryan’s pulse racing so hot and ferocious that he feels a little faint. He wonders if it’s actually possible to come just from watching someone.

And then he wonders how the fuck they will live up to the expectations of this.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? The flaw in the plan, the reason why the Victorians were so goddamned uptight and miserable. No matter how great the sex when the control finally snaps and they end up inside one another, Ryan can’t imagine how it could possibly match this—this nearly visceral, cerebral desire that has him painfully hard and aching at little more than a thought. Sooner or later, the bubble will burst and the dream will come to an end, and he doesn’t know what comes after that. If there will even be an after. The thought is chillingly terrifying, and Ryan can’t seem to get it out of his head.