DAMN YOUR KISS; ryden

Chapter Twenty-Four: If I Could Trade Mistakes For Sheep

For the longest time, neither of them spoke. Heck, save for breathing and blinking, they barely moved.

Ryan was the first to recover his ability to speak, his stunned mind staggering back to functioning. So he swallowed, hard, forcing what felt like a large stone down his throat. "Perhaps you didn't hear me." His words were slow, even. To his own ears, he sounded dumb, but he hoped that to Brendon's it came across as him being calm, but pissed off enough. "I said-"

"I know what you said." Brendon cut him off, the sharpness of the words startling both of them momentarily. Another moment of quiet passed, before Brendon let out a small, awkward laugh, and ran a hand through his hair self-consciously, and shrugged. "I just couldn't respond to it."

"Couldn't respond to it?" Ryan repeated, arching an eyebrow. He resisted the urge to cross his arms across his chest huffily.

"Yes. As in I don't have an answer."

"You don't have an answer?" Ryan said. God, I'm beginning to sound like a bad echo.

It was Brendon who raised an eyebrow this time - and Ryan had an irrational brief flash of admiration and envy at how much better he was at doing that than Ryan.

"What happened to your hair?" Ryan, having run out of anything else his brain was capable of processing right then, went with that, waving a hand at the new do, all shaved sides and a rock n' roll quiff on top.

"Uh... Z did it." Brendon replied, biting his lip, and self-consciously patting his hand to it again.

"Of course," Ryan shook his head, the realisation that his most trusted friend was the one who set this whole thing up settling in, "Of course Z did it."

"Don't be mad at her." Brendon said quickly. "She's only trying to help."

That was just the thing. Z liked to help. And she was good at it. But she was so focused on seeing the positive outcomes she didn't acknowledge the possibility of the bad. As he did quite a lot, Ryan found himself simultaneously blessing and cursing her.

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, and bowing his head. "Fuck," he cursed, under his breath, even though he felt like saying it out loud - yelling it - for the entire restaurant to hear, for all of LA to hear. Because there really was no other way for him to put into words about how ... everything was, right then.

And when he opened his eyes again, there was Brendon - well, of course Brendon is there. You ain't magical, Ross, he isn't gonna disappear in a poof of smoke and glitter just cos you want him to he mentally chided himself - watching him carefully, brown eyes big, wide and simultaneously as young as the boy from Summerlin, Nevada, who'd stumbled into a band, and as old and mature as his twenty-five years. He had the knuckles of one hand pressed to thumb of his other, poised as if he were going to crack them, a nervous habit he'd had for as long as the two had known one another. And something Ryan had always hated, and always reprimanded him for doing... but something that couldn't be knocked out of him.

And Ryan's eyes must have been fixed on Brendon's hands for long enough for a frown to flicker across Brendon's face, and to glance down, notice, then back up at Ryan.

And Ryan couldn't help it. A small smile quirked his lips upward. "Don't." he said in warning.

And even though he could have, and he wanted to - partly because it soothed him, partly due to a small rebellious, defiant spark - Brendon set his hands apart, laying them in balled up fists on the dinner table in front of him.

"Thank you," Ryan bobbed his head in acknowledgment.

"Why don't you sit down?" Brendon finally spoke again, and nodded his head to the chair beside Ryan.

"Why should I?" he countered, immediately. Better to get straight to the point, rip the band aid off without being a wimp about it.

Brendon had been expecting that. He cast his eyes down, to the almost finished origami swan, and swallowed, hard, before clearing his throat. "I-" he opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again, wishing for nothing more right then than for the ground to open and swallow his sorry ass up. And just as Ryan had been a moment ago when he'd retorted, Brendon decided just to go for it - and looked back up to meet Ryan's hazel eyes, push back the knot in his throat, and say "Because we need to talk. Running away doesn't do any good for us. Both of us found that out the hard way." He paused, waiting for Ryan's counter, but when he got none, he continued. "This whole ... thing, it's ... well, it's pretty darn fucked up. I mean not ... not our thing, the ... the whole sex ... thing. No. I mean ... my reaction. It was childish and stupid and..." he swallowed again. "I guess I was in denial. I mean, I was. And I shouldn't have done that. And I fully understand why you felt the way you did, why you reacted the way you did ... but again, I don't think running away really helped any. Did it?"

Ryan, who'd tried not to show his startled reaction at the sudden outpour from the man before him, and stand, listening, blinked at the question thrown at him. Then slowly shook his head. "No. It didn't."

Brendon nodded, assured in his assumption. "So Z found me. I'm pretty sure she was looking for you, but ended up finding the wrong half of the problem," he laughed, shaking his head. "And she basically yanked me up by my armpits and refused to let me sit in my doldrums."

Ryan nodded. "That sounds like Z, for sure."

"And ... and she helped me ... helped me realise my denial. That ... That I'm bisexual. And she told me that I was an idiot, and to stop being one. And to talk to you, say all this..." he trailed off, sucking in his lower lip and looking like an adorable puppy that Ryan had just threatened to kick.

And so Ryan sucked in a deep breath, and pulled the chair back, saying "Ok. I'll sit."

Brendon's face went from troubled and worried to relieved and jubilant within moments. But just as he opened his mouth to say thank you, thank you, thank you! Ryan held up a hand, halting him. "But before I do..." he smiled, a little. "You're an asshole."

Brendon nodded. "I'm an asshole."

Ryan's smile grew. "Ok. Now I'll sit."