Ryden Oneshots 【2】

You Will Know The Difference When I Touch You

.:. Rating : Mature .:.

It wasn’t a gay thing at first. Well, it was possible that Brendon had a tiny little crush on Ryan, but it was a buried thing in the back of his still-half-Mormon brain, emerging very slowly.

But the touching - it wasn’t because Brendon wanted to like, get Ryan naked. At first. It was because Ryan so obviously needed touching. Brendon had siblings, and two parents who were reasonably affectionate, and an extended family. Hugs were an every day occurrence in his household, as were kisses and half-hugs and shoulder squeezes. There was hand-holding and wrestling, tickling and sitting squished together between his sister and brothers on the couch as they watched movies. You could see it in every photo his family had. Everyone in every publicly displayed picture was holding hands, hanging on, or otherwise touching someone else.

Ryan’s family - what there was of it - wasn’t like that at all. Brendon thought that sucked. It fell to him to make up for eighteen years of Ryan not getting enough.

Ryan touched Spencer some - not enough - but he was weird about it with everyone else. When Brendon was first accepted into the band, Ryan would hang a little stiffly in Brendon’s hugs, or lean very subtly away when Brendon squished against him for a picture. Brendon could tell it wasn’t because Ryan had a problem with it - it wasn’t the no-bad-touch sort of body language - it was that Ryan didn’t know how to respond, the sort of hesitancy you got with strangers who you had to squish next to on a bus. The ‘should I touch this person or will they be horribly offended?’ body language. That was Ryan. Like he was afraid of offending someone if he leaned into them.

After they started writing songs together, it was a little different. They were no longer strangers even a little bit. They’d blown up at each other over both stupid and important shit. They’d slept nights on the floor of the recording studio, drooling onto each other’s clothes and hair only to be woken up by the other with an idea they had to try right now, wake up! They’d endured hours and days of sitting next to each other, flanked by Brent or Spencer half the time, strapped into a moving vehicle while their limbs cried out for movement.

At that point, Ryan still wouldn't always return the gesture, but he was relaxed when Brendon snatched him in close for a hug or kissed his cheek. He’d even hold hands with Brendon of his own accord, which sent a happy thrill up Brendon’s arm even as he tried to hold still and not alert Ryan to his elation.

So, no matter what anyone said, the gay thing came later.

It actually started months before any Ryan-related gay activity, when Brendon had been at a lame over-eighteen dance club in a little town. Two fans had invited him and he didn’t want to go straight to bed after their show, he wanted to go out and do something, but he didn’t want to drink with some of the Academy guys, either, because the thought still made his stomach churn a little. That last hangover had been pure hell.

Most of the people at the club had been kind of desperate. Bad hip hop and girls with fake blond hair and fake tans and trying-too-hard makeup had brushed up against him, smiling, and none of them appealed. The guys were even worse: white hats and basketball jerseys and pimples. It was like every high school dance he’d been talked into going to. So he was just thinking about leaving and calling Zack to come get him, when a guy bumped headlong against him in at the beginning of the dark passage outside.

“Sorry,” the guy said, and his voice was kind of low and smoky, and Brendon could see ear piercings glitter from the dance floor lights, and the shape of his face looked good in the dimness.

“It’s okay,” said Brendon.

The guy hesitated. “You want to split a cigarette?” he asked. Brendon didn’t smoke, not really, but he was willing to smoke socially. The smokers were always really fun to hang out with no matter where he was.