Omnibus: One-Shots, Imagines, & Drabbles

Oh, Let's Go Back to the Start (Ryden)

Figured I'd try a songfic and ended up with this.  Inspired by "The Scientist" by Coldplay

Trigger warning (depression, alcohol, drugs, suicidal thoughts, self-hate, etc)

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Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry

You don't know how lovely you are

I had to find you, tell you I need you

Tell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets, ask me your questions

Oh, let's go back to the start...

January 15, 2016

I ran a hand through my hair and exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.  I knew I should have smoked more pot.  I shouldn't be this stressed about releasing an album.  I'd done it several times before - the exact number is a little fuzzy at the moment but it's somewhere around four or five - but this time was different.  This time, I was alone.

Death of a Bachelor was, officially, a Panic! At The Disco album, but it felt like a solo project.  Everyone was gone.  Ryan, Brent, Jon, Spencer, fuck, even Dallon was just a touring member now.  I was not used to releasing albums alone.  There was always someone else there, even if it was just one person.  It made the whole things a lot less scary, in a way, the knowledge that there was a person sitting beside you who was also hoping to the moon and back that they weren't a first-class disappointment.  And for a while, that person had been Ryan.

Losing Ryan had hurt the most - not that I didn't miss the others.  But Ryan and I... that was different.  I found something in those deep hazel-brown eyes, in those gangly limbs and geeky scarves and that shy smile, something that wormed its way into my heart and stayed there long after he wasn't.  And I didn't realize - the fucking stupid shit that I was - didn't realize what I had until it was gone.  But then again, that seemed to be a running joke in the cruelly hilarious fuck-up that was my life.

Ryan had always been there for me.  From the first time the band came together, he took care of me.  When I got myself drunk off my ass or woke up in an alley with no idea of where I was or spent the night in jail for getting in a fight over some chick, Ryan was always ready to save my poor sorry ass.  I always figured that we would be together forever, whether as band mates or best friends or as something I placed in a vague and hazy zone somewhere closer than friendship.  It was naïve and idealistic, but I ignored the little voice in the back of my head called reality that protested.

I wonder, sometimes, if he saw it coming.  We had different plans for Panic!, that had been evident from the start.  But I had always assumed we could work through those differences like we worked through everything else.  A big argument with lots of well-fuck-you's and I-don't-give-a-damn's, then a day or two of silent treatments and cold shoulders and Spencer massaging his temples in exasperation before Ryan and I admitted our mistakes and made up.

But I was wrong.  We never recovered from that fight.  Maybe I was too much of an ass or maybe he was too stubborn, but before I knew it, Panic! was splitting.  It was surreal.  I remember lying on the couch in the studio, staring at the ceiling and realizing that he was never coming back.  I cried myself to sleep that night.  Spencer found me the next morning and rocked me back and forth as I sobbed into his shoulder.

And after that, I just sort of shut Ryan out.  I couldn't bear to go back and reopen that wound because I was afraid that I wouldn't make it through the pain a second time.  Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.  I spent a lot of my time either drunk or high, or occasionally both.  And, in the second-cruelest twist of fate in my life, it wasn't me who suffered for my attempts to drown Ryan out.  It was Spencer.  Spencer, who stuck by me when his best friend left because he knew I needed him more.  Spencer, who did his best to pick up the pieces of my heart and clumsily duct tape them back together.  Spencer, who endured my destructive temper tantrums and pitiful cry-fests in an effort to try and save me.  Spencer, who succeeded in his mission - at least to the point of keeping me alive, but was himself left with an alcohol and prescription drug addiction.  Because of me.  Because he tried too damn hard to fix something that was broken beyond repair, and got himself broken in the process.