how to kill a straight guy // ryden

step 2: share your dreams

"It's in tune—get over it."

"It just doesn't sound like it is. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing," Brendon replied as he continued to turn the tuning key on the headboard of Ryan's guitar. It was all in a pattern, turn it a little, pluck the string, turn it again, and listen once more. Ryan leaned back on his hands on Brendon's bed and let out a dramatic sigh, exposing his boredom at this repetitive task. Brendon was deafer than Helen Keller and the tuning was fine, any more turns and the string would...

Ryan jumped as there was a loud, harsh tone from the guitar and the scraping of a string against the neck of it. And then of course there was Brendon, sitting there and holding his hand with a thin gash across the top after the string had snapped, a couple loud swear words yelled here and there. Ryan just smirked.

"Told you it was in tune."

Brendon glared at him. "I hope you die a horrible death."

Ryan didn't crack back, only shrugged like the little insolent bastard that he was. The brunet leaned back farther on the bed, stretching out a long arm to the nightstand that was pressed up against the wall. Brendon watched as he grabbed a couple of Kleenexes from the half-empty box sitting on it, blinking once as they went from there, to the gash on his hand, his palm suddenly in Ryan's warm one.

"Do you have any band-aids?" the older man asked.

"No. I've grown up to be quite a big boy."

"Pff. You're such a douche."

"I know."

There was a breath of a laugh from Ryan as he dabbed the cut on Brendon's hand, the room growing quiet soon after. It always would get quiet with Ryan, a comfortable kind of quiet. The younger man just sat there, letting the brunet tend to his wound and tilting his head a little to the side in interest as he watched the few red droplets soak into the thin tissue. It was kind of mesmerizing.

"Are you bleeding?" a small voice sounded from Brendon's doorway. The man's head snapped towards the sound and his hand ripped out of Ryan's like the boy was on fire.

"Kara, get out of my room!"

"I'm not in your room. I'm near your room."

"Go. Away." Brendon growled back.

"I brought band-aids," was what Kara's reply was, talking more to Ryan than her brother. Completely against Brendon's wishes, she sauntered her little body into his room, the small box behind her back tossed into Ryan's lap as soon as she reached the bed. "Special ones, just for him."

Ryan's hands slapped over his mouth to stifle his laughter at the imprint on the box. Brendon died about four times from embarrassment.

Dora The Explorer band-aids.

"Out!" Brendon practically shouted, arm stiff as he pointed out the door. Kara complied for there was no more reason to stay with her terrible deed done, skipping out of the room with a large grin. Brendon wished that she would cackle like the evil witch from The Wizard Of Oz before she left, that way he'd feel completely justified the next time he called her names and dropped a giant farmhouse on her. A giant farmhouse and five cows. Ten cows...

Brendon's anger was subsided quickly to make way for dull surprise as his hand was grasped again, a sticky material suddenly slapped on it before he even had time to blink. When Ryan's hand let his go, a pink children's band-aid sat contentedly over his cut, Dora and that talking monkey with the red boots smiling up at him with the word 'Hola!' in white letters.

Brendon hated life.

Ryan laughed as the other man's self-esteem visually dropped into a black pit, the brunet closing the lid of the cardboard container and throwing it aside. "You look upset," he teased.