how to kill a straight guy // ryden

step 10: slowly bring back the hope

He had lost the ability to fall asleep.

Sure, he really did think that lack of daily nutrition would completely deplete his energy level, plummeting him into a state resembling that of a lifeless blob of nothingness. But, it was really quite the opposite, nights spent wide awake on that small couch of their tour bus. He would just sit there, picking at seat fibers for long hours until he would crawl back in bed before the sun rose to give his bandmates the impression that he had had a good, hearty sleep. There was no fatigue when the day would come, no dragged-out personality that made his friends question whether his slow fading was really true or not. No, he was playing his game quite well, putting on this wonderful show of chipper attitudes and giddy excitement that would never show what was happening on the inside. What washappening inside by the way? Could you give it a name?

Anorexicbulimicinsomniacdepression disease?

Analimicdepromniac syndrome?

That one sounded more professional.

But no, Brendon Urie was still Brendon Urie—nothing had changed who he was, and this was his trump card. The only realization that something was wrong with him were those bones that pressed sickeningly against his skin when he would raise his arms above his head, frowning into the mirror as he counted twelve visible ribs on his side and watched those hipbones jut out through thin, pale flesh. They were quite a quaint formality by now though, able to be masked under the simple slip of clothing that hardly fit anymore. Oh yes, he'd grown quite used to it all. These problems were no longer conscious thought, they had become habit. This heartbreaking feeling that tore him to shreds was beginning to grow numb with the fading of time, any thoughts of happy endings long lost under stacked layers of banal attitudes. Think of him as a corpse; a dried out, slowly decaying shell of a human being that was only kept alive to act out this play, to continue the charade that everything was A-Okay just so he could watch his friends buy into his lies. He should really start writing these things down—he could make a wonderful graveyard poet.

However, it seemed in better taste just to digress.

So, here he sat once again, back pressed into the permanent impression in the couch from endless nights of use. Tonight he was lucky enough to be accompanied by brilliant moonlight that poured in through the large window behind him, casting exaggerated shadows that crept up blank walls from anything it touched. With feet propped up on that small coffee table bolted to the floor, he could see how pale the light made his legs look, head tilted to the side in interest as he stared at white limbs slowly emaciated by time. He guessed that the only thing that wasn't really creepy about him sitting alone in macabre moonlight, staring at his own decaying body, was the yellow straw that was pressed between his lips. It connected his mouth and the pouch he held in his thin fingers, the clear liquid seeping through the plastic all but satisfying.

Capri Sun kept Brendon alive.

He took pride in the fact that he invested his time into juice boxes, who could judge something like that? Spencer would call him silly when he'd store ten of them at a time in their tiny fridge, but if Spencer only knew that those were the things that kept Brendon breathing, maybe he would think a little differently. Maybe he would sit out here on the couch with him one night, sipping contentedly on fruit punch and delicious strawberry kiwi as they celebrated the life-giving nutrition that they gave. Maybe.

He was down to those last few drops, sucking down remnants of lasting fluid and making that obnoxiously loud sound of salvaging as his pouch began to collapse in on itself. Light streams of bottom liquid streamed through gaps of air, Brendon sucking harder once the oxygen began to deplete itself and his straw pressed hard against the silver constricting around the plastic stick. In a way, it made the younger man smile around his straw, humor turned dark once he connected the fact that this stick pressed tight against its pouch covering resembled what his legs had begun to look like, limbs of bone showing hard through white skin. Maybe one day he would wake up from this prolonged nightmare, this saturnine way of life that occupied his downtime, and things would turn back to normal. At this thought, Brendon slowly blew air back through the straw in his pouch, filling its inside with restoring sustenance that once again gave it its round form. It was normal again, just like he could be. It was back to times of laying in the grass and looking up at clouds, back to scandalous sleepovers and watching movies cuddled in the dark, back to cheek-kisses and nervously holding hands before a show, back to when existence was important.