On your knees // Bandom

23. Break Your Little Heart

They were practicing at Kitty's again, because Jimmy had a lunchtime detention on Friday and they were all free Tuesday night.
They had gone straight from school, and were now in her bedroom/studio space, which Ray was quickly realising he wanted to spend his life in.

"So, Ray." Jimmy was sat on Kittys desk chair.
"Yeah?"
"We've decided that you're officially part of the band."
"I wasn't before?"
"You were an intern." Lindsey replied, from her cross legged position across from Ray.
"Good to know. What does being an actual member entail?"
"Knowing the band name and helping write songs." Kitty smiled at him.
"You have a name?"
"Lindsey came up with it." She said.
"Oh. What is it?"
"Mindless Self Indulgence. MSI for short." Lindsey told him.
"Thats cool."
"Thanks, now will you help us score some of Jimmys lyrics?"
"I'd love to."
Jimmy pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket and showed it to him.

It was a love song, in his own way. A little unconventional, sure, but he liked the rhythm of the lyrics.
Jimmy was watching him scan through it, an unreadable expression on his face.
"It's good." He said, he didn't know what else to say. "Its real."
"Its a fake story, that didn't actually happen."
"The feelings real. Who's it about?"
Lindsey looked up at that, and Kitty turned her head away.
"Nobody." Jimmy replied. "As I said, it's fake."

Ray was starting to get a sense of who liked who, Kitty was still in love with Jamia, and he knew Jamia herself liked Lindsey, but she hated that she still had feelings, so he wasn't going to spill that. Lindsey herself clearly liked Jimmy, and Jimmy liked someone. Ray had no idea who but Kitty seemed to. Kitty knew everything, she had some sort of talent for reading expressions and emotions. Alongside her talent for drumming, because holy shit could that girl keep a beat.

He'd found Jimmy crying the other day, curled up in a music room and shaking, he hadn't known what to do. Wait. Correction: he had known he should have got Lindsey, but he didn't. He sat down next to Jimmy and started talking, about music and class and nothing in particular. Gradually Jimmy stopped crying, and since then there had been some bond formed between the two. He still wouldn't say who he liked.

He was brought back to the present by Kitty starting to tap out a beat.
"Does this work, like as the base?"
"No." Lindsey replied, and went over to join her on the drums. "Add one here..." she picked up a spare drumstick. "Its three/four."
"I only have two hands, y'know." Kitty complained, but Jimmy was nodding, and Ray picked up his guitar and started adding chords.
"Hey, thats my job, you're rhythm." Lindsey interrupted him.
"Better get working on it before I take your job then."
Kitty laughed and poked her with a drumstick. "Yeah, Lindz."

This was where he felt comfortable, he decided, this is what he wanted to do.

~

Dallon got a text as soon as he got home, from a boy he couldn't quite call him boyfriend, but there was something.

Ry😍: we need to talk
Me: yeah
Me: time and place?
Ry😍: here. Now.

He types out 'you want to break up by text. Classy.' But he deletes it, because now is not the time to be bitchy.

Me: because you can't say no to me when you look me in the eyes?
Ry😍: something like that
Me: im sorry
Ry😍: for which bit?
Ry😍: dating me while still liking Brendon?
Me: I didnt still like him
Ry😍: just fucking admit it or this can never work
Me: this can work?
Ry😍: not if you don't
Me: im truly sorry, ry
Ry😍: you're still not saying it
Me: fine. I liked brendon. I don't anymore
Me: I love you
Ry😍: I just don't believe you.
Me: this is it, then?
Ry😍: for now
Me: don't fucking promise a future that won't happen
Me: that hurts more

Ryan was typing, and Dallon was just staring at those three dots, waiting for some kind of response, but it never came.

He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, there were posters stuck on it; he and Brendon had put them up there with a stepladder back when his bed had been on the other side. They seemed to look down on him with disapproval, and they had much to disapprove of.

He had so many memories of people who had meant the world to him, and yet he had ruined every relationship. Every good person. Ryan Ross playing his first chords on the guitar, singing his first lyrics, stripping his soul for Dallon to rip apart. Brendon Urie beating him at Mario Cart, and Pokémon, and basically any game they tried to play, and Dallon pouting, forever a sore looser. Foreshadowing. Now it was Ryan Seaman, and his cats named after literacy classics, and his bright blue hair and brighter eyes. Those obsessive roses running over his house that somehow hadn't transferred their love magic to Dallon, perhaps he hadn't been worth it.

He tried to put his headphones in, and blot out his thoughts with music. It was so easy to lose himself in someone else's imagination, but not today. Today every song felt wrong, and his thoughts overclouded every lyric. The angriest songs merged into just screaming, blunt force. The soft songs, happy songs, were out of the question. He wanted this to hurt. He needed this to have been real enough for it to break him.

He dropped his phone onto his mattress, with enough force to make it bounce onto the floor, but enough apathy to not check if it had survived the drop. Maybe he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, to string them into a pretty little story to tell, to make things worse. He needed to cry, he needed to think about it again and again until he was wrecked. He wanted his heart to smash, a self saboteur who blamed it on someone else.

Layla knocked on the door, but he told her to leave, because he was crying and that meant questions, and some part of him wanted to be asked them, so he could sob for them and tell them his version of events. Thats what he really wanted, right? The drama, the pain. To be able to take his turn in the spotlight and weave a tale of woe. To be woken up just as they fell apart, because the fall was always more fun than the flight. This was his fault.

~

On the Wednesday night, Ryan Ross was lying in his bed, listening to records because knowing all the lyrics made him feel normal again. They brought memories back with them, too, memories of Brendon mostly, hazy and indistinct, but still real. Brendon said he might not come today, but Ryan heard the doorbell and sat up, because by now its routine to see each other every night. He wondered if they were like this before he forgot everything.

Strangely enough, it wasn't Brendon who came into his room, school uniform still on bar the tie, it was Frank.
"Hey, Frank, Was it?"
"Yeah, I just... I know we weren't super, super close but you meant a lot to me."
"Brendon said I invited you to hang out a couple of months ago."
"Yeah, you were the first person I came out to. I didn't even mean to do it, you overheard, but you totally welcomed me, and basically set me up, so I owe you a lot."
"I didn't know all that."
"Yeah, I know." He paused for a second, and then his face brightened. "Anyways, you have amnesia, right?"
"Evidently."
"So have you forgotten the plots of movies and stuff? Can you experience the first time joy and shock all over again?"
Ryan grinned at him. "I remember old stuff, like films I watched in elementary."
"Brooklyn-nine-nine?"
"I don't know what that is."
"You're in for a treat." Frank grabbed Ryans laptop and handed it to him. "Open Netflix, you remember your password?"
"Obviously not. But im signed in."
"Okay, its a cop comedy tv show. Five seasons."
"Okay?"
"Its better than it sounds, and gets progressively more amazing."
Ryan handed him Netflix, and he found it and started from episode one. "You're gonna love it. And you need to know the references or you're totally in the dark."
"Thanks." Ryan leaned against his headboard and Frank joined him.
"No problem."

~

They had been gathered in the hall by the headmaster, as they would have been if Ryan had died, but Ryan was very much alive and this was for a different reason. This was for the new student with the lilac hair and the oversized raincoat.

"Please welcome Awsten Knight." There was a reluctant round of applause, but Ryan Seaman froze.

Break came and he found Awsten straight away, uncomfortably answering questions.
"Awsten?" He asked.
"Do you know him or something?" Lindsey replied, of course it was Lindsey bugging him.
"Or something." Ryan muttered. "I need to talk to you."
"Okay?" Awsten let himself to be dragged into a corner.
"You're Awsten Knight?"
"Yeah. Obviously."
"Well I'm Ryan Seaman."
Awstens mouth dropped open.

An// ik this took forever but look theres a cliff hanger. Ily'all x