On your knees // Bandom

44. Bored To Death

Dallon Weekes watched his sister leave for school with his eyes filled with tears. It was strange how he could twist Ryans spine and keep his cool but now a temporary goodbye was too much for him.

She hugged him one last time. "I love you."
"I love you too," He said, then, suddenly. "I killed Ryan."
"What?"
"Its my fault he died."
"Dall, I-"
Their dad honked.
"I have to go, talk when I get back. You didn't kill him, I promise."

It was an empty promise and it meant nothing, but she promised it sure enough, because she believed it. She trusted her brother.

She had also known him long enough to know he overreacted and overthought and blamed himself even when it was never his fault.

Dallon went into his room, into his bed, and covered his head with his pillow. He turned the world black and muffled and he wished it could stay like that.

All of this pain, all of this heatbreak, all of him falling apart, it was all over Taylor, and she was coming back.

What he'd done to Ryan? It didn't feel bad, not really. He closed his eyes and he saw Ryans head turning sharply and his life falling from his lips, but it didn't hurt him to watch it.

It was kind of a good feeling, for the first time he felt powerful and in control and now nobody but him could harm Ryan. Nobody but him had and dominance over him.

He remembered Ryan as he had been, cross-legged on the floor talking about something Dallon didn't truly understand, his hands always moving, dancing, tapping.

He remembered Ryan as his, not Awstens.

He remembered Erasure coming on on Halloween and them dancing round the room. It was the first time Dallon had realised that Ryan was actually more important than his plans. He'd carried them out anyway, a foolish error, and he'd lost Ryan that same night.

It was better like this. Better to have everyone missing him. They didn't, couldn't, know the full story, but he didn't care.

Life was starting to get boring though, as people got over. Maybe he should do it again? Feel that same thrill. That wave of power that overtook him.

He pictured Awsten falling to the ground. Frank with his eyes no longer seeing. Brendon with blue lips.

Brendon, that was it. He couldn't even speak anymore, couldn't scream.

Dallon sat up, his face lighting up for the first time since Taylor left. He bet there'd be a valentines party in a month or so, and he bet he'd be invited. He was doing all of this in the name of love, after all.

He could get some roses. What a sight to behold: the brown haired boy lying white on the ground, covered in pinpricks of blood from the thorns surrounding him.

That certainly wouldn't be boring.

~

Gabe hated waking up alone. Ever since he was a kid with nightmares haunting his head, he would wake with a start and run into his parents room. He would climb into their bed with them and they would sleepily tell him he was ok, and he believed them.

Then, one morning, when he'd grown up a little and didn't go there every morning: he'd woken up shaking. Hed pulled back the covers on his parents bed and his mom had been gone. He'd awoken his dad and asked where she was frantically, desperately.

Turns out he'd been too much for her, and she'd disappeared in the cover of the night with an old suitcase and a new boyfriend.

When Gabe was sweet seventeen, his dad had been offered a job in Ohio. Gabe hadn't wanted to move, so here was the arrangement. Him left in an apartment in New Jersey with his father paying the rent, and his dad across the country.