Bandom Oneshots

What I Want and What I Get Never Coincide 》 Ryden

Published: July 26, 2019
Pairings: Brendon Urie/Ryan Ross
Summary: Brendon reflecting on his life and affairs.

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It's easy to play pretend, but I can never fool myself. When I feel empty, I'm never sitting there, wondering how I became this way. Because I've always been this way, and though I had the choice to change that, I never went for it.

I wasted my time in love with a fabrication of myself. I wasted my time becoming who I'm not, and I've tried to reconcile the sense of wrong that I feel with my being. There were times I could've destroyed my lies, broken them down to rubble so that everyone must come to terms with the fact that this is who I am. Or who I'm meant to be.

Years ago, I fell in love with someone much braver than I. He could take his own pain and make something out of it, make something beautiful. I'd see him channel his frustrations into song, how he'd be able to get over it. I was never like that. I let my anger and melancholy build up, until I felt like a volcano ready to erupt. And I would erupt, and practically ruin everything in my path.

Somehow, he liked that. "You have fire," he told me. "There are not many men like that."

I fell in love with brusied knuckles and chapped lips. It was amusing, how he loved me for being fierce, when he had much more bravery in his pinky finger than I had in my entire body. He had the courage to be himself, and I'm sure right now, he's still himself, while I'm just a fool pretending to be satisfied with my miserable life. But I digress.

He could always see my hesitation. Though we had been together in many ways, there were ways we were not. At night, we'd stumble into each other and end up colliding, like a car crash. It was passionate, which only added to my shame. I couldn't accept that I liked a man, because in all I'd ever been taught, homosexuality was a disease of the mind that sways people from their designated paths. But I'd always end up under the sheets with him, for I could never deny myself the carnal pleasures.

I'd spent many nights memorizing him, drinking him in like I'll never see him again. It always felt like each night would be the last, and I wanted to make sure I'd remember him. (How could I have known that I'd remember him for the rest of my life?)

In the morning, when the sunlight crept in through the window, I'd crawl out of bed and leave, my steps calculated so I'd leave without a single noise. And I knew it hurt him; he was never ashamed, and loving a man who was certainly didn't make him feel good.

I was fooling around with him for months on end. As we grew older, our paths were divulging. Expectations were placed on me, placed on us.

"Make us proud, son," always came from my father. Their definition of proud meant the things I couldn't be. But those requests started to feel more like demands, and I drowned in them.

So, really, I knew when the last night with my love would be. I knew it, and I think he did too, as we made love. "I'm sorry," I told him, in the afterglow.

"For what?" he asked. His hand was combing through my hair, in a familiar way that crossed the line between lovers and not.

"For not being able to love you," I answered. "At least not enough to ditch everything."

Love was always so strange to me, the way you care so much about how another feels. I had realized, in the moment that his eyes shined with tears he would never let leave, that love had blindsided me. I loved him, but just not enough.

"You don't have to love me," he said. "You already did."

And it all clicked into place. The things I had been so blissfully ignorant of. We were always living on borrowed time, and I came to realize he knew this. He knew this, possibly from the beginning, and he still chose to love me.

And I kissed him. It was a goodbye, wrapped in what I believed to be my regret already slipping in. I left in the morning, and never returned again, but not because I didn't want to come back.

I had once regretted it with so much of my being that I was possessed to check up on him. It had been just a couple of months from the last time I was with him. When I found him, he was in the arms of another man, and certainly not missing me.

I was heartbroken. But I knew I had missed my one chance, a chance that would never come my way again.

As I lay beside my lover, years later, I can only reflect on this. Some days, that man is never on my mind. Most days, however, I would wonder how I would feel if I had the bravery to be in Ryan's arms.

My lover stirred from sleep, turning to face me. "What are you thinking about?" she muttered, tiredly.

Him. My only regret. For without him, I had cursed myself to this life of fake love. Thinking about how I've never truly moved on from him.

"Nothing, dear," I answered. "Just go to sleep."

"Okay," she replied, turning back around and her quiet snores filled the air.

All of this is hysterical. I should be happy. I've got a loving girlfriend and a blooming future before me, but it wasn't what I wanted.

I wanted a life between me and him, the way it should have been. If I hadn't been so afraid, I could've told him to stay.