FicWad

Blood dripped from his lip, a slow trickle working its way past his chin to drip onto his shirt. The boy just sat there on the floor, head against the wall, and let the salty liquid stain his clothing. He leaned over attempting to reach the box of tissues just out of his reach to stop the blood flow but was halted by a wincing pain. His chest was bruised, a result of multiple kicks to the ribs. He lifted up his shirt and saw an unnaturally skinny chest, ribs slightly visible, with purple, blue, and green splotches forming an intricate pattern down his front. He traced the design lightly with his fingers, cringing at the pain. The blood continued to drip from his face and with a large effort he managed to half drag his body towards the box of tissues, emitting a small squeak at the pain. The skinny boy bit his lip trying to contain himself from making any sounds. Biting his lip only caused it to gush more blood from where he was punched. He gently dabbed the tissue against his bleeding mouth while cracking a hidden dry-ice pack to place on his chest. He kept the packs hidden specifically for that reason.
Just sitting there, Ryan rubbed his fingers over a pale scar on his shoulder, his thin body giving an involuntary shudder at the memory of that night. It had been one of the worst, his father had come home drunk once again, that time a wasted blonde in tow. He had heard a loud crash so snuck downstairs to see what it was only to find his dad attempting to find more beer and knocking everything over in the process. Ryan had turned around to hide quietly in his room until the morning, but his douche bag dad had spotted him.
“Look,” he slurred his words drawing the blonde closer and pointing to Ryan, “this is my faggot son.” She giggled, drunk as hell, as he continued; waving a beer can around haphazardly, “He’s a useless little fag. But that’s what I get for seeing his whore of a mother.” Normally Ryan would let the insults slide off his shoulder; he had heard them so many times. But each time he tried to pretend the words weren’t affecting him, the seemed to pierce him straight in the heart and wonder why he was alive. Instead of leaving and running back upstairs like he should have, he turned around and let the pent up anger and hate overthrow him.
“You have no fucking right to talk about my mother like that!” he had yelled back, pointing a finger accusingly, though he had never met his mother and was unsure why he was defending her. “You’re just a fucking ass hole that doesn’t deserve anybody!” Blind sighted by abhorrence, Ryan hadn’t noticed the air borne bottle until it had struck him right in the shoulder. The strength behind the throw had shattered the damn thing and had caused a gash on the boy’s left shoulder. Leaving Ryan to fend for himself with a profusely bleeding shoulder, his dad had turned around and walked right out of the house with the bitch still trailing behind him.
Ryan shivered from both the memory and the cold. The icepack on his chest felt good on the bruises, but chilled the rest of his body unbearably.. He slowly stood up and walked over to his bed before collapsing on it. Each step had hurt; he had forgotten how painful a kick to the ribs was. To Ryan the pain had started to feel good. The physical torture obscured the chaos in his mind. His sick twisted mind. The boy curled up, hating himself and everything around him; he squeezed his eyes shut as if everything would disappear and was surprised to feel a tear gently sliding down his face. Crying was one of Ryan’s pet peeves. He hated it when he did it; it was usually a sign that once again he had no control over what was going on in his life. Living days between school and praying his dad wouldn’t come home drunk again. Shutting his eyes even tighter hoping to stop the tears the frail boy fell asleep, clothes, shoes and all, with the tickle of the drying tear drop against his cheek.


Normally Ryan dreaded school. It was just another place he had to go where he was considered a freak. He’d even catch his only friend, Jon, giving him weird glances on occasion. No one knew about his dad. Maybe there were some suspicions about why he always wore long jeans and long sleeve shirts to hide his scared body, but they were all theories that he cut himself or had some deformed body hidden underneath, which actually wasn’t too far off. Yet who would care? It didn’t really matter to anyone whether he came in to school with a cut lip or black eye. After receiving yet another serving of shit on a tray, Ryan took his expected place next to Jon at their empty lunch table. Jon didn’t even acknowledge Ryan’s appearance. He sat there holding his head up with his hand, drooling a little, obviously infatuated with Spencer. Spencer was the most popular kid at school, the boy every school has. Always surrounded by the schools biggest sluts. And apparently the dream boy of Jon.
“Jon.” Ryan snapped his fingers in front of his diverted friend, obviously pissed off, “Hey. Snap out of it.”
“What?” he replied, turning around and acknowledging the other boy for the first time, “Oh hey can I borrow your math homework? I left the damn book at school.”
“Shit, we had math homework?” homework had been the last thing on his mind last night.
“Well you’re no help.”
Ryan rolled his eyes and picked at whatever was on his plate with a fork. Whenever he touched it, the “food” just kind of bounced back into place like jello. He pushed the plate away, disgusted, and attempted to find his math book in hopes of not completely failing the class.
“Dude what happened to your lip?” Jon pointed and questioned.
“Uh nothing. I just, uh, cut myself shaving.” He replied looking up. Jon just shrugged, not even caring enough to question the fact that Ryan didn’t need to shave and never had before.
“Did you hear about the new kid?” Ryan asked, a little desperate to change the topic of discussion away from his scrapes.
“Hmm sure.” Jon was hunched over his math book scribbling furiously, also attempting to finish the forgotten homework in time. “Damn it!” he cursed and continued to mumble equations Ryan couldn’t understand.
Ryan had heard about the new kid during first period. He had heard these two girls gossiping near him. Apparently he had moved from Hawaii and wore skinny jeans. In his school if you wore skinny jeans you were automatically labeled as gay which usually led to being shunned. Looking down at his own black skinny jeans, it probably explained at least one of the reasons he was hated at school. Other than that information though, the new kid seemed to be a little mystery. Ryan shrugged. What did it matter to him? He’d move here, become “corrupted” as he liked to call it, then be just another person that would make fun of him.
The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. Jon was finishing up the last equation; Ryan looked down at his empty sheet and sighed before grabbing his stuff and heading to his math class. What’s another forgotten homework assignment? He walked into class with his head down and headed toward his normal seat in the back. Ryan threw his backpack on the desk but stopped when he heard a cough. Looking up from his feet he saw a boy he had never seen before sitting in his seat, he assumed he was new. The kid was gorgeous. He had those big brown puppy dog eyes that sparkled when he smiled at Ryan. His short hair was a matching color; it was a little disheveled, but only made him look cuter.
“Am I in your seat?” the new boy kept smiling, full of bubbling energy which completely offset Ryan’s own quiet demeanor.
“Uh,” Ryan stumbled. He was a little taken aback from the beautiful kid in front of him, and his lack of people skills really didn’t help the situation. “N-no, it’s fine.” Picking up his backpack he threw it on the chair of the desk next to the new boy. Ryan struggled with his stuff, trying to pull out some older homework he had finally finished, but in the process his iPod and pens slipped out and off the desk, clanging on the floor. “Shit,” he murmured, leaning over to pick everything up. His straightened floppy brown hair fell in his eyes as he bent over, obscuring everything else but the floor, now littered with his stuff.
“Ryan, I see you’ve met Brendon.”
Ryan looked up, pens in hand, at the teacher standing above him.
“What?” he knitted his eyebrows together, wondering why the teacher was talking to him when he was one of her least favorite students.
“Ryan this is Brendon. Brendon, Ryan.” She gestured with her hands between two boys sitting next to each other.
He looked over to see the new kid, Brendon, still smiling and holding his dropped iPod out to him. Ryan gave him a once over, starting at his old gray Converses, eyes traveling up his skinny legs and feminine hips, clad in dark skinny jeans. His shirt was a deep blue v-neck, making him look delicious. Ryan shook his head, clearing the unwanted thoughts.
“I’d like you to help Brendon during class, explain our procedures and answer any question you can about the homework I’m assuming you finished.” She glared at Ryan, daring him to admit he hadn’t done the assignment like they both knew. He glared back. “And of course you can help him find his way around the school too.” The teacher from hell turned around and Ryan cringed. The last thing he needed was a hyper buddy-buddy.
“You dropped your iPod.” Brendon said, holding it out for Ryan. Did the kid ever stop smiling? He just sat there blankly and blinked at the thing until his brain registered to take the technology from Brendon. His human interaction skills really needed work.
“Thanks,” Ryan mumbled his response and just sat there, head down, and picked at the calluses on his left hand.
“You play guitar?”
“What?” Confused, Ryan looked at Brendon.
“Your fingers have calluses on them…do you play guitar?”
“Uh yeah, I do.” He smiled, trying to be somewhat polite. Some people just kind of assumed he was an extreme bitch because he was so shy.
Brendon smiled; pleased he could finally get the other boy to crack a grin. Ryan’s smile made him all the more cuter. Looking past his introverted show, he had adorable golden honey eyes and a cute little nose. Brendon giggled to himself at the thought.
“What did you do to your lip?” he asked, noticing the cut, the smile falling from his face. Ryan froze, his grin also slipping away. Shit, this kid was observant.
“Nothing, I just, uh, cut myself shaving.” He lied again.
“You don’t need to shave, and by the looks of it never have.”
“It’s nothing ok, just a cut.” Ryan said a little defensively and turned to focus on his backpack and pretend to look for something. He glanced over, eyes hidden through a wall of hair, to see Brendon still studying him. Was that a look of concern on his face? Who the hell was this kid? Ryan looked away, his eyes flickering back towards the board. He tried to focus on the teacher but often found his gaze drifting to admire the new boy’s strong profile. After what seemed like three hours of torture squeezed into a one hour class, the ball rang.
“What class do you have next?”
Looking down at his schedule, Brendon replied, “Uh, I have History with Mr. Hall.”
“So do I, I can show you were the class is.” Ryan’s initial reaction was excitement. Another class with him meant more time with Brendon, and Ryan was perfectly content to just sit there and gaze at his handsome face. But then anger flooded over him, why did he feel attracted to him? It was as if Brendon already had Ryan wrapped around his finger. Besides, this kid was too observant and seemed to care too much for Ryan’s taste.
The boys gathered their things and Ryan led Brendon along to his next class. Brendon observed the slender, almost emaciated like boy’s disposition as he walked through the hallways. His face held a pained expression, and his eyes would watch the ground, as if afraid to make eye contact with another. Through the pushing and crowding of the busy hallway, he shrunk away, made uncomfortable with the close proximity. Brendon felt sympathy for the kid, and without thinking he reached his hand around the boy’s torso and asked, “Are you ok?” Ryan’s initial reaction was to wince, Brendon’s hand had hit his bruised ribs, and he flinched at the returning pain. But then he realized what was actually happening and looked at the other boy with a look almost of shock on his face, as if this new kid would dare touch him so comfortably. He studied Brendon’s eyes, looking for an understanding on what was going on, because Ryan sure as hell didn’t know.
Brendon looked at Ryan with equal scrutiny. A normal reaction to his protective gesture was not to wince, more as not to wince with pain. He tightened his grip on the boy, and Ryan could see curiosity flaming in his glistening eyes. But when his fingers found the wound again, Ryan let out a small yelp and struggled to wiggle himself out of Brendon’s grasp. Brendon just stared at him with a questioning look in his eyes.
“I’m fine.” Ryan grumbled, remembering to answer the earlier question. He found himself asking again, who the fuck this boy was? He was a hell of a lot more observant than Jon, and seemed to care way more than he should.
“Hmm. You didn’t seem ok.” Brendon shrugged, his only response. Ryan looked at his face, hoping to generate another response while keeping his own face a blank canvas, but all he got back was the same empty expression. Brendon seemed like the type of person whose face and eyes you could only read if he wanted you to, as it was with him too. But the fact that this Hawaiian new kid could just waltz right in and start examining made him angry, and a little intrigued.
“Come on, we have to get to class.” Ryan said, snapping back to reality, “The class is right here on the right.” He gestured, walking into the classroom and tossing his backpack on the floor near his conventional seat in the back. Brendon placed his stuff next to Ryan again and they started and easy conversation about the school and teachers, ignoring the past awkwardness. When Mr. Hall walked in the class fell silent and Ryan sighed and mentally prepared himself for an onslaught of monotonous torture. Not even half the class was spent registering what the teacher was saying towards them, Ryan just picked up his pencil and absently sketched along the margins of his blank notes page. He filled the page with mindless scribbles, alternating between lyrics and deformed cubes and circles decorating the perimeter of the paper. It was the last period of the day and Ryan let his mind wander. Thinking back, he could never really remember what it exactly was he thought about during this time of the day, but his mind brushed over his annoyance at the shitload of homework, his douche bag parent, Brendon, and whatever else happened to come to his thoughts.
Glancing at the clock, Ryan let out a silent mental victory cheer, he had managed to zone out the entire class, and there was now a total of ten minutes left. He allowed himself to quietly hum under his breath, like his head was an iPod he could scroll through. The bell rang just as he was daydreaming and humming the chorus of Eleanor Rigby. Ryan gathered his stuff, remembering Brendon sitting next to him. His thoughts really did wander during ninth period.
“Do you know where your bus is?” Ryan asked Brendon, a little peppier then might have been needed. Last period had put him in a good mood, sometimes that one hour could seem endless like most other classes, but today the time had managed to just disappear.
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?” was Brendon’s response.
Ryan laughed and played along, “All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”
Brendon laughed along with him, and shrugged. “I heard you humming; I’d rather listen to that then Mr. Hall’s class from hell.”
“Dude that class is fucking torture; as soon as I walk in I’m already beating myself in the head with my binders.”
They continued to laugh and their mutual hate of the class carried the conversation until they arrived at Brendon’s bus.
“Your bus is 736 right?” Ryan asked him.
“Uh yeah”, he replied, checking the numbers scribbled on his hand, “thanks a lot for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Brendon smiled before turning around and walking onto the bus. His hips gently sashayed from side to side, accentuated by his tight jeans. Ryan turned around before he was caught there smiling like an idiot. The boy was cute, funny, and didn’t seem talk to him just out of requirement. Ryan started to walk towards his bus, his hopes bobbing up and down; alternating between happiness and disappointment that it was too good to be true. He didn’t deserve anyone like Brendon. But he had also only known the kid for one day…his thoughts ran in endless circles. Settling down on his bus seat he sighed and shrunk into his seat, music pouring from his ear buds sheltering him from the outside world. He made sure the music was playing loud enough to make every other thought incoherent.
The bus rolled up to Ryan’s stop, he was so engrossed in his own little musical world that he wouldn’t have even noticed the stop except for the extreme whiplash provided by the incompetent driver. Ryan rolled his eyes as he stepped off the bus; the driver was a fucking druggie. He started the walk to his house down the street, looking forward to being able to just crash on his bed, curl up, and forget the world for a little bit. As the bus rolled away, Ryan caught the sound through his ear buds of a senior yelling “Fag!” out the window. He flinched, like the words had been a physical blow to his frame. The boy just turned up the music as loud as was possible. He could feel the drum beats thumping through the headphones and his body, matching his stride against the pavement.
Ryan reached his house at the end of the street. It was a tiny house, on the outside it was covered in cream colored panels, but the paint had started to chip. Adding the house’s age, it was looking a little run down, which essentially it was. The door slammed behind him as he walked in and his backpack hit the ground with a thud by his shoes. Ryan ran up the stairs to the call of his comforting room.
The room was small, with dull white walls. His desk was in one corner, covered in stacks of magazines, books, CDs, and whatever else had managed to find its home strewn across the surface. He had a few small bookshelves in the other corner of his room and each of its contents was meticulously placed compared to the rest of his cluttered room. On the shelves were hundreds of CDs, ranging from Fall Out Boy to Mozart; piles of DVD’s he’d like to watch on his tiny television on his bureau; and more magazines and books, most of which he had either read at least twice or never even picked up before.
Ryan fell on his back onto his twin bed with limbs hanging off the edge as his bed was too small to accommodate his teenage body. The boy just laid there and stared at the ceiling, not really thinking about anything, just sprawled across his mattress. Through his lethargic stupor, Ryan leaned over to grab his guitar sitting in its stand. It was an acoustic Ibanez, and though worn, seeing it was the only guitar he had ever owned, it still produced quality sound and Ryan was content to sit there and finger pluck a simple melody. Still lying on his back on his bed, he switched to strum a slower song, one of the first he had written himself in 8th grade. His slender fingers moved quickly over the frets, switching from chord to chord, as his right hand worked the strings. The song was slow and had almost a haunting feel to it, but it made Ryan smile. The guitar slowly slid from his fingers, the chord still echoing out as his eyelids fluttered shut.
The loud slam of the door woke Ryan up.