Unfinished (With Fear in Your Smile) [prologue]

[longerthanwedo]

Title: Unfinished (With Fear in Your Smile) [prologue]
Author: longerthanwedo 
Beta: melody_so_sweet 
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan for now.
Rating: PG-13
POV: 3^rd, Brendon centric.
Summary: He’s writing in blood; a feeble attempt to finish the story. The story of his life, of him and him and him. It’s a story of life, of love, of lions and fireworks and years gone by. It’s a story of blood, plenty of blood.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. Title and inspiration from Something Corporate.
Author’s Note: About this time last year I started writing my first chaptered fic. This one is new, different, and just barely beginning. And this prologue is very very short, but the rest will be longer. Feedback is awesome and will help me get going on this. Let’s see where it takes us.

 

He’s writing in blood.

 He’s spilling his life onto paper already stained brown with coffee, once sweet-smelling and now soaked up by fiber and age. Coffee and blood, maybe a few tears, dried for hours now.

He’s writing in blood; a feeble attempt to finish the story. The story of his life, of him and him and him. It’s a story of life, of love, of lions and fireworks and years gone by. It’s a story of blood, plenty of blood.

He jabs his pen into the page, bright red searing through, but he finds that words are out of reach. They won’t surface in his mind, won’t come out of hiding long enough to make their way onto the page. It’s because they extend behind his blood, deeper, past muscle and into bone. And into the blood of others.

This story, it’s not just his. It’s composed from a jumble of lives, interlocking lives, and the stories of people long gone. All their minds, hearts, bones, all scattered across the world, even beyond. All this, he thinks, is why his story is unfinished.

He’s tired. All this blood, he thinks, all my blood, blood from my body that I’m sacrificing for the sake of my story. It’s making me tired. He thinks of the others, how weary they must be. They must feel the tug of his exhaustion, for they’re all a part of this.

He looks down at his paper, red splotches and scratches and smears. He puts his pen to the surface, only to find that it’s gone dry. His blood has run out.

He blinks his eyes and the red fades to black, innocent ink staring up at him. Ink, just ink, but it feels like blood. Because the words cut into him, sharp as any knife. This unfinished story burns him, piercing right through to his heart.

He sets down his pen, closes his eyes, and retreats through that hole in his chest. He pulls himself right back to the beginning of his story, and relives it.