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The pain seared through his body like a knife plunging its way into his chest and twisting, slowly but surely. His chest tightens as that low, guttural clicking sound tears its way out. It’s loud, proud, just like how he was. Is? He wasn’t himself now was he? The clicking, it becomes more frequent as he tries and tries to communicate, to say what he really wants to say. He notes as the footsteps, Rolan’s, stop. The lawyer is staring at him and he can tell. Every scar, freckle and tattoo, they’re all on display for him to see now. The rockstar is frozen in place, his body tightening up on itself and shuddering. His neck was craned up to the sky above and a sickeningly sweet smell embraced every single sense he had.
It was like a drug; addictive. Kian wouldn’t ever get enough from it, it felt. It was addicting in the sense that it felt like he would die if he tried to ignore it, if he tried to sober up. Like something and someone he once knew.
As this feeling overwhelmed him, he cried deep down. Every imperfection, every crack and crevice of who he was was out for display. This.. drug was different than anything he’d ever had and he’s basically tried everything he could get his hands on for every sliver of reality, joy and a never ending high. A never ending trip of happiness. This was different. It overwhelmed his nose, that burning yet sweet smell making itself familiar, and his mind, fogging up his memories and any hope he had of trying to fight back against this. It has the high and the crash in the one sweep, it was something he would never forget ever. He felt on top of the world, yet six feet under at the same time.
Salty tears well up in his eyes, which like his mind, was fogging. Normally excited and bright eyes were now dull and bland, as if all emotion were sucked from his body with his life. The foggy appearance made his eyes look glossy, even. From an outsider’s perspective, you would think he was dead yet walking. From Rolan’s perspective, it was like watching the life of the party die out, a light he wouldn’t see in any other slowly go out.
Yet for Kian, it was like everything had become clear.
His vision, it darkened at the edges, black spots of pure nothing taking over his sight. His eyes pretty much rolled into the back of his head, and that was one sense down.
The tightness and the tensity of his body seemed to leave as this sickly addictive smell took more of a grasp on his being, on his will. His want to escape, to run away. It felt like he belonged somewhere, for once. Wasn’t that crazy? In all the years of his life, he felt like he never belonged. Maybe it was because he wasn’t boyish enough to be seen as a boy, loudly parading wherever he went, and hair that was long and unkept. His appearance was too feminine to class him as a boy, a soft face that would get him away with anything. Every boy his age thought he was a girl, but even with the girls he never fit in. He wasn’t girlish enough to be seen as much of a girl either. So why now did that sense of belonging cloud his mind?
Build, expand, protect, build, expand, protect…
That thought repeated in his mind. Over and over and over. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. Not even his own thoughts. Not even Rolan. He couldn’t hear anything but that anymore. Build, expand, protect. Kian had no idea at all what any of it meant, but it also made sense to him in that way.
The next thing that slowly broke its way into his mostly empty mind was that melody. Her song. Their song. He could close his eyes and listen to it forever if needs be. It was perfect. The lyrics, the melody and the rhythm. Everything she did was perfect to him, nothing she could do would ever come his way as wrong. It would always be right. Becky, his Becky, she was perfect in every way, he can clearly imagine it. Them, together, at their spot under their tree, holding tightly to the other in fear that something happens. That they get separated and then he’s alone again, unaware if she’s alive, if she’s okay.
The rockstar feels as if he’s splitting in two, memories rushing like no tomorrow. They tell the tale of two different lives.
One is the tale of a boy, long, unkempt hair and a personality that makes him stand out in all the wrong ways. All the ways that make him wrong, a sinner. He never cared too much. He was shunned and shunned since birth. He was loud, and acted out. He had two friends, one of which he liked more than he should. He liked him in secret, it would be wrong for anybody to learn of, to find out. He’d cling to people he shouldn’t and he’d drown trying to find his footing. He’d drown trying to find love, trying to find someone who would love the same amount as he loved.
His love was unnatural. It was wrong. No kid his age would or should love like that.
As the messy child grew and grew, his love did too. He’d wait and he’d wait for that lover to come, someone he could sink his rotting teeth into and show how bad he needed to express his love. It would be beautiful, it would be messy. As he grew older, his love for a rebellious girl did. Then she left. Then his love, he felt it overwhelm him. Again and again. He was met with rejection after rejection, and adulthood was not any bit nicer to him. Nobody met his needs, he never met anybody that he could smother with love. They were all here then they left. Though he was used to that at this stage. Scars upon scars built up on his body, darker times consumed the lover’s mind.
The memories struck the rockstar familiar, as the smell of home. This lover’s home. It was faint and then it was forgotten. Was this his life?
The other memories continue on this, but it’s wrong.
It’s the same story, the same boy. But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. It’s like he was made to never fit in. It was like he was made to be met with negativity. Over and over again. It hurt the rockstar to see, to watch. He watches the two stories back to back, but they both look so wrong. Is that supposed to be him? Was that who he was supposed to be? A kid who never knew what the right love felt like? A kid who would never face a normal childhood?
Kian watches as the two lives progress, and one seems to get worse than the other. The darker moments are almost pure darkness, with no hope of ever seeing any light in the bad. He watches as the worse story spirals into how he would find drunks, groupies, anybody he could to try and infest with his horrible thoughts of what love was. Like an eagle finding his prey, he’d sink his talons into anybody and everybody he could, and he would try to make them stay. It made him unbearable. It made him horrible.
The man winces with the familiar sting. Rejection after rejection, every single day of his life.
Now the stories are the same again, but one’s more light hearted than the other. It shows the affection, the love he so longed to feel, the love he’s been idolising his whole life. He found somebody in this tale, and he likes this outcome much more than the other where he’s left to die alone. The other one, it portrays betrayal, fighting. The lover is met with more rejection there than anything, it portrays a death.
He died because of love.
The lover died and it was all because of how mind consuming his poison he called love was.
That was life. That darker story was his life. Kian’s hand travels to his throat as he reminisces on that burning sensation. The same sensation made his throat close up, it was hard to breathe. So he scrambled away from that love, the one he risked it all for. The one that got away. His blonde hair felt matted as he pressed his back to the rough bark of their oak tree. She was so unphased, so unalarmed at this. She knew, didn't she?
In every case, he thought that his love, which was considered a poison and wrong, would kill somebody. Never did he think it would be the other way around.
The pale tattooed hand, it reaches for the light hearted tale. He wants to live that life, laying there happily with the woman he would kill for. He wanted that life, the life where he was met with equal love, where he never ever felt entirely outcasted. Reality was horrible to Kian Stone, so why would he want to ever remember living it? Why would he willingly remember the low that was the bane of his existence, the reason he felt so wrong now? Reality was this consistent low point for Kian, but this. This story, this wholehearted story, it could be his. This fantasy could be his, all he would have to do is give in. This life he so very wished for, it could all be his. He’d just have to ignore and forget everything about himself. He didn’t mind, because it felt right.
As his mind is clouded by the thoughts of her, their song, the melody and the rhythm, and this new life, he hears a scream and a sob.
Rolan. The lawyer. His friend that he’d fallen for all those years ago. He wanted to tune it out, he wanted to tune it out so badly, and he wanted to ignore how wrong he was for ever seeing the lawyer as anything more. It was these thoughts that hurt him in reality, he didn’t want it to ruin his fantasy too. He wanted– no, he needed this fantasy to be perfect. The thoughts of what his life could be is washed away as his sight comes back to him. He would never have that as his reality.
He gasps and grunts, that pain in his chest fainter than how it was before. Kian moves his head down, and he’s staring the absolute best he can at the suited man turning and running heel.
This is why you should never love, he scolds himself mentally.
A click comes from his throat before he can talk. Each word is strained. He’s in pain, his body, it’s painfully shifting to host something, someone new. He’s in pain and his first ever love is running from him. It felt like a stab to the heart, but amidst the tune that plays on a loop in the back of his mind, he’s okay with it. He has her now, he only ever needed her.
“I was a phony too,” He gets out. It’s weak, but it’s enough to get Rolan’s attention. “I never really was a real rockstar.”
A phony. Some stupid kid with too big of dreams for him to accomplish. He doesn’t notice as the concern and confusion settles itself on the lawyer’s face. A phony. That’s all Kian Stone was, but maybe he didn’t have to be. Build, expand, protect. It rings in his ears, and his head cranes back up to the sky. He was a phony, a big fat fucking phony, he’d never escape that about him. He was a phony, one not worthy of even having a title of being a rockstar.
As that sweet smell engulfs his senses again, the phony manages out one last sentence to his friend. His friend is halfway out of earshot, but wishful thinking had the blonde hoping he would hear it.
“Thanks for always believing I was.”
And his eyes rolled back into his head once more.
Which left Kian Stone to be no more. This form wasn’t his own anymore. He didn’t have a form to belong to. This body wasn’t his own anymore; he gave it up. He gave it all up for love. His mind, his free will, everything.
He gave everything up. All for her.
All to relive the memories of her warm hands trailing his freckles and scars reassuringly as they laughed and sung songs that didn’t make any sense to everyone else.