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ryan starts drinking at fourteen. his dad sits him down at the table, hands him a few glasses, gets him wasted. it’s the only time ryan feels close to him, the only times he feels like he can relate — when they’re both stumbling around, talking with slurred words, listening to each other’s sob stories.
the house always reeks afterwards. ryan tries to get away from it, away from the smell. ten years on, he’ll walk past a brewery and puke. it’s forever ingrained in his head, a storm of bad memories and regrets. he’d take it all back if he could.
at seventeen, ryan drinks because he has to. he doesn’t like the high anymore, doesn’t like how giddy he feels because he hasn’t felt like that since the first time. he drinks because it’s the only thing he has. he had his mother, but she left. he had his siblings, but they went with her. he’s never had his father.
brent, spencer, and him make a really shitty band. they do covers, and ryan sings, but his voice is shot from all the beer. brent and spencer don’t mind, though. music doesn’t seem to be as big of a thing to them as it is to him. he has his alcohol, but one day that’ll be gone, and then all he’ll have are some instruments and a rusty voice.
brendon is a skinny kid from ryan’s music class. he plays every instrument known to mankind and sings like an angel. ryan compares him to beer. everything evens out, but in the end ryan decides that brendon tastes sweeter.
pete wentz, this mopey bassist from another band, signs them to his record label. they’re his First Band which is a Big Deal. ryan doesn’t think it is, but he likes pete. he always tries hard to manipulate his words into something beautiful, always is surrounded by an air of faux poetry. ryan doesn’t mind, though. he needs fake in his life.
they’re getting big and they’re spending more time together. ryan learns things about brendon that he never thought he’d learn. he doesn’t eat, for one — all his energy comes from energy drinks and coffee, from adhd and anxiety, but none from food. he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t coax him to eat. he just finds it kind of funny because he’d always thought that he was the most fucked up one of them.
one day, as he sits in the back of the van with brendon, straddling his guitar, he blurts, “the only time i feel full is when i’m drunk.”
brendon doesn’t miss a beat with his response. “the only time i feel full is when i’m empty.”
/
they have a week between shows and brendon goes to food therapy. he comes back everyday looking more tired than the one before, looking so exhausted that ryan sometimes thinks it would be better if he just didn’t eat. because now he’s being forced to, and he always looks so unhappy, so much like ryan. he doesn’t like it.
as brendon slowly falls into a pit, ryan starts going back to the bar. he’d taken a break when they were on tour, only got drunk after shows. he has no reason to do that now.
as he downs glasses of beer, he thinks of brendon’s ribs. how they poke through his shirt and how he could hold bottles in them. they’re both dying, but in different ways. ryan thinks that brendon’s is more memorable.
he comes back to the hotel so wasted that spencer kicks him out, yelling that he’s a bad influence for brendon, who needs to be recovering. he wonders if spencer ever stopped to think that maybe he needs help, too.
/
brendon passes out on stage in a concert and that’s the final straw. the ambulance takes him away, pumping his body full of artificial fluids, trying to make it work again. it’s finally caving in on itself, finally trying to die.
ryan sits in the dressing room with a bottle of beer. pete joins him with a pack of cigarettes and takes the bottle away.
“you shouldn’t drink so much, you know — it’ll fuck you up when you’re older.”
he looks at him with blank eyes and says, “i’m already as fucked up as i’m gonna get, wentz. hand over the beer.”
pete shrugs and gives it back, taking a drag of his cigarette. the smoke swirls in the air, a reflection of ryan’s emotions right now. “brendon’s gonna be fine, you know.”
“yeah, i do.” he looks at his hands, marked with scratches from last week when he threw a bottle. “can we do something? to get my mind off everything?”
pete blinks. “you wanna make out?”
ryan shrugs.
pete tastes stale. he doesn’t taste sweet like brendon.
/
brendon goes to rehab after the hospital. he kisses ryan on the cheek, lips cold to touch. “i love you,” he says, but it doesn’t mean anything. he’ll be gone for the next month, supposedly healing. ryan is scared that when he comes back he’ll be a new person. a different person. ryan likes brendon like he is now.
he holes himself up in his apartment and writes bad poetry while brendon is away. pete comes over sometimes with his cigarettes and stale breath, and sure they fuck, but there isn’t anything beautiful about it. he won’t write about pete like he does brendon. pete is a cemetery, a lukewarm cup of coffee, the smog setting over los angeles every morning; brendon is a patch of daisies, a kaleidoscope, the smell of dew in the morning.
alcohol and brendon are almost synonymous in ryan’s head. he feels conflicted about both, feels like he could continue without either if he ever wants to. the days begin to drag on and, after so many days without brendon, the alcohol starts to taste sweeter.
in this world, everyone is allowed to choose their own poison. at fourteen, ryan chose alcohol.