tamingthemuse | #119 - Hide and Seek - All I Know - originalharmony

Title: All I Know
Fandom: Backstreet Boys (Music RPS)
Prompt: Hide and Seek
Warnings: RPS, slash, allusions to substance abuse, mild sexual imagery, second-person
Rating: PG - PG-13
Summary: If you want, you can find me on the dark side of the sun. Babe, I don't want to see what we've become.

When I met you, you were this dorky kid who wore blue pin-striped boxers that came down to your knees. You sat cross-legged on lumpy beds in Germany and admitted that you once played Dopey in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and made me promise not to tell any of the other guys. You wore sweatshirts that you now tell me were ugly, and I still can't tell the difference because things like that have never mattered to me but have always mattered to you. You were so innocent, so insecure; you didn't even have your piercings yet.

You put ice down my pants when I was sleeping once.

You kissed me when I was sleeping once.

You trusted me once.

Sometime in between now and then, you pierced your ears, dyed your hair every color of the rainbow, tried wearing blue contacts and, on one occasion, a blue flannel suit that even I knew was ugly, got several bad tattoos, got better ones that I couldn't look away from and didn't know why, became a strung-out addict that was nothing like the prank-pulling fifteen-year-old I once knew, and slept with more women than I could count.

You got drunk and punched me more than once, and I never told any of the guys.

You got drunk and kissed me and left and got more drunk and came back and told me you'd kissed me when I was sleeping once.

You stopped trusting me unless I was sleeping.

Even now that it's all over – you've gotten help; you aren't mad at Kevin or Nick or Howie any more – you're still mad at me, and I don't know why.

All I know is that there was a time, before things changed between us – it was in between the blue flannel suit and the addiction – that I stared like a fool whenever you put anything into your mouth. You developed a sudden habit of sucking on your pens or pencils or what ever you were writing with just then, and you used straws a lot more.

All I know is that, when I couldn't sleep at night and we were so much younger and so far away from home, I'd listen to your breathing, steady and soothing across the German hotel room, and not feel so alone. When it sped up, like it did sometimes, and I could hear the soft rustle of fabric and maybe a quiet whimper, I'd wish I was because my whole body was suddenly, uncomfortably hot. It was like I was embarrassed, but I knew I wasn't.

All I know is that I just came home to find a note saying that she's leaving, not because she doesn't love me, but because she wants me to be happy. You were the first thing I thought of, and I don't know why.