💦 RoadTrip One Shot Collection 💦

Rye | Heartbreak Hurts

A/N: I might delete this one at some point but I got in my feels so might as well post

* r y e *

I'm five years old, and I fall off the jungle-gym. There's blood pouring down my leg from a messy gash on my knee. It's puddling in my sock as I stand up on shaky legs, teeth clamping down on my wobbling lower lip. It's still stinging as I walk it off, pretending it isn't there. If they see I'm hurting, they'll know that I fell down. And Rye Beaumont never falls.

I never fall into anything. I never trip, I never falter. I didn't fall into you, I leapt. I rose with you into love. We held each other so tightly, I didn't even realise I'd been leaning on you until you let go.

I'm nineteen years old and we're sharing our first cigarette. I never wanted to smoke before because smoking takes the edge off things and I've never had an edge that needed softening. But now for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm slipping, because I can't get this one pair of blue eyes out of my brain, and I'm not enjoying the feeling of something being inside me that I didn't put there myself with careful intention. Thankfully, I have you to tell me it's okay. I have you to lean on and cough with through the smoke until it doesn't burn anymore. I have you to make me calm and grounded, although from now on I can at least pretend it's the nicotine.

I'm twenty one years old and I'm scared because I'm so in love and it hasn't gone away. Even though it's not the love I chose to let into my life. The love that every time I tried to give away to someone other than him it came back returned to sender. I have to chain smoke my way through the pack because I'm at a party and if I'm not out here with my lips occupied I'll be inside wrapping them around something far more addictive and dangerous, and you're not here to stop me tonight. So the smoke will have to fill in for now.

I think about smoking, and how I don't feel bad about doing it because if I'm smoking I'm not stressed or making terrible decisions, it's making me calm and making me creative, and I think about how confusing it is that there can be subjective good in an objective harm.

I need you, my friend, and I need my distractions, because they're the only things that can support me when love knocks my shaky knees out from under me. I can lean on you and pretend I didn't fall in the first place.

I'm twenty-three and my heart is breaking for the first time. It knocks me off my feet and leaves me completely breathless, because I didn't see this one coming. Because it didn't come from the place I expected it to. Not from the ones I tried to love but couldn't. Not even from the one I tried not to love but couldn't stop. It came from the one person who I had trusted to hold me up when I was hurting and keep my secret for me. It came from you.

Now I'm down, I'm in more pain than ever, and all I can do is what I've always done- pretend it doesn't exist- because that's all I know. But without you there to help me through it, pretending is too hard, and once again my choice is taken away and I just have to let myself feel it.

I don't think we miss people. I think we miss feelings. We miss the feelings we attach to the memories that were such a special part of our narrative, memories that you tarnished and stole and gave back with the wrong ending. I'm not sad that we didn't work, I'm angry. Betrayed. Even if I had a part to play, I wasn't the one to cut the cord, to destroy everything we'd carefully built.

I am so, so angry with you, because I thought you were safe to love when you weren't.

I'm trying my absolute best, but I'm learning there's no easy clinical way to cut a person out of your life. The more tangled you are, the more messy the scar, and we were more tangled up than I'd ever cared to admit. When we separated we were bound to leave little shards of shrapnel embedded in each other's skin, sharp pieces that seem to keep unearthing themselves as soon I think I've dug the last of them out and am finally ready to heal. They're still just there beneath the surface, waiting for one of us to make a wrong move before they reveal themselves.

You're gone, and I'm left with nothing but raw painful emotions and a wound that won't stop bleeding. I'm left with nothing but the person I leaned on you to avoid needing in the first place, and I never wanted to be in the position where he was all I had because then I would have no choice but to fall into him completely.

But instead of helping me up, giving me a new shoulder to lean on to replace the one that you swept out from under me, he kneels beside me and holds my hand. He tells me it's okay to cry and for the first time in my life I actually feel like it is.

I'm not used to my pain being permitted. I'm not used to my wounds being kissed.

You broke me, and finally I'm going to let myself break. I'm going to let myself fall. I'm going to let myself hurt and not pretend that it doesn't. I'm going to let him hold me and kiss my scars until they mean something more to me than just a missing piece of you.

A/N: This is still fanfiction so don't take it deep, just in some rye feels. I don't speak about drama and I don't wanna discuss it in comments or anything, but I will say one hot take: the only person who broke rye beaumont's heart in 2019 is mikey cobban.