Ryden Oneshots

From A Pretty Mouth

Summary: “Are you wearing lip gloss?” Spencer asked as he passed by the two boys right when Brendon pursed his lips in the mirror.
“Damn right I am!” Brendon exclaimed, and grinned at the drummer.  “It tastes like strawberries.”

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It didn’t take long for Brendon to agree with Ryan’s makeup idea when he had brought it up.  He had simply shrugged, said “Why the hell not,” and sat as quietly as he could while Ryan put eyeliner on him.

Spencer only let Ryan put makeup on him once in a while, and Ryan knew that it was only because they had known each other since they were five, and some things just weren’t worth stupid arguments.  Jon was a little better than Spencer.  He didn’t really care one way or the other, and would let Ryan line his eyes, but still shied away from any other experimentation.

Ryan liked to experiment with his own makeup.  He liked to find new patterns to draw, new techniques to try.  On himself, Ryan was all about the eyes.  He liked to emphasize them, decorate them, but on Brendon, Ryan was always drawn to something different. 

When it came to Brendon, it wasn’t his eyes, it was his lips.

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The first time that Ryan had gone makeup shopping by himself, he had felt slightly ridiculous, but over time, he had learned to brush off the looks of other customers.  It was unlikely that he would ever see them again anyway.

Usually, when he walked down the beauty aisle, Ryan headed straight for the eyeliner, but earlier that day, when he and Brendon were hanging out in the back of the bus, Ryan’s eyes kept rushing back to Brendon’s lips. 

When he found himself in front of the wall of different lip glosses, Ryan immediately blamed his subconscious.

It was stupid, he knew that, but he couldn’t help but want to see Brendon in lip gloss, want to see his lips wet with shine, maybe tinged with a little bit of color.  He wondered if Brendon would wear it for him if he asked, and he let his eyes scan across the displays.

Ryan had never realized how many different kinds of lip gloss there were.  Not just how it was packaged: roll on, stick, container, wand, but the flavors, seemingly every taste ever thought of.  There were even some that claimed to make the lips bigger, and even though Ryan didn’t think that Brendon really needed that, he threw one into his cart along with the other lip glosses.

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“What the hell?” Brendon asked when Ryan had talked to him about possibly wearing lip gloss.

“I think it’ll be good for the show,” Ryan defended, not meeting Brendon’s eyes, picking at the hard cardboard back of one of the vials of lip gloss.  “You know, you sing, so it only makes sense to draw attention to your mouth.”

Brendon cocked his head questioningly, and Ryan knew that no, his reasoning really didn’t make that much sense actually.

“Plus it’s good for your lips,” Ryan continued on.  “Helps with chapped skin and all that.”  He thought that there would be no way that Brendon would buy his half-thought out reasons, but Brendon relented.