Title: It Was A Beautiful Letdown
Author: Seasonal Dreamer
Author's Note: Hi guys! Okay, so I'm back :D haha and this is kind of a one-shot I just put together after listening to 'The Beautiful Letdown' by Switchfoot :P lol I was inspired :D haha so I hope you guys like it and that you haven't all given up on me :P
Read and Review please!
It was a beautiful let down
When I crashed and burned
When I found myself alone unknown and hurt
It was a beautiful let down
The day I knew
That all the riches this world had to offer me
Would never do
Dylan had never thought it possible. Love. It sounded so foreign in his ears. What was love anyway? Love made people weak, as his father had repeatedly told him when his parents had gotten a divorce. Love was make believe, a fantasy. Love only hurt and turned people into fools. His father didn't believe in a lot of things, but love was a big one.
So how could one boy, after years of these lectures being engraved in Dylan's brain, just come along and change everything? How could one boy give Dylan the courage to challenge his strict father's ideals? How could someone possibly have that kind of power over him?
Dylan didn't know how, but he supposed that was the mystery of it all. He'd do anything for that boy, Marco. Anything. And that alone spelled it out.
In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt
I was trying so hard to fit in, fit in,
Until I found out
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong
But I don't belong
He remembered the exact moment when Marco had ever so bashfully walked into his life with that bright smile of his. His dark hair and eyes seemed to radiate his optimistic personality and Dylan couldn't help but get sucked in whenever he was within fifty feet of him. It was intoxicating. He just couldn't get enough.
But there was one problem.
He wasn't supposed to be gay.
It was a beautiful let down
When you found me here
Yeah for once in a rare blue moon I see everything clear
I'll be a beautiful let down
That's what I'll forever be
One of his father's famous lectures involved his extreme hatred towards homosexuals. Dylan had never thought too much about it himself. His father had just told him they were sick and wrong, and that was all Dylan had ever known. He'd never questioned why all the girls he'd ever met he'd never found attractive. Dylan just assumed that the right one had never come along.
Until Marco, of course.
And while Dylan may not have thought about guys as often as some people might've thought, he certainly thought about Marco. Sometimes he didn't even mean to. Sometimes he even tried not to think about him for the very fear that his father had implanted in his head; that he'd fall in love. That he'd get hurt. But no matter how hard he tried, Dylan just couldn't forget him. He hadn't even known him that well at the time. He'd just spend his lunch periods wandering around, almost subconsciously looking for him until he found Marco laughing or talking to someone enthusiastically in the hallway. At which point Dylan would instantly jump behind a corner, peek around it, and grin softly to himself at the boy's bubbly nature.
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free
We're still chasin' our tails and the rising sun
And our dark water planet's
Still spinning in a race
Where no one wins and no one's won
Dylan had been discovered one day, however, and he'd marked this day as the beginning of the end for him and his will power. He'd been peering around a corner, this time fully aware of who he was looking for, and found Marco's piercingly dark eyes lock on to his startled blue ones as though expecting him. His breath had caught, expecting Marco to demand why he was, more or less, stalking him, but Marco had simply looked at him...and smiled. He smiled at him like they were best friends. He didn't bring everyone's attention to him, embarrass him, nothing.
And that's when Dylan knew that Marco was not only adorable, he was...kind. Considerate and friendly. The teen could name a thousand people who would've gotten angry or creeped out at least. No, this boy...Marco was different.
Marco was special.
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I'm gonna set sight and set sail for the kingdom come
I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong
But I don't belong
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
Kingdom come
Your kingdom come
And when the time came for Dylan to tackle the tedious task of driving his little sister and her friends to the beach, only to find that Marco was one of them, well...that came as quite a shocker. Dylan couldn't take his eyes off of him the entire time. No, Dylan had thought stubbornly. He wasn't gay, and neither was Marco. But the very thought of the younger boy sharing his smile with some girl, kissing and perhaps serenading her made him sick to his stomach. No one understood him like he did. No one deserved the smile that he was declared rightfully his.
Dylan decided to make sure no one ever took that away from him. So he talked to him, and he was surprised, though he really shouldn't have been, to find that he had made him laugh and smile wider than he ever had. Dylan's own heart beat pounding in his chest...
Won't you let me down yeah
Let my foolish pride
Forever let me down
Months seemed to go by before Dylan's very smitten eyes, and before he knew it he and Marco had become best friends. They hung out almost every day, and every night Dylan would go to bed with a giggle in his throat and a smile on his lips. No one had ever seen Dylan so, well, giddy. His father had only told him the negative parts about love, but what he didn't tell him was how invinsible you felt when you had someone to love.
And Dylan did. All he ever wanted to do anymore was hold him. Kiss him. Whisper in his ear and hear that beautiful laugh of his. See that radiant smile. Dylan knew that despite his damn refusal to accept the truth in the beginning, he needed to make it official.
But that was the daunting aspect of it. Dylan, brave and adventurous by nature, now had to second guess himself. He needed to win Marco over honestly in order to gain access, not simply by buying or pleading his way into his heart. This was new for him, but then again...along with Marco had come a lot of firsts. Things were just always a little bit different when it came to Marco, no matter what it was about. And it was scary. It was terrifying how much time Dylan spent day dreaming about him, wondering about him, spending time with him. Liking him. He'd never felt this way before, and the foreignness of it made him feel like hiding. Never had he been so confused yet so sure of his feelings before.
Easy living, not much like your name
Easy dying, you look just about the same
Won't you please take me off your list
Easy living please come on and let me down
Yet perhaps that was the reason Dylan had made the biggest mistake of his life.
His father's words had never left him. 'Love will get you no where, Dylan. Love will only hurt you. It's best to stay away.' They rung in his ears each and every time him and Marco were apart. When his clouded and enamoured brain could think more clearly. What if Marco left him? Heck, it'd happened to millions of people all over the world, why not him? Why not have his heart shatter too? 'A wise man never loves, and leaves before he is left.' This was his father's favourite quote. His 'quote of the day' so to speak, yet it was the same one every day. Dylan's paranoid brain imagined up tension in Marco's shoulders and distance in his eyes when all Marco ever did was love him. He conjured up guilt in Marco's face and anger when it wasn't there. Dylan was making himself crazy until he finally snapped.
And cheated on him.
Of course, Marco had found out not too long afterwards, and the sharp pain in his lover's eyes brought the older boy back to reality. All those months of thinking he saw signs that Marco was losing interest were wrong. Marco had given Dylan everything he had, and he had simply thrown that all away.
Dylan had been horrified at what he'd done. He had somehow in one swift movement ensured that Marco would leave by 'throwing the first punch.' That was a very dark time for Dylan. He remembered crying to hours, each and every day and never sleeping. The blue eyed boy remembered seeing a broken Marco walking through the halls, holding himself as if afraid that if he let go he would fall apart. It was pain beyond pain. All he could think was that this was Hell. No, scratch that. Hell wasn't even that bad. How could he stand seeing the love of his life gliding through existence as a ghost of his former self, never smiling that smile that he had held so dear. Never hearing that laugh that he treasured or seeing his eyes sparkle in that quirky way whenever they landed on his own.
How could he live without that?
We are a beautiful let down,
Painfully uncool,
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures and the fools
Oh what a beautiful let down
Are we salt in the wound
Let us sing one true tune
It took a long time. Many weeks of pleading and begging and apologizing for Marco to trust him again. And even now, Dylan sadly could tell in the way that he looked at him some times that he was waiting for him to leave. But he would never do that again.
Because he had finally figured something out for himself. His father had been wrong. Love wasn't the enemy. In fact, love was what made life worth living. A wise man may leave before he is left, but a strong and content man stayed even after he had been told to leave. Maybe, if you could leave someone so easily because of your own selfish agenda, then maybe you had never learned to love in the first place. Maybe you had never learned to trust with everything you had or woken up to find your entire reason for living lying right next to you, almost heart-breakingly perfect. And, perhaps, if you could force yourself to never experience these simple miracles in life, were you ever that wise to begin with?
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
Feels like I don't belong here
Let me down
Let me down
Feels like I'm let down
Let me down.
'Cause I don't belong here
Love was a fickle being. It brought the greatest joy in existence, but if you beat around it too much, if you never learn to give in to it, it could bring you the biggest heart ache in the world. In the end, it wasn't so much whether or not love decided to find you. More often than not, it did. No, the question, rather, would be that when it did, would you let down the walls you've built against it and simply listen?
Please
Won't you let me down?
Tehe :) What do you think?