you remind me of home

Guh. I'm going kind of insane over here (let's please to be ignoring the fact that I'm definitely probably maybe insane already, mmmkay?). This fic is eating my brain.

I seem to live in a fantastical world where Ryan Ross is not merely a girl but a transsexual. Shall I take you there, y/y?


It's dark and smoky in the club where he first sees her. She's on stage, a performer dressed in a can-can dress with an ostrich feather tucked into her hair and intricate make-up that covers half of her face. But even so she's the prettiest girl in the room.

Brendon sits alone in a darkened booth, half-watching from the corners of his eyes - as though it makes him less conspicuous, less recognizable should anyone he knows or, god forbid, his parents know happen into this shady club on the wrong side of town and spot him across the dusky room. He doesn't even come here often, but tonight he decides perhaps it's time for that to change.

The girl, she's a waitress here too, he notes, and maybe he asks the tall, graceful boy who brings him his Shirley Temple for her name. The boy just laughs, though, and shakes his head. Brendon pouts sourly over his drink for the next half-hour. He doesn't get the joke.

Sometime near the end of the night, however, he finally plucks up the courage to go over and say hello. "Hi, I'm Brendon," he exhales and she smiles at him coyly and replies, "Lola."

"Like the song?" he asks, trying to stretch the conversation. She's already eying the next table.

"Yes."

"I've always liked Copacabana," Brendon gushes. "Rod Stewart - big, big fan."

She laughs and he can see her Adam's apple bob. His throat tightens. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"The song. Your name? Her name was Lola. She was a show girl," he starts to sing, and he's well aware how much of as ass he's making of himself but she's grinning at him and giggling so he starts snapping his fingers to the beat and doing a rather poor imitation of the Charleston. "With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there! She would merengue..."

He finishes with a big flourish and some jazz hands, and Lola claps as do a couple of the patrons at the table beside them. Brendon blushes and takes a bow before turning back to her, and his stomach flutters a bit to see that Lola's beaming at him with a brilliant white smile. "I thought you meant the one by The Kinks," she chuckles, and he grimaces.

"Uh," he answers, because he hadn't even thought of that. "I could do that one for you too."

"Some other time," she tells him, laughing again. "I've got to get back to work. But you have a really beautiful voice."

Brendon grins at the compliment and catches her hand, and before he even knows it he's saying, "Maybe this Saturday?" Her eyes go wide and yeah, Brendon's a little shocked that he's being this forward too but he really likes this girl and, "Please?"

"I don't think so. I work Saturdays."

"Tuesday, then. This Tuesday."

She surveys him carefully but his smile only wides with his growing nerves and his eyes are wide and hopeful. Really, he doesn't leave her any choice. She sighs.

"Do you have a pen?"



Thoughts, comments, offers to pay my psychiatric bills?