THERE’S NO MODERN ROMANCE

Claimer: Characters, story, plot (what plot?!) are all mine. Ask if you want to use them, ne? The title was inspired by Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song “Modern Romance”. The lyrics below belong to them too. Download it and have a listen, they rock.

Rating: PG-13, for now.

Warnings: Shounen-ai/yaoi/slash, anything that means two boys being in love; swearing, a plot that doesn’t know where it’s going, and no more for now.

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Baby I’m afraid of a lot of things
But I ain’t scared of loving you
Baby I know you’re afraid of a lot of things
But don't be scared of love
’Cause people will say all kinds of things
That don't mean a damn to me
’Cause all I see is what's in front of me
And that’s you

Well, I’ve been dragged all over the place
I’ve taken hits time just don't erase
And baby I can see you've been fucked with too
But that don't mean your loving days are through
’Cause people will say all kinds of things
That don't mean a damn to me
’Cause all I see is what's in front of me
And that’s you

Well I may be just a fool
But I know we’re just as cool
And cool kids they belong together…

Chapter One: A tangible embodiment of Love as Disappointment

LOVE.

It's why chicks like romantic comedies. It's a parent's favourite excuse for laying down so many cumbersome and varied rules (ie. Son, I'm only doing this because I love you). It's why couples do all that... PDA fuzzy fuzzy couple stuff.

A magical, four-letter word. All together now. L-O-V-E, love!

Weird that no one told me love was going to be such a pain the bloody arse.

I mean, I suppose you know I'm not talking about the family, parent-son, sibling-sibling kind of love (who ever does?). Though... even THAT is bad enough.

I get up at 8am every morning (horror), to the lovely tone of my alarm clock. Ring-ring.

Mmmf. What unholy vampire-infested hour of the night is this? Turn over right now and go back to sleep for another five hours, you idiot.

No such luck. Soon as I shut my eyes -

"DYLAN!!" oh, the dulcet voice of my darling mother. Good morning to you too.

"DYLAN, DID YOU HIT SNOOZE AGAIN? I don't have time for this!" Sure you don't. Bet Mr-20-years-younger-than-you-but-has-a-hot-bod is waiting. Is his real name Mr. Tomlinson? Can't remember. Could've gotten a new man since last week, who knows?

"GET YOUR ARSE DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!" Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm coming. It's just that... my blanket has somehow mysteriously plastered me to the bed. Fuuuuuck. I can't move!

"DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!" My legs are lead. My body is as... is... as that greasy looking rug on top of the carpet (where did that come from?).

Looks like I'll have to roll. One, two, three-THUMP.

Ouch. Success.

I manage to slither over to the door and pull myself up by holding onto the doorknob. A blackboard, a set of fingernails and a temperamental cat are jamming away in my head. I groan and knead my temples uselessly with my hands. What did I do last night?

I nudge a tottering Tower of Pisa of textbooks out of the way with my toe so I can get out the door. Shit! I almost trip over a mountain of dirty laundry gracing the tiny landing. Can't these people put the fucking clothes in the fucking clothes hamper? Must remember to wash these tonight. Most of them are Nikki's. You'd think she could wash her own clothes by now.

"THAT'S IT! Dylan, I'm off! Breakfast's on the table. Oh, and remember to do the dishes and take your sisters to school!!" Loud door SLAM.

Christ. Kind of scared to go down there now. No doubt the Terrible Twosome will be perched at the table, pecking at breakfast and trying not to faint in shock at the sight of food that actually has more than zero calories.

So yes. That's the tender, loving parental care I have grown up with over the years. I think dad was okay, though. He took me fishing when I was five (I think I got a hook in one finger, but never mind that). I can't remember much else. He did bugger off a few years later, after all...

But where was I? Ah, yes, love. And not the stifling irritable family kind. The swoony, floaty, angels-are-singing and doves-are-flying-around (crapping on my head) kind of love. ROMANTIC love. Violin music, roses-are-red violets-are-blue...

Oh, stop, I'm making myself sick.

Well, I guess the best way for me to explain WHY romantic love isn't all it's cracked up to be, would be to show you. But be patient, that comes later.

For now I'm stuck with the Scavenging Sisters and probably some very suspicious and dangerous-looking dishes in the sink. I'll leave the dishes till after school, like I always do.

The Twins, though...

I shamble downstairs reluctantly, still in my boxers. One step creaks alarmingly, and I rush down the others in a hurry, just avoiding banging my head against the dangling hall-light.

My house is... well, let me put it this way. It isn't actually a house, as such. It's more a bunch of planks and carpet hung onto a loose skeleton of rickety beams pretending to be a house.

Okay, it's not that bad. It is awfully small, though.

I duck into the kitchen and am met with twin squeals of indignation. I raise my eyebrows and look down at myself quizzically. What, does the sight of my body repulse them? I didn't think I was that ugly, not uglier than before I went to bed, at least -

"Dy-lan! Eeew!" Chelsea's the younger one. Chubbier, with short hair held back by a glittery hair band.

"Get dressed!" Nikki is the more... what will I call it... influential slash bossier of the two.

"Eeeew!"

"What?" I cut in. "Why are - "

"You're walking around in your underwear! Don't you know that we're almost teenagers?" Nikki wrinkles her perfect little button nose and turns her head away sharply, long brown hair flicking out. Chelsea is still pulling disgusted faces from behind the cereal box.

Oh. Is that all. I grab the cornflakes, fill my bowl, and dig in. Milkless, of course. What do you think I am, a savage? I don't care what Kellogg's says, milk is a drink drink, it's not meant to be mixed with wheaten breakfast products.

"Our brother is disgusting," Chelsea is saying, in a voice lowered in the shame of being related to such a monster. I roll my eyes and try to tune them out so I can crunch my cornflakes in peace. A quick glance at the kitchen clock reveals that if I don't want to be late for school (again), I'd better hurry. I shove a few more spoonfuls of cornflakes into my mouth, dump the piece of crockery into the (overflowing) sink, yell at my sisters to wait in the car, thunder back upstairs (I could've sworn the steps actually shuddered then) and throw on a random pair of pants and a sweater.

Fast forward to the car. Yes, I have a car. Well, actually it's not mine, it's my mum's, but she hasn't had her license renewed for a couple decades. So I guess, in a way, it's mine. Hahaha. It's not something I would've chosen - it's a conventional old sidewagon in a very questionable shade of maroon, but I'm not complaining.

This morning, I blow on my fingers hard to warm them up a bit, and take hold of the steering wheel, turning the key and praying that - yes! The cars starts with no trouble except for a throaty kind of wheeze.

"Yeah!" I give in to the urge to cheer as I coax the car on to the road. Ignoring the loud wails of annoyance from the back seats, I whack the radio on full blast.

Savvy. The Invisible Man's playing.

I guess you're wondering. Why the cranky car that only starts on the best of days? Why the sad old house? Well, y'see...

Ooops! I almost cruised right past the Painful Preteens' school. Back up a bit: there.

"Okay! Out! And don't kiss any boys, you know mum won't like that!" I wave cheerily at them as they both stick their tongues out at me in a rare show of immaturity.

My sisters. Puzzling, annoying, demanding and preppy ten-year-old Barbie dolls. We don't exactly hate each other, or wage any of those age-long sibling wars, but we definitely don't understand each other. Even so, there's a certain amount of... tolerance? - that can be forged when I've practically been cleaning up after them and running after them ever since they were...

I don't take much notice of the sunny, cluttered-but-pleasant jumbling of streets and grass on the way to school today. For some reason the blaring of the radio is more comforting than that -

always know where you are,
you never know where I am
you've got me sneaking around like the invisible man...

I trundle up the gentle littered slope leading to the school and execute an edgy kind of swerve with the steering wheel, so the car's half in and half out the parking space. Oh well - not many people park halfway up the slope anyway. I pull on my Jansport bag (one of the few things I own that I actually like) and turn off the radio. The tune to Invisible Man is still playing in my head and I think I'm walking in time to the rhythm... Theory of a Dead Man, gotta love 'em.

Yeah, I know I promised a pained love story... or, to be exact I promised to show you why love is a pain, in general. Just wait a minute, I'll be able to show you h- um, it, in a second.

I shove the gates open with my shoulder. They creak open scarily (ghosts! I'm sorry, but creaks always make me think of ghosts - only creaky places are haunted. I mean, you never hear doors smartly clicking shut in horror films, do you?).

I make my way over to my navy blue locker and it starts - sweaty palms, jelly legs, lip-chewing - all signs that the embodiment of Why Love is a Tragedy is somewhere near!

I fumble with my lock a bit and try not to look as Someone approaches the locker next to mine.

Okay, you've waited this long, I guess I owe you a nice long look - Mark Snow. My woeful love story - his name is Mark Snow. (Can you hear the violins playing in the background? Can you?)

Gosh, he's gorgeous. I mean, I've seen him a hundred times and I can never get over how utterly... good he looks. I don't know if it's the angle or the way he's concentrating on his locker (crappy rusty old padlocks) so that his hair is sort of all in his face... I don't know, but he looks - well, breathtaking.

And, yes, his name is Mark Snow. Not Melissa Snow or Mary Snow or what have you. He's a boy, and I'm a boy, and if that makes you gasp and feel faint, just go have your accident somewhere else and see if I care.

Right, so if you're still here, I'll try my best to describe him. He's shorter than me (most people are - I think I'm too tall for my own good...) and... paler, too. His skin's not vampire-white, just a light peachy color. I've never seen him tan. Freckle a bit, maybe, just across the cheekbones, but never... erm, okay, moving on now...

I suppose, if you were a terribly boring person, you would call his hair chestnut. It's actually this wonderful glossy chocolate color, and kind of... well, messy but neat-messy. Not oh-my-god-this-boy-has-just-stuck-his-finger-in-a-power-outlet kind of messy (like mine). It's like his hair's been styled to fall across his face and move like silk when he turns his head... like he's turning it now... oh. He's looking at me. Probably wondering what in bloody hell I'm staring at.

"Ah... Morning, Mark. Havin trouble with your lock again?" Not that I usually greet people with 'morning' in the morning, but that's what he says to me at mornings.

"Morning, Dylan," he mutters in return, kind of preoccupied with prying the big padlock open. No matter how many times you entered in the right combination, the stiff old things never opened unless you give them a good bang. But for some reason Mark just prefers to jiggle and twiddle and poke at them until they click open by themselves. The one time I suggested that he bash it against the door a bit, he looked at me with such a horrified expression that I felt like I'd suggested that he bash a baby's head against the locker to make it stop crying.

I give my own padlock a swift knock and it pops open. Mark continues to pick at his lock with thin white fingers while I excavate in my own locker for my Maths (blargh) textbooks.

I'm slamming my locker shut by the time he's got his open. He offers me a quick little smile (Christ I think it's my heartbeat making that loud thudding noise) as I make for the gent's.

So far I suppose you don't know why lovely Mark Snow makes my life such a tragic... thing. In credit to him, I think he has no idea that he's doing it. I mean, I'm sure he doesn't mean anything when he comes moonwalking into school every morning, looking like a space-cadet, dark-green-almost-black-eyed and chocolate-haired, being so... being so Mark. I'm sure he doesn't have the faintest idea about the ramifications his Mark-y Mark-ness is having on certain innocent bystanding lockermates...

As I'm coming out of the loo I catch the first good look of myself of the morning.

A beanpole-like figure in too-big jeans and a strange swampy-brown colored sweater stares back out of the mirror. Tufty, dry light-brown hair flops over my forehead in a very not-neat-messy way at all, green eyes like sour grapes peer from behind rectangular specs. A plentiful, and, I think, permanent, smattering of freckles is swiped across my nose. This sloppy looking person has a mostly sleepy (partly scrutinizing) expression on his face.

Guh. Even if Mark sorry-but-hopelessly-straight Snow was even the slightest bit bent, he was never going to look at broke-spectacled-beanpole Dylan Watkins.

Jesus. In l... (love-lust-love-lust-love-lust...like?) er... having strong feelings for my locker-buddy. How cliché can my life get?

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A/N: okay, bear with me. I wrote this only to have a little fun and try to get rid of my writer...s block. You might have noticed I haven’t done anything with Muse for the past age. I dunno if I’m fed up of all the angst or what. But just warning you, I have no idea where I’m going with this yet, just thought I’d post a little something so no one would think I was dead or something xx

Edit 15/02/04: just reposted cos I realized instead of putting actual LYRICS from the song ‘Invisible man’, I forgot and put (LYRICS FROM INVISIBLE MAN!) instead. Christ. Changed it now.