Categories > Celebrities > 30 Seconds to Mars
Rituals of Passion
0 ReviewsShannon isn't sure if it's really there or not, until he is shown the truth. Finding out brings forth some new sides in him.
Story Info
Title: Rituals of Passion
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: Real Person fiction
Genre: Drama, erotica
Rating: T / FRT
Summary: Shannon isn't sure if it's really there or not, until he is shown the truth. Finding out brings forth some new sides in him.
Complete. Prequel to "Rituals of Love".
Written for: /Trinity Dare/'s, Dare 17: Quote challenge | People have a desire to be a part of a ritual.
Characters: Jared Leto, Shannon Leto, Tim Kelleher, Matt Wachter (, Tomo Milicevic)
Pairings: implied Jared/Matt, implied Jared/Tim
Warnings: Language, troilism, homosexual content, hint of incestuous thoughts.
Beta: Mythra
Disclaimer: This is just a figment of my imagination, and has nothing to do with the actual people represented in the writing - nor their sexuality, behavior, interests, or opinions. I have not gained profit from making this story - other than by perhaps making few of my readers happy - but this piece of writing has no pecuniary value whatsoever.
Feedback: Reviews are only one form of love, but a much appreciated one.
About Rituals of Passion/: Written for a Dare over at /Trinity Dare community in LiveJournal.
Here I wanted to explore a bizarre possibility of manly and brotherly love, mixed with the idea of a secret ritual - a code for behavior. If you are given a chance to see something you weren't aware of before, how will that change you? Will you move on? Will one change provoke another?
Chapter and status: Below you see the writing process of the story. If there is no text after the title, then it is finished and checked.
Rituals of Passion
~ ~ ~
Written for Trinity Dare's Dare 17 at LiveJournal (Quote challenge | People have a desire to be a part of a ritual).
Rituals of Passion
Jared often came up with things in the middle of events like interviews or public appearances. Especially interviews, Shannon had noticed. Such occasions gave his brother an opportunity to talk, answer, and explain. Rarely would any interviewer tell him he was wrong - that just didn't happen - so maybe it also gave him a sense of righteousness.
Sometimes, though, Jared dressed up an old, used realization and represented it as a new one. No one else could tell, but Shannon, who spent a lot of time with his brother - simply because Jared was his brother - he noticed such things. He could tell when Jared treaded on personal ground, but transformed his chosen memory or an idea into something that could be said by anyone anywhere.
It was Jared's way of hiding in public. Half truths and clever little lies that made people look one way when they should have been facing the other.
He hated it when his brother managed, if rarely, to do it in his private life as well.
- - -
Shannon could remember the first time he had seen that look in Matt's eye. They were getting ready for a show; sitting back, adjusting their clothes, minds, bodies - and in Jared's case, last minute make-up. Shannon didn't know how long Matt had been staring at Jared like that, or how long ago his brother had shifted his position just enough to meet the other's eyes through the mirror in front of him.
Shannon didn't know what it meant, but after that night he kept noting that it happened. Not every night, but more like the cycle of the moon or something, though it had nothing to do with lunar movements, he figured with simple math.
Jared noticed he was looking sooner than Shannon thought possible. The uneasy expression that passed Matt's face the day after raised Shannon's suspicion for the first time; if it hadn't been for that look on the bassist's face, he may have never noticed - or realized - what it really was there for.
It took a few weeks after that before anything actually happened: they were preparing for another show. The looks Matt was giving Jared across the room were ones of desperation. He was trying to hide it though; Shannon was sure of that.
When the tall blond noticed Shannon was staring, he excused himself and headed out. Jared's eyes moved to meet Shannon's, and he gave the drummer a sharp look, then moved his head to the side, breaking their eye-contact in the mirror and got up from his place. Shannon followed him out of the room, slightly surprised when Jared led them to the bathroom in the hallway.
They entered, finding Matt splashing water on his face.
"At ease, Wachter," Jared whispered to him, a glint in his eye. Then he turned to Shannon. "You make him nervous."
Shannon wondered why Matt didn't say so if that was the case. He decided there was something to it, though, since Jared was the one talking. "Why's that?" he asked, playing along.
Jared gave Matt a look from the corner of his eye. The bassist seemed kind of panicked. All knew, though, that Jared was like the Juggernaut: once on the move, he was unstoppable.
"He fears how you'd react if you caught him fucking your brother," Jared stated languidly, though with a low tone; this was a secret of some sort; a secret between friends and family only.
Shannon blinked, wondering if he had got it right. Apparently yes. It was kind of hard to misinterpret it. "How should I react?" he replied to Jared in a matching tone. He wasn't going to raise the bets too high. Not yet.
The smile on his younger sibling's face was radiant. "You're such a good boy, Shannon."
Matt looked a bit queasy.
Shannon didn't know how he should have felt, or looked, after Jared's words. So, he didn't say anything else.
Jared nodded, then walked out of the bathroom. The silence that followed was strange. Matt looked at the stained tile wall; Shannon looked at Matt.
"Are you really fucking him?" Shannon asked at length.
"On occasion," Matt answered without hesitation, as if he knew the answer by heart, whether he wanted to say it or not.
- - -
The first time was the easiest, though Shannon had imagined it to be the other way around.
For the first time, he was like a guard posted outside a forbidden door, though in reality he was sprawled on the couch, watching TV, sipping a beer, and making sure no one entered the area of the bus behind said closed door before Jared was finished.
Vaguely, he could hear the sounds, and Shannon wondered if Matt really fucked Jared, or if it was just their way of putting it.
He was tempted to find out, but not tempted enough to go and see for himself. That would be kind of weird, though this was pretty strange, too: to keep watch while his brother fucked less than a dozen feet away. Tomo was passed out on the opposite couch - had been for some time before Jared and Matt disappeared - and Shannon kind of envied the guitarist. If he was unconscious, he would not have to be doing this stupid 'guard the door' thing.
The TV was almost inaudible to his ears. He could have turned up the sound, but hadn't. During the last half an hour, he had actually turned it further down.
His mind wandered, back along the last few months. He had yet to find out what exactly had created this odd pattern between his brother and their bassist. There was always something, like a sign, and he was pretty sure it always came from Jared. His brother was a control freak, after all.
There was always some sign - which he had yet to recognize - and it always took place before a gig, when they were preparing. He hadn't seen any of it outside such a setting. He would always notice the change in Matt, but never in Jared. That was bizarre; it was driving Shannon nuts that he could not see the same thing in his little brother that Matt obviously did. So, perhaps there was no sign, and there had just been some kind of a plan or a discussion before Shannon was present.
Some days, he thought he should not care about it either way. Adult brothers cared even less about each others' sexual habits and life than teenagers, right? That, of course, didn't stop the small nudge in his head; that he actually didn't want to go and see Jared and Matt going at it because he was curious who was doing who - he wanted to see Jared do it.
He gulped down the rest of his beer, deciding he needed to be far drunker than this to think such thoughts.
- - -
Matt and Libby were a fact. Whatever happened between Jared and Matt, or Matt and Libby, didn't really matter. From Shannon's point of view, there was one way for it all to end. And when that became reality, there were no more hidden signs. There was no need for them. Jared was afraid of losing Matt, which Shannon understood
When Matt got engaged, it seemed something came to an end.
When Matt got married, the suppressed emotions flared a bit. Shannon had a hard time deciding which man he felt most sorry for, but decided that since Matt had his wife, while Jared had nobody, he should root for his brother.
After Matt left - Jared drove him away, quicker than Matt had decided on the actual date - it was a slightly devastating time. It seemed it also opened new doors, too; Shannon was now 'alone' with his brother. Matt was gone and Shannon was the only one who really knew Jared.
The nights he held his brother because Jared didn't want to be alone were rare; Jared was stony and let go only when there was no alternative way for him to channel the frustration. The nights when Shannon took the initiative, though, came more often. He would go into Jared's room, and would wait until Jared gave him some room on his bed, followed Shannon back to his, or Shannon simply slid in beside his brother.
Whenever Jared demanded an answered or said he didn't want it, Shannon always said Jared owed him this.
Jared never asked what he owed this for - just like he didn't shy away from Shannon's eyes that stared at him.
- - -
After Shannon got accustomed to sleeping in the same bed as Jared, whenever they had the chance, it gave room for other kinds of thoughts to develop.
Like Jared, he was a person who liked to see the visual beauty of things. Beauty that wasn't necessarily fair or flawless.
Shannon realized one morning when he was shaving while Jared took a shower that, close as they were, his younger brother's body held his attention. Every little glimpse he could get between the wall and the shower curtain, he would devour.
When he thought of his behavior later, while Jared was out, he decided his stare probably had little if any difference to how Matt had gazed upon his brother.
Shannon wondered if he had missed a sign somewhere. But then, Jared was no different - only Shannon.
- - -
"Am I making you nervous?" Shannon asked.
"Never," Jared answered, sounding sure as always. He didn't shift or flinch, either.
This was not the first time Shannon had come to Jared's room, eyed him restlessly, and then moved forth and stripped off any clothes that Jared was wearing. They had been doing this dance for some weeks now, and Jared had never asked why Shannon did it.
That was a good thing, since Shannon didn't possess the answer.
In the beginning, he touched Jared's body; mapped every spot that caught his attention. It was not sexual - not in the traditional way. He just wanted to... learn it, somehow. Be close to Jared - closer than he already was.
Jared never told him 'no', or asked him to leave. Not even lately when Shannon had stopped touching him after he was naked, and would just stare at him instead. Jared always stayed still until Shannon made him move. It reminded him of a pose of some kind; a model to be drawn on canvas.
That night, Jared was very beautiful: his hair clean, eyes clear, a little whisper of dark make-up lingering around the white and blue. Perhaps the look was what spurred Shannon to keep the moment. Store it. Jared's camera was conveniently at hand, and even though he would have preferred one of his own, he had no desire to go look for it.
And then he took his first picture of Jared in years, and certainly it was the first he had ever taken of him naked.
Jared didn't ask what he did to those pictures afterwards. There was no lecture of how dangerous it would be if they were spread around. Either Jared trusted him, or he simply didn't care.
Shannon liked to think it was the former.
- - -
Tim was the one who told him it was a ritual. And that this ritual, like any other, was born from tradition and bound by strict rules.
By then, Shannon had suspected there was something going on between his brother and their young new bassist, but that Tim said such a statement confirmed it.
Afterwards, Shannon watched them, like he used to watch Matt and Jared before the show, but soon decided Tim was far more subtle than his predecessor had been, or Shannon just didn't know him well enough yet.
It was starting all over again. He tried to find ways to confront Jared about it, but each night that he got the chance to share his brother's bed, he just lay silent. He didn't know what to say.
Jared made his move for them both, perhaps sensing Shannon's silent dilemma; one night after a show, when they were all returning to their hotel rooms, he brought Tim in with him to the room he shared with Shannon.
That night Shannon didn't play the gatekeeper. He didn't sit alone, wondering how his brother looked as he fucked their bassist, or the other way around.
Instead he sat in a chair beside the bed, taking in the scene with all his five senses. And in case his eyes couldn't store away every little detail and every little movement, or his ears couldn't catch every little sound his brother made, the camera sitting beside his bottle of beer on the table by his chair would restore the lost memories whenever he felt the need.
The End
Title: Rituals of Passion
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: Real Person fiction
Genre: Drama, erotica
Rating: T / FRT
Summary: Shannon isn't sure if it's really there or not, until he is shown the truth. Finding out brings forth some new sides in him.
Complete. Prequel to "Rituals of Love".
Written for: /Trinity Dare/'s, Dare 17: Quote challenge | People have a desire to be a part of a ritual.
Characters: Jared Leto, Shannon Leto, Tim Kelleher, Matt Wachter (, Tomo Milicevic)
Pairings: implied Jared/Matt, implied Jared/Tim
Warnings: Language, troilism, homosexual content, hint of incestuous thoughts.
Beta: Mythra
Disclaimer: This is just a figment of my imagination, and has nothing to do with the actual people represented in the writing - nor their sexuality, behavior, interests, or opinions. I have not gained profit from making this story - other than by perhaps making few of my readers happy - but this piece of writing has no pecuniary value whatsoever.
Feedback: Reviews are only one form of love, but a much appreciated one.
About Rituals of Passion/: Written for a Dare over at /Trinity Dare community in LiveJournal.
Here I wanted to explore a bizarre possibility of manly and brotherly love, mixed with the idea of a secret ritual - a code for behavior. If you are given a chance to see something you weren't aware of before, how will that change you? Will you move on? Will one change provoke another?
Chapter and status: Below you see the writing process of the story. If there is no text after the title, then it is finished and checked.
Rituals of Passion
~ ~ ~
Written for Trinity Dare's Dare 17 at LiveJournal (Quote challenge | People have a desire to be a part of a ritual).
Rituals of Passion
Jared often came up with things in the middle of events like interviews or public appearances. Especially interviews, Shannon had noticed. Such occasions gave his brother an opportunity to talk, answer, and explain. Rarely would any interviewer tell him he was wrong - that just didn't happen - so maybe it also gave him a sense of righteousness.
Sometimes, though, Jared dressed up an old, used realization and represented it as a new one. No one else could tell, but Shannon, who spent a lot of time with his brother - simply because Jared was his brother - he noticed such things. He could tell when Jared treaded on personal ground, but transformed his chosen memory or an idea into something that could be said by anyone anywhere.
It was Jared's way of hiding in public. Half truths and clever little lies that made people look one way when they should have been facing the other.
He hated it when his brother managed, if rarely, to do it in his private life as well.
- - -
Shannon could remember the first time he had seen that look in Matt's eye. They were getting ready for a show; sitting back, adjusting their clothes, minds, bodies - and in Jared's case, last minute make-up. Shannon didn't know how long Matt had been staring at Jared like that, or how long ago his brother had shifted his position just enough to meet the other's eyes through the mirror in front of him.
Shannon didn't know what it meant, but after that night he kept noting that it happened. Not every night, but more like the cycle of the moon or something, though it had nothing to do with lunar movements, he figured with simple math.
Jared noticed he was looking sooner than Shannon thought possible. The uneasy expression that passed Matt's face the day after raised Shannon's suspicion for the first time; if it hadn't been for that look on the bassist's face, he may have never noticed - or realized - what it really was there for.
It took a few weeks after that before anything actually happened: they were preparing for another show. The looks Matt was giving Jared across the room were ones of desperation. He was trying to hide it though; Shannon was sure of that.
When the tall blond noticed Shannon was staring, he excused himself and headed out. Jared's eyes moved to meet Shannon's, and he gave the drummer a sharp look, then moved his head to the side, breaking their eye-contact in the mirror and got up from his place. Shannon followed him out of the room, slightly surprised when Jared led them to the bathroom in the hallway.
They entered, finding Matt splashing water on his face.
"At ease, Wachter," Jared whispered to him, a glint in his eye. Then he turned to Shannon. "You make him nervous."
Shannon wondered why Matt didn't say so if that was the case. He decided there was something to it, though, since Jared was the one talking. "Why's that?" he asked, playing along.
Jared gave Matt a look from the corner of his eye. The bassist seemed kind of panicked. All knew, though, that Jared was like the Juggernaut: once on the move, he was unstoppable.
"He fears how you'd react if you caught him fucking your brother," Jared stated languidly, though with a low tone; this was a secret of some sort; a secret between friends and family only.
Shannon blinked, wondering if he had got it right. Apparently yes. It was kind of hard to misinterpret it. "How should I react?" he replied to Jared in a matching tone. He wasn't going to raise the bets too high. Not yet.
The smile on his younger sibling's face was radiant. "You're such a good boy, Shannon."
Matt looked a bit queasy.
Shannon didn't know how he should have felt, or looked, after Jared's words. So, he didn't say anything else.
Jared nodded, then walked out of the bathroom. The silence that followed was strange. Matt looked at the stained tile wall; Shannon looked at Matt.
"Are you really fucking him?" Shannon asked at length.
"On occasion," Matt answered without hesitation, as if he knew the answer by heart, whether he wanted to say it or not.
- - -
The first time was the easiest, though Shannon had imagined it to be the other way around.
For the first time, he was like a guard posted outside a forbidden door, though in reality he was sprawled on the couch, watching TV, sipping a beer, and making sure no one entered the area of the bus behind said closed door before Jared was finished.
Vaguely, he could hear the sounds, and Shannon wondered if Matt really fucked Jared, or if it was just their way of putting it.
He was tempted to find out, but not tempted enough to go and see for himself. That would be kind of weird, though this was pretty strange, too: to keep watch while his brother fucked less than a dozen feet away. Tomo was passed out on the opposite couch - had been for some time before Jared and Matt disappeared - and Shannon kind of envied the guitarist. If he was unconscious, he would not have to be doing this stupid 'guard the door' thing.
The TV was almost inaudible to his ears. He could have turned up the sound, but hadn't. During the last half an hour, he had actually turned it further down.
His mind wandered, back along the last few months. He had yet to find out what exactly had created this odd pattern between his brother and their bassist. There was always something, like a sign, and he was pretty sure it always came from Jared. His brother was a control freak, after all.
There was always some sign - which he had yet to recognize - and it always took place before a gig, when they were preparing. He hadn't seen any of it outside such a setting. He would always notice the change in Matt, but never in Jared. That was bizarre; it was driving Shannon nuts that he could not see the same thing in his little brother that Matt obviously did. So, perhaps there was no sign, and there had just been some kind of a plan or a discussion before Shannon was present.
Some days, he thought he should not care about it either way. Adult brothers cared even less about each others' sexual habits and life than teenagers, right? That, of course, didn't stop the small nudge in his head; that he actually didn't want to go and see Jared and Matt going at it because he was curious who was doing who - he wanted to see Jared do it.
He gulped down the rest of his beer, deciding he needed to be far drunker than this to think such thoughts.
- - -
Matt and Libby were a fact. Whatever happened between Jared and Matt, or Matt and Libby, didn't really matter. From Shannon's point of view, there was one way for it all to end. And when that became reality, there were no more hidden signs. There was no need for them. Jared was afraid of losing Matt, which Shannon understood
When Matt got engaged, it seemed something came to an end.
When Matt got married, the suppressed emotions flared a bit. Shannon had a hard time deciding which man he felt most sorry for, but decided that since Matt had his wife, while Jared had nobody, he should root for his brother.
After Matt left - Jared drove him away, quicker than Matt had decided on the actual date - it was a slightly devastating time. It seemed it also opened new doors, too; Shannon was now 'alone' with his brother. Matt was gone and Shannon was the only one who really knew Jared.
The nights he held his brother because Jared didn't want to be alone were rare; Jared was stony and let go only when there was no alternative way for him to channel the frustration. The nights when Shannon took the initiative, though, came more often. He would go into Jared's room, and would wait until Jared gave him some room on his bed, followed Shannon back to his, or Shannon simply slid in beside his brother.
Whenever Jared demanded an answered or said he didn't want it, Shannon always said Jared owed him this.
Jared never asked what he owed this for - just like he didn't shy away from Shannon's eyes that stared at him.
- - -
After Shannon got accustomed to sleeping in the same bed as Jared, whenever they had the chance, it gave room for other kinds of thoughts to develop.
Like Jared, he was a person who liked to see the visual beauty of things. Beauty that wasn't necessarily fair or flawless.
Shannon realized one morning when he was shaving while Jared took a shower that, close as they were, his younger brother's body held his attention. Every little glimpse he could get between the wall and the shower curtain, he would devour.
When he thought of his behavior later, while Jared was out, he decided his stare probably had little if any difference to how Matt had gazed upon his brother.
Shannon wondered if he had missed a sign somewhere. But then, Jared was no different - only Shannon.
- - -
"Am I making you nervous?" Shannon asked.
"Never," Jared answered, sounding sure as always. He didn't shift or flinch, either.
This was not the first time Shannon had come to Jared's room, eyed him restlessly, and then moved forth and stripped off any clothes that Jared was wearing. They had been doing this dance for some weeks now, and Jared had never asked why Shannon did it.
That was a good thing, since Shannon didn't possess the answer.
In the beginning, he touched Jared's body; mapped every spot that caught his attention. It was not sexual - not in the traditional way. He just wanted to... learn it, somehow. Be close to Jared - closer than he already was.
Jared never told him 'no', or asked him to leave. Not even lately when Shannon had stopped touching him after he was naked, and would just stare at him instead. Jared always stayed still until Shannon made him move. It reminded him of a pose of some kind; a model to be drawn on canvas.
That night, Jared was very beautiful: his hair clean, eyes clear, a little whisper of dark make-up lingering around the white and blue. Perhaps the look was what spurred Shannon to keep the moment. Store it. Jared's camera was conveniently at hand, and even though he would have preferred one of his own, he had no desire to go look for it.
And then he took his first picture of Jared in years, and certainly it was the first he had ever taken of him naked.
Jared didn't ask what he did to those pictures afterwards. There was no lecture of how dangerous it would be if they were spread around. Either Jared trusted him, or he simply didn't care.
Shannon liked to think it was the former.
- - -
Tim was the one who told him it was a ritual. And that this ritual, like any other, was born from tradition and bound by strict rules.
By then, Shannon had suspected there was something going on between his brother and their young new bassist, but that Tim said such a statement confirmed it.
Afterwards, Shannon watched them, like he used to watch Matt and Jared before the show, but soon decided Tim was far more subtle than his predecessor had been, or Shannon just didn't know him well enough yet.
It was starting all over again. He tried to find ways to confront Jared about it, but each night that he got the chance to share his brother's bed, he just lay silent. He didn't know what to say.
Jared made his move for them both, perhaps sensing Shannon's silent dilemma; one night after a show, when they were all returning to their hotel rooms, he brought Tim in with him to the room he shared with Shannon.
That night Shannon didn't play the gatekeeper. He didn't sit alone, wondering how his brother looked as he fucked their bassist, or the other way around.
Instead he sat in a chair beside the bed, taking in the scene with all his five senses. And in case his eyes couldn't store away every little detail and every little movement, or his ears couldn't catch every little sound his brother made, the camera sitting beside his bottle of beer on the table by his chair would restore the lost memories whenever he felt the need.
The End
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