Recognize Myself: Part Two
Masterpost / Part One
For all his faults, all his fuckups, Ryan's better at reading Jon - when he wants to be - than probably anyone else. Usually when they're in bed like this, Jon on his back and Ryan on his side, head propped up on one hand, Ryan'll run his other hand up and down Jon's chest and stomach, light enough to raise goosebumps.
But Jon's almost-breasts and stomach are molehill-mountains in Jon's shirt, and he's not sure he can handle anything drawing attention to them; Ryan didn't even hesitate when they settled in, just reached out to rub Jon's arm instead.
"I can call," Ryan says. "If that's - if that's the only problem, I can call for you and set it up."
"And what happens when I'm too freaked out about it to actually go?"
"I'll drag you out."
Jon expects, from the little trying-not-to-laugh tremor in Ryan's voice, to look up and see Ryan smiling; instead he's got this weird half-smile half-grimace thing happening, like he's not sure he wanted to make a joke but can't help wanting to laugh. And Jon wants - or at least thinks he should want - to be mad, to insist this is serious, this isn't a time for fucking jokes, but the image of Ryan trying to drag Jon anywhere is fucking hilarious.
"I'll get Tom to drag you out," he amends.
"Okay, we'll pretend that's a solution. What about when we get there, when they see me?"
"If anyone says a single word you don't like," Ryan says, and suddenly the set of his mouth is serious, his eyes aren't laughing, "I will punch them in the fucking face."
That should be funny, too, because Jon's seen Ryan try to punch someone and it's never anything but funny. But Ryan's eyes are fierce and there's a lump in Jon's throat and he's not sure he could laugh if he wanted to. Jon just rolls over on his side, rests his forehead against Ryan's chest.
"Okay," he says. "Call."
*
Ryan spends half an hour typing and making increasingly frustrated noises before he shuts his laptop loudly enough to startle Clover off of Jon's lap. "This is stupid," he says. "There's literally no possible combination of words that works."
"I told you," Jon says.
"Whatever. That's what phones are for."
"Like anyone's gonna come right out and say 'yeah, no, we'll totally laugh at you and make you feel like a freak'."
"No one's gonna laugh at you."
Jon rolls his eyes, but doesn't give into any of his other urges to fight over this; it's not gonna do him any good to find out how much of a dick he has to be before Ryan stops ignoring it. "I'm taking Marley for a walk."
It's colder than Jon's usual limit, cold enough he'd normally turn back as soon as Marley'd had a chance to yellow some snow, but the sun's bright and warm on his face, and the idea of freezing his fingers off is more appealing than sitting around listening to Ryan try and make sure some random doctor isn't going to make this even worse for Jon.
Marley starts trying to turn him around before Jon's ready to go back, but if there's one thing he always puts above his own shit it's his pets, and Marley shouldn't have to freeze because Jon's a coward. Ryan's making sandwiches when they get back, even though it's too late for lunch and too early for dinner.
"Friday," he says, and, "pickles, or no?"
"Pickles. And are you sure?"
Ryan shrugs. "I was on the phone for like an hour and a half. If you didn't trust me to ask the right questions, you should have stayed."
"I trust you," Jon says, a little surprised by just how much he means that. "So, okay. Friday."
"I checked with Tom, and he's free, if you don't want me there."
"I need you there," Jon says. "Maybe Tom, too. But you're coming."
He's not sure if that's something to smile about, but he's not going to pretend he's not a little relieved when Ryan turns around to bring the sandwiches to the table and he's got that lazy pleased smile Jon always wants to kiss. Ryan puts a sandwich with at least two layers of pickles in front of Jon, and with him that close there's no reason not to go ahead and kiss him.
"I'm glad you came," he says, when Ryan pulls back, angle awkward on his neck. Ryan doesn't say anything, but his smile gets wider.
*
There are protesters outside, but not many, and Jon's so wrapped up in his own head it's easy to ignore them, to pretend there's nothing past the solidness of Tom and Ryan closing ranks on either side of him. Ryan makes some snide remark about being there to pick up loose women - he actually uses the phrase "loose women", God - and they're inside.
Everyone else in the waiting room is a woman, but the receptionist doesn't even blink when Jon checks in. Ryan must have done okay with the research.
Tom fidgets, twisting his fingers in the drawstrings of his hoodie, because when Tom's in an uncomfortable situation he takes pictures but Jon and Ryan hadn't let him bring a camera. Ryan fidgets, bouncing his leg and tapping his fingers on the arm rest. Jon sits almost completely still and focuses on breathing.
What he remembers between that and waking up in his bedroom isn't much: the nurse said his name, again without any indication "Jon" is a weird name for someone who wants an abortion, the room she took him too was freezing; he didn't want to take his pants off in front of Tom but he wanted Tom to leave even less than that; he woke up halfway to the car, leaning heavily on Tom, Ryan talking heatedly, too fast for Jon's brain to process any of the words.
When he wakes up in his own room, it's dark outside, and there are low voices coming from the kitchen. He gets up, winces at the soreness between his legs, and stumbles a little on his way down the hall.
"You should probably stay in bed," Ryan says, when he sees Jon.
"Probably," Jon agrees, but he steps into the kitchen instead of turning around. His mouth feels like cotton, but there aren't any clean glasses.
"How're you feeling, dude?" Tom asks.
"Thirsty," Jon says, because his head is still fuzzy, too fuzzy to really process anything. He's sore, and groggy, and...something else, something he can't put his finger on. He keeps looking in the cupboards, like if he stares hard enough a clean glass will materialize. There's shuffling behind him, the refrigerator opens and closes, and Ryan presses a bottle into Jon's hand. Of course Ryan would go buy water instead of doing dishes, of course he would. "Thanks."
"You should probably sit down. Or, like, can you sit down?"
"I can," Jon says, and turns so his back's resting against the counter, "but leaning's fine."
"Okay. Um. Okay. Like, do you - what can I - "
"Tell him how you almost got thrown out," Tom says.
"I didn't almost get thrown out."
"He screamed at a nurse."
"I didn't scream, I corrected him. He asked how 'she' was doing, fucking stupid."
"It was yelling, if not screaming." Tom's grinning; Jon probably shouldn't be, should be annoyed that Ryan made a scene, but he can't keep from smiling himself. He takes a few swigs, almost half the bottle, and then rests his head on Ryan's shoulder. It's getting too heavy to hold up on his own.
"Hey," Ryan says.
"Hi."
Tom rolls his eyes a little and stands up. "I was gonna walk Marley, but we couldn't find his leash."
"In the coffee table drawer," Jon says; Tom nods and leaves them alone.
"You okay?" Ryan asks, rubs Jon's shoulder a little.
"Tired," he says, because he's not sure he can really answer that question yet.
"Okay," Ryan says, "let’s go to bed."
*
Like every other time they've fallen asleep together, Jon wakes up before Ryan. Unlike almost every other time, instead of using the time to do something useful, Jon opens the closet door so he can look in the one full-length mirror in the apartment. He looks, and then he takes off his shirt and looks more, and he's so intent on the shape of his stomach he doesn't see or hear Ryan coming up behind him until Ryan's hands cover his own on his stomach.
"I don't look any different," Jon says, when it's clear Ryan isn't going to say anything.
Ryan hunches down enough to hook his chin over Jon's shoulder. "No. But it just looks like a beer gut."
It probably does, objectively; as anxious as Jon gets about passing, as sure as he is that even the littlest slip up is as obvious to the rest of the world as it is to him, a stomach like this on a short, stocky, bearded guy isn't going to say "pregnant" to anyone. But Jon isn't - can't be - objective about it. He knows what it is, and why it's there, and what it means.
"It's kind of cute," Ryan says, kisses Jon's shoulder, then up to Jon's neck. Jon is acutely aware he didn't bother to put his harness on when they got home yesterday. He shifts away; Ryan lets him.
"We should get pancakes," Jon says.
*
Jon starts jogging in the morning, which makes Marley the happiest dog in the world. It's freezing, at its warmest, and Jon's painfully out of shape, but Marley wags his tail in delight when Jon slides out of bed, toes on his sneakers, and grabs the leash, and Jon can pretend that's his motivation.
"Don't overdo it," is all Ryan says, the one morning he's awake when Jon gets back. It's the same thing he says the few times he catches Jon doing sit-ups in the living room. Jon knows his limits, though, and Ryan doesn't push.
In bed, Ryan lets his hands skim over Jon's arms, his chest, never Jon's stomach; he rolls Jon onto his back, settles between his thighs, lines their dicks up and rolls his hips until they both come. Jon doesn't take his underwear off, for sex or for sleeping; Ryan doesn't push.
"Do you need me to make your follow-up appointment for you?" Ryan asks, over grilled cheese for dinner a week after the abortion.
"Maybe," Jon says, "or I can." He doesn't call, or tell Ryan to call. Ryan doesn't push.
*
"It's like living with a fucking ghost," Jon says, ignores Tom taking a picture of him taking a picture of a tree so he won't ruin Tom's shot with awareness. "A really agreeable ghost."
Tom snaps twice as many pictures of Jon as Jon does of the tree. "The last time he argued with you, you ran halfway across the country and ignored him," he says. "I'd be agreeable, too."
"That wasn't an argument," Jon says, turns to take a picture of Tom with the camera halfway to his face.
"Point stands," Tom says; Jon can almost make out the individual words in the puffs of steam from his breath in the freezing air. "Fighting with you sucks, dude. Especially with gender stuff."
"So I should let that shit slide?"
Tom lifts the camera back up, but he doesn't take any pictures, just uses it to hide his face. It's one of the best things about photography, having an automatic way to shield yourself from the conversation; it's one of the worst things about Tom, how he uses it to keep going past the point Jon's other friends would have gotten too uncomfortable to keep talking. Maybe it's one of the best things about Tom, too.
"Maybe? Not always. Sometimes you're really cool about shit like calling you a bitch, or whatever. But I don't mean let it slide, I mean don't get so you about it. Like, you don't yell it out and get it over with, you just get all quiet and stew for weeks. It sucks."
"Ryan knew what he was getting into."
Tom shrugs. "Sure. And you knew what you were getting with Ryan. That hasn't stopped you from expecting some level of change, right? Could you be with Ryan if he was the same way about gender stuff now as he was the first time you fucked?"
There's a really great shrub Jon is so intent on taking a picture of he can't possibly answer Tom right away. Tom doesn't seem to care.
"Ryan tries, dude. And no, you don't have to put up with shit that hurts you just because he's trying. But you don't have to keep making it worse and worse for him to fuck up."
"I don't. Just when it's a bigger thing - "
"You getting pregnant wasn't just his fuckup, Jon."
There's a part of Jon's brain, a big part, that knows that; knows that even if not using a condom was all Ryan's problem, which it isn't, necessarily, he might have been better at it if Jon hasn't made such a big deal about how nothing could be different, if he didn't make it so if Ryan was anything less than perfect, they fought. And maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, maybe if Jon held his hand and coddled him every time he got confused about something he still wouldn't have asked, or thought of it. Maybe.
But.
“I don’t think you give him enough credit,” Tom says. “You were fucking psycho when you went off T, and I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed him for siding with Brendon and Spencer a lot more than he did. He puts up with so much shit from you, and I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you that maybe your reaction to that should be something other than expecting him to deal with more.”
Jon bites his lip against the urge to yell at Tom, clenches his fist against the urge to hit him. Tom’s the only person left in Jon’s life who’ll say this kind of shit to him, and yeah, Jon kind of prefers it that way, but he’s a rational enough person to know stopping Tom would be the stupidest thing he could do.
"It's fucking freezing," he says, finally. Tom just nods.
"I've got plenty, yeah. Coffee and home?"
"Coffee and home," Jon agrees. He doesn't add thank you, or I'm lucky to have you, but he buys Tom's coffee for him; he figures Tom knows what that means.
*
Jon has every intention of talking to Ryan, but when he gets home Ryan's high as a fucking kite, cooing over the texture of Dylan's fur. That's both fucking adorable and a horrible starting point for a serious talk, so Jon just packs his own pipe and sets about catching up to Ryan.
He loses track of how many bowls they go through; the clock chiming startles him twice, so at least an hour passes. At some point Ryan abandons Dylan - or Dylan finds something better to do - to pet Jon. Jon's so fucking high he manages to distract himself from that by wiggling his toes in the socks he hadn't taken off when he came in from hanging out with Tom. Tom, right, stuff he wanted to talk about because of Tom.
"I don't know why you haven't left yet," Jon says, rolls a little to rest his cheek on Ryan's stomach. The way his beard feels against the thin cotton covering Ryan's skin is amazing.
"Do you want me to? I just got here.”
"No," Jon says, "like, left me. Given up."
The way the fabric of his shirt pulls means Ryan's probably shrugging. Or yawning. "I have a shelf full of books about being transsexual and a fucking seven-foot-high cat toy in my living room," he says. "If that's what you're waiting for, you're as stupid as you think I am."
"I don't think you're stupid."
"Ignorant."
"Not in the bad way."
"Yeah, I can tell by how upset you get about it, you obviously love that about me.”
Jon sighs, pushes Ryan's shirt up so he can rest his hand on his bare stomach. Ryan's skin is so warm, so fucking soft, one of Jon's favorite things to touch. "I used to - when I got my period, I would sit in my room for, like, hours, and cry. And I would, like, try to picture myself happy. Sometimes I couldn't do it. A lot of times. Like. It only ever worked when I pretended that I hadn't been born like this. And I can't - I don't think I can be happy. If I have to acknowledge it for the rest of my life."
"Okay," Ryan says. "I - okay. That's. You get it, though, that you're kind of forcing me to acknowledge it all the time? Like I can't just treat you like I treat any other guy."
"Bullshit," Jon says; somewhere in the distant parts of his mind he's angry, but it's a slow anger, boiling just out of reach, not enough to make him sit up or stop touching.
"I can call Spencer a housewife, and Brendon a princess, and I can make fun of how Greenwald's bathroom is totally a girl bathroom with all his, like, shower stuff and hair stuff and...stuff. I have to not do that with you, which means I have to remember you're different. And it's not like I mind doing it, obviously I fuck up, but I try. But if your goal is to make me forget, that's not gonna work. I can forget the trans stuff, to an extent, and treat you like I treat everyone else, or I can remember and avoid the stuff that bothers you. I don't think it's possible to do both."
Jon rubs his cheek against Ryan's shirt, sighs a little when Ryan starts petting him again. "I don't know what to do," Jon says. "I don't know how to do this. I never - I never even bothered trying to picture myself with someone, because I thought it was stupid to expect anyone to put up with this."
"Okay," Ryan says again. "That's - it's not good, obviously, that sucks, but, like, it's good that you said that? We can work with that."
"You need to make my follow-up appointment," Jon tells Ryan's stomach. "I can't do it."
"In the morning," Ryan says, and that's probably not where the conversation should end, but the soothing motion of Ryan's fingers in his hair and the steady way his stomach rises and falls under Jon's cheek and hand is a little too much to stay awake through.
*
Jon has to stretch twice as long before his jog the next morning, stiff and achy from sleeping on the floor. He thinks, briefly, about waking Ryan up, but Ryan is fucking murderous if he doesn't wake up under his own power. That, and Jon kind of wants some time to process before they have to talk more.
There are things Jon doesn't tell people, and things he never wants people to know. Sometimes they're separate - there's plenty of stuff he doesn't care if people find out secondhand, and a few things he's willing to tell people out of necessity even if he doesn't actually want the information out there - but mostly they overlap. "I'm a transsexual" was, for a long time, both, but thanks to Ryan it's just the second thing now. "I can't ever be happy if I don't pretend I'm someone else" was, for obvious reasons, another one that fell in both categories. There were reasons, lots of reasons, some good and some bad, Jon never bothered to envision himself dating. This constant revision of his own boundaries was a big one, this constant need to move the goal posts because he has something important to lose if he won’t move them.
Ryan's awake when he gets back, curled up on the couch with his phone in his hands, staring out the window at nothing in particular.
"Next Wednesday at one-thirty," he says without looking up, when Jon gets a bottle of water and flops down on the other end of the couch.
"Okay," Jon says, and waits for Ryan to keep talking. He doesn't, though, just fiddles with his phone and keeps looking out the window long past the point the silence shifts from awkward to comfortable.
"When I was a teenager," he says, finally, "The only fantasy that ever worked was the one where Spencer and I took the world by storm, and I had eight Grammys, and a mansion with, like, my high school's football team on staff to do humiliating stuff whenever I wanted."
"Okay."
"Teenagers are stupid," Ryan says, looks away from the window. "And fantasies aren't supposed to be stuff we can have."
"It's not really the same thing."
"No," Ryan says, "not exactly. But it's not totally different, either. And, like, I don't have eight Grammys, and I'm never going to, and I like my house, and why would I want to pay those assholes for anything? I guess you could argue the taking-the-world-by-storm thing, but that didn't really go the way I planned, either. But I'm happy."
"It's not - "
"I'm glad you had that fantasy, if that's what you needed to get through how hard that stuff must have been for you. But I think you're cheating yourself if you assume if you can't have that in reality, you can't be happy. You're never gonna be a dude who was born with a dick, and I'm sorry, because I know that sucks for you, and it's bullshit what you've had to deal with. But at some point I think maybe you need to look at yourself and be able to say 'I'm never going to have that, but I like what I do have'."
"I do like what I have," Jon says, and pokes Ryan with his toe. Ryan's answering smile is wide and genuinely pleased.
"Okay," he says. "That's a start."
*
Every intention Jon had of talking through his shit with Ryan vanishes in the face of Ryan's sudden, and apparently isolated, willingness to call Jon on his bullshit. It's not like Jon doesn't think they need to talk, that Ryan's little moment of pushing back suddenly made Jon decide Tom was wrong, that he thinks he shouldn't get called on his crap, that Ryan shouldn't call him on his crap. Just, he kind of feels like there's another shoe that needs to drop, and he can't bring himself to start the conversation with that hanging over his head.
"You two should come for dinner," Jon's mom says, when he finally tells her Ryan flew up and they're working stuff out, so they do. It's exactly as awkward as it always is when Ryan has to interact with Jon's parents - he's not good with parents in general, Spencer's mom excluded, and he's convinced Jon's parents don't like him. It's nice, though, and Jon thinks that however justified he was in keeping Ryan at a distance for a while, it would have been even nicer if they could have done this for Christmas.
"I want to try something," Ryan mumbles against his lips, gangly limbs tangled up in Jon's. Jon could tense up, pull away, get mad at Ryan for pushing, for daring to think he has a right to ask for things in bed; he could say no, because whatever it is Ryan wants, Jon doesn't like to push unless it's his idea. Instead he asks what it is Ryan wants, and for the first time they fuck without Jon's underwear on, Ryan riding Jon, losing his rhythm more than once to let his hands wander, never farther than Jon's comfortable with. Jon works his harness off under the covers, after; he'd forgotten how nice it was to sleep skin-to-skin.
"The Nicks aren't ever gonna talk to you again," Andy says, laughing a little over his drink. "No one burns bridges like Jonny Walker."
Jon waits for Ryan's reaction, braces himself for the reaction he totally deserves. It was one thing to throw his fit, to run away, to make Ryan suffer through the distance and the silence, but another thing entirely to wreck his band. But Ryan just shrugs, shirt dragging against Jon's where they're pressed together in the booth. "Young Veins was a stupid band name, anyway," he says, and Jon laughs in relief.
At home, Ryan pushes him against their bedroom door and hits his knees; Jon doesn't argue when Ryan pulls his underwear down with his jeans, or make Ryan wait until he switches to the dick they usually use for sex. Ryan gives him the world's sloppiest blowjob, all tongue and spit and watching Jon through his eyelashes because as long as he uses his fist to rock the base of Jon's dick so Jon gets enough friction, the rest can be for show. Jon comes with his fingers wound tight in Ryan's hair, and forgets to care that was the first time Ryan's face has been that close without underwear hiding what Jon doesn't like the idea of him seeing.
*
"Does it make it better or worse if I remind you I've already seen everything? Tom and I both, during the thing." Ryan asks. He's spooned up behind Jon, arm around Jon's waist; when Jon shifts, he takes the hint and slides it up a little, just under his chest.
"I don't know," Jon says. "I hadn't really thought about it."
"Okay. So pretend I haven't - what do you think is going to happen, when - if - you do let me?"
It all feels far-off and unspecific, lying in their bed with Ryan wrapped warm around him, fears that make perfect sense when he doesn't think about them too hard, when he doesn't put them into words he can argue with. "I don't - I mean, I know, but I don't - I don't know how to say it."
Ryan nods, kisses Jon's shoulder. "Because it's been a week and a half, and nothing bad's happened."
"Your logic has no place here," Jon says, turns his face towards the pillow to muffle it a little. He's trying to joke, to break the suffocating tension he thinks maybe only he feels, but it's more truthful than he'd like to admit. Jon's built his life around a certain set of boundaries, and beliefs, and yeah, fears, and they're breaking through too many of them in too short a time.
"I'll back off tonight," Ryan says, "but not forever."
"No," Jon says, "you shouldn't - this is good, I think. It's just not really easy for me."
Ryan nods again. "Can I try something? You can tell me to stop anytime."
Jon takes a deep breath, turns his face into the pillow a little more, tries to focus on the last couple times he's let Ryan try things, how good it felt to push through. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
The path of Ryan's hand down Jon's stomach, past his bellybutton, down - down there - is agonizingly slow; he's giving Jon plenty of time to stop him, to draw the line, but Jon - Ryan's right, he's seen it, and he hasn't left, or suddenly forgotten not to call Jon "she", or any of the million other things Jon had convinced himself were good reasons to keep hiding. He clenches his fingers tight in the sheets, and spreads his legs a little so Ryan can cup his hand between them, lightly enough Jon can barely feel him.
"Okay?"
"Okay," Jon says, voice less shaky than he feels. Ryan pushes up a little, meets Jon with a kiss when he finally manages to look away from the pillow and face Ryan. He slips his hand out, back up to rest on Jon's waist while they kiss; when Jon wakes up, Ryan's clutching him so tightly he can't get out of bed right away.
*
The whole making progress thing is a lot less painful than Jon expected; the more they push, the more examples of how good it can be once he gets past the initial anxiety Jon has to cling to, the easier it is to push. Ryan gets him off like that one night, hand cupped between Jon's legs, holding still so Jon can grind against him, as much or as little contact as he wants.
It's only the third time in his life Jon’s come without his dick in the way; he shakes through it, has to push Ryan's hand away almost before he's finished. Ryan jerks himself off, almost frantic with it, comes over his fist and stomach before Jon's gotten over the wrung-out heaviness in his limbs, gotten past did I really just let him do that? He feels a little guilty, but Ryan doesn't seem to care, just wipes off on the sheets and nuzzles into Jon's neck, falls asleep smiling.
They shift enough in the night Jon wakes up with Ryan's thigh between his, pressed up against him. He takes a minute, a few minutes, to savor how good it feels to not panic about it.
*
"Do you think cats have souls?"
Jon's going to answer, tell Ryan of course he does, but as soon as Ryan gets the question out, Clover bats at his face then uses his bladder as a launch pad to jump to the floor, and Jon can't stop laughing at Ryan's genuinely injured look.
"He's going to pee in my shoes," Ryan says, so dismayed Jon just laughs harder.
"Serves you right," he says, when he finally catches his breath. "How the fuck would there be a cat heaven if cats didn't have souls?"
"You're high."
"Obviously," Jon says. "But I'm also right."
"Sure, okay." Ryan raises his voice, like he wants to make sure anyone who might pee in his shoes is listening. "Cats totally have souls. Totally."
*
"I want to - uh. Are you cold?"
Ryan's blinking at him in confusion, and now is maybe not the best time to think Jon should have warned him in advance what he was thinking for tonight. Ryan eyes him, the thick flannel pants over his boxers over his harness, the faded Cubs shirt covering his torso.
"No, uh, I think - with tomorrow, I think I need the night off from pushing." Jon's been mastering the skill of denial most of his life, and it's paid off, but tonight he has to set the alarm so they can go to his follow-up appointment tomorrow, and he can't just pretend that's not going to happen, or that the idea of the part of him he's most insecure about showing is going to be examined in some detail.
"I don't think that's the best idea," Ryan says; Jon rolls his eyes.
"Good for you. I do."
"And we don't have to push, but you've gone back to, like - I don’t think you should undo all your progress."
"I need to be comfortable tonight to handle tomorrow, and I'm sorry if you can't handle that."
"You are not," Ryan says. "And I don't think you're uncomfortable with stuff that's better than going back to square one. You’ve got, like, eight layers on, that’s more than you’ve worn in bed with me for years."
"And at no point in those years have I been preparing to let a doctor look at my fucking vagina, Ryan, I'm not fucking arguing about this."
"I don't want to argue, I just want to talk about it. If you're not okay with what we've been doing, we need to talk."
"I'm okay with it. But this is easier for me, and I need easy."
"Okay. I just - I think it would be good if you could, like, talk to me about this shit."
"I can. We just talked. Now I'm going to sleep." Jon slides under the covers and rolls over so his back's to Ryan, keeping enough distance between them to make a point. Ryan doesn't move or shut off his light, just sits there like he's reading. After what feels like forever goes by with no pages turning, Jon sighs and rolls over. "I can't fight tonight, because tomorrow is gonna take, like, all my coping skills."
"It doesn't have to be a fight," Ryan says, puts his book aside. "I don't get why you act like there's no difference between talking and fighting."
"Do you remember what I told you when I said I was going off T?"
"I don't know what that has to do with anything," Ryan says, frustration clear in his voice. "But it was something to do with your voice, right? You didn't want it any deeper. And side effects, maybe?"
Jon scoots over so he can rest his head on Ryan's stomach. Ryan isn't frustrated enough not to take that as a clear sign Jon wants to be pet, at least. "I went off T because my doctor was retiring, and I didn't like the idea of being forced to see a new one. Everywhere else, with everyone else, I get to decide how much of me to talk about, how much of me anyone can see. I don't like being in a situation where I can't control that."
Ryan just pets him without talking for a long time, before he finally slides down so he's face-to-face with Jon. "That," he says, and Jon's surprised a little by how relieved he is to see the smile playing at the corners of Ryan's mouth, "is a way better reason to have broken up my band."
"The band would have broken up anyway, asshole."
"Probably," Ryan says, and this time he really does smile. "But it would have been way less entertaining."
Jon barks out a laugh at that, tucks his face into Ryan's neck. "Probably."
"We'll get through tomorrow," Ryan says, into the top of Jon's head. "And then you can go back to only ever being as naked as you want."
That's probably not the best attitude; Ryan should probably be doing what Tom does, lecture him about all the risks he's taking refusing to ever go to a doctor. Right then. though, the idea that Ryan won't ever push him in this one place he really truly can't handle being pushed is enough to lull him into a far more restful sleep than he'd been expecting.
*
Ryan wraps his arm around Jon's waist as they walk out, and Jon doesn't know whether to lean into it or pull away. He wants to hold onto him, make Ryan bring him somewhere and say "this is my boyfriend" because Ryan believes it, he's never not believed that, never hesitated to refer to Jon as guy, dude, boy. He wants to hide, go somewhere and shut himself in a room with a mirror just big enough he can look at his beard, can rest his hand on the bulge in his jeans and shut his fucking brain off. He has a folder of bookmarks of people calling him Panic's real boy, laughing about how he's too manly for them, he could go read that for a few hours. He could go buy clothes, underwear, anything, and not worry like he used to the cashier thinks he must be a girl buying for her boyfriend because he has a beard and he's a man, dammit.
"I need to get drunk," Jon says, instead of any of the hundred options racing in his head. It's exactly the wrong thing; Ryan goes noticeably still for too long in the driver's seat. At least they're at a red light, fuck. Ryan's gotten receptive enough to alcohol - and a thousand other substances - Jon forgets, too often, he still has a thing about using it as a coping mechanism.
"Could you go to Tom's for that?" he asks, before Jon can apologize. "Or, I guess it's your place, I can go somewhere for a while. Andy and I were - "
"No, shit," Jon says. "You don't - that was shitty. No, I won't. Just. Fuck, that was awful, I need to - something."
Ryan reaches over, squeezes Jon's knee, keeps his hand there when he starts driving again. "We can get really, really high," he says. "Like. Super high."
It takes longer than Jon would like to get high enough to settle him down, but a lot less time than it would have taken to get drunk enough, and without the potential for feeling like shit and fighting with Ryan later. They're sprawled on the couch, and Ryan's giving Jon a foot rub because Jon was in no way above shoving his feet in Ryan's lap in anticipation of the moment he got high enough to get touch-hungry and go for the nearest skin.
"You okay?"
"Better," Jon says, because he's not sure he can say yes honestly. With his head turned towards the back of the couch, talking makes his beard rub against the fabric, and the sensation swirls through his veins and meets the fucking awesome feeling of Ryan working his long fingers between Jon's toes somewhere low in Jon's stomach. "You should," he starts, bites his lip because he's not sure he can say it. Ryan just keeps rubbing. "It's stupid that I'd let some doctor I've seen twice see more of me than you get to."
Jon’s been with Ryan for just under four years, and Jon’s only let Ryan actually touch him for three fucking weeks. It’s fucking stupid and he can be mad at himself for it, he can even get mad at Ryan for just letting him be so selfish about it, or he can stop with the fucking baby steps so in another year he won’t still have this same exact regret.
Ryan stops rubbing; Jon tries not to kick at him to get him to start again. "I try not to think about it that way," he says, and starts again. "I would - it's not fair, it's not fucking fair at all. But I don't get to tell you what to do with your body, that would suck. As much as I want to."
"You should go down on me," Jon says. "Like, me, not my dick."
Ryan blinks, twice, opens his mouth and closes it, blinks again. "You can't just say that, holy shit," he says. "You're a dude, you should understand the severity of blue balls."
"I'm serious."
"You're high."
"I'd chicken out sober, I think," he says, and finally gives in to his urge to poke Ryan with his toes. "Man up and eat me out, Ross."
"You can't just - Jesus fuck," Ryan says, and clambers over Jon to kiss him senseless.
Ryan gets Jon's harness tangled in his boxers tangled in his jeans caught around his ankle, elbows Jon twice in his pot-hazy overenthusiastic rush, wraps his lips around Jon and sucks until Jon can't breathe, can't stop jerking his hips, and when Jon comes it's intense enough he almost feels too weak to tug Ryan off when he doesn't stop.
"Like a guy," he pants, and he's not sure it's clear but Ryan gets it, at least enough to slide back up Jon's body, kiss him deep and dirty and wet.
"That was - fuck," Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jon agrees, and pushes him back against the couch to return the favor.
*
"Stop fucking smiling," Tom says, and snaps the picture without waiting for Jon to actually stop. "You're ruining the mood."
"The sky and the ground are the same color," Jon says, kicks at some snow. "I don't think my face is doing anything to change that."
"Which is why I'm going for 'bleak', and your stupid face isn't falling in line."
Jon adopts an exaggerated frown, and Tom takes five or six pictures of it, then shifts so Jon's not in the frame any more. Which is fine, because it's fucking freezing, and the sky's the same gross muted depressing-as-Hell gray as the ground, and Jon had fucking fantastic sex before he came to meet Tom, and Tom is being ridiculous about his art, and Jon doesn't see any reason to stop smiling.
"I don't really want you to stop smiling," Tom says, kicks at a pile of snow and makes his stupid I'm-contemplating-the-artistic-value-of-the-universe face before he takes a picture of the patch of gray sidewalk surrounded by the snow that doesn't look quite so gray in contrast. "I like this new, improved, not-a-sulky-asshole Jon."
"Fuck you." Jon punches his arm, just enough to get Tom smiling too. "You should like sulky, if you're after 'bleak' all of a sudden."
"I'm after 'bleak' today, because I don't think I can manage anything else. Not, like, as a lifestyle choice."
"Your apartment is the bleakest place I've ever been, dude, if you're aiming for anything else, you missed."
"It's not my fault Sean doesn't know how to do dishes or laundry."
"It's your fault you don't."
Tom thinks on that for a second, then shrugs. "If he wore more color, the piles of clothes would probably be more cheerful."
Jon doesn't say anything about Tom's black-on-gray-on-black outfit, because Tom is the kind of person who would start pointing out that his blacks are somehow more colorful than Sean's. He knows just enough color theory to make it sound logical, too, but maybe only because Jon knows about the same amount of color theory. Tom looks around, tilts his head at the dead tree stark against the sky, then shrugs and starts walking. "So when's Ross abandoning us for warmer climates?"
Uh. "He isn't, I don't think."
"Does he live here now? I kind of figured you'd go with him, since he wilts like a delicate flower in the snow."
"Marley does like his place better," Jon says. "Better backyard."
"With anyone else, I'm not sure I'd believe the dog was the deciding factor, but I'm not even gonna pretend like I don't think you'd move cross-country based on what Marley wants."
"I'm not moving based on what Marley wants. I'm not - we haven't talked about moving."
Tom stops in his tracks and lifts his camera to snap a picture of Jon's profile. "I think it's time to admit you don't have any room to act like I'm the one of us who sucks at communicating, dude."
That's the most ridiculous thing Jon's ever heard, but it might be true. Tom sucks at talking, but he's good at making his position clear other ways. If he's honest with himself, he's pretty sure the guy who can only handle the long-distance relationship thing with frequent, long visits loses to the guy who can go months without seeing his girlfriend without worrying, without the relationship suffering.
"We just haven't talked about it," Jon says. "That doesn't mean we won't."
Tom snorts in disbelief, but doesn't say anything else.
*
It's not that Jon's stupid, or oblivious, it's just that he knows Ryan, so when Tom asked him to walk around and take pictures for a while on Valentine's Day, he considered the possibility it was to get him out of the house so Ryan could make whatever arrangements he might need, and discarded it for the probability Tom was just lonely on one of the few days Skype dates don't really cut it.
When he opens the door, Marley's chewing on a plastic rose, and the cats are fighting over another one. There's a trail of them leading to the bedroom, because of course Ryan wouldn't remember that you can't just leave plastic shit all over the floors in a house full of pets who think "on the floor" means "food". Marley gives his up pretty easily, though, and the cats have forgotten there even are roses in favor of chasing their tails, so Jon's more charmed than annoyed.
Ryan is usually the kind of romantic who does things like write stupidly sweet songs just to be surprised when people actually find them stupidly sweet, or forgets all the groceries they actually need but remembers Jon wishing they had avocados for his sandwich a week ago. He's not really a roses kind of guy, or a Valentine's kind of guy; they tend to spend the day enjoying one of their favorite restaurants that has the kind of shitty ambiance that scares guys trying to impress their girlfriends away, or forgetting it happened until three days later when they've missed all the good candy sales.
Jon gathers up the roses on his way to the bedroom - there's twelve, because of course Ryan wouldn't go half-cliché - and drops them all when he opens the bedroom door. Not because there's anything surprising back there, but holy fuck the synthetic smell of cheap rose candles smacks him in the face and leaves him breathless for a second. Clearly, Ryan didn't half-ass the candles, either.
He's not in the bedroom, and Jon's going to have to have a leaving-candles-unattended talk when he has the leaving-shit-the-animals-will-choke-on-on-the-floor talk. He shoves those thoughts to the back of his mind; Ryan went to all this trouble, the least he could do is enjoy it. There are rose petals on the bed, of course there are, and a light on in the bathroom.
And, uh, a full bubble bath in the bathroom. Ryan's sitting on the edge of the tub, looking half anxious and half incredibly pleased with himself. It's, weirdly, kind of a good look on him.
"I thought you might be cold," he says, with all the fake casualness of someone who spent all day figuring out the most casual way to present a path of roses leading to a bubble bath.
"I don't think I've taken a bubble bath since I was six years old," Jon says, tugs his shirt off.
"Yeah, well, these are grownup bubbles. And if you weren't so picky about Bath & Body Works scents, it'd be easier to buy you a present there, this is like all they had that wasn’t the wrong smell.“
"I didn't get you anything," Jon says while he kicks his pants aside.
Ryan shrugs. "I kind of owe you. And you kind of have."
Jon isn't sure that's okay, that Ryan thinks Jon trying to have a healthy relationship with him is a gift instead of just something he should be doing, should have been doing from the start. He unbuckles his harness under his boxers, shoves them down together. It's not something he's let Ryan see, tends to take the last layer off in the bathroom, or under the covers, or with Ryan's back turned. Jon doesn't get naked, Jon gets down to his boxers, and then when he lets Ryan look again he just is naked.
Still, if Ryan wants to think of this stuff as a present, now would be the time to give him a little more. Ryan's eyes sliding over him don't make him feel anywhere near as uncomfortable as they used to, not uncomfortable at all, actually, just a little warm, a little turned on, a little like he might actually be nice to look at. If Ryan's not gonna act like he doesn't like what he sees, Jon's gonna try to take him at his word.
"It might be getting a little cold," Ryan says, with his eyes hovering somewhere around Jon's bellybutton. "I told Tom three o'clock."
"Tom and clocks have a weird relationship," Jon says. The water is a little cooler than he expected, but still good, nice and soothing on his cold skin. Ryan's face is all pleased, now, and Jon should maybe do more to make him look like that more often, considering how much he likes it.
Ryan kneels next to the tub to wash Jon's back when he leans forward and raises his eyebrow in question, and then keeps going, dragging the washcloth up and down Jon's legs. He lets it drift away when Jon spreads his legs a little in invitation, rubs the heel of his palm against Jon's - against Jon, kisses him thorough and eager and doesn't falter when Jon starts jerking his hips against the pressure of Ryan's hand, sloshing water and bubbles over the side of the tub.
Jon never ends up giving Ryan the lecture about his dog eating plastic roses, or how unattended candles are how houses burn down, because Ryan goes down on Jon on top of the stupid plastic rose petals, then Jon lets Ryan buckle the harness on, because it doesn't make Ryan think of him as any less of a dude, or any more of a dude, it just means Ryan can ride him, hands braced on Jon's chest and hips rolling in a rhythm that has Jon on the edge way faster than he should after two orgasms.
"I forgot to ask before I went for the second one," Ryan mumbles against Jon's chest, at least half asleep. "That was okay, though?"
The multiple orgasm thing, it turns out, isn't so much emasculating as fucking awesome. And there are plenty of guys with quick recovery times, right? Right. "It was great, Ryan, it - thank you."
Ryan presses a sleepy kiss right where he insists he can't actually tell Jon has a scar from his top surgery. "Thank you," he says; Jon's pretty sure he's asleep before he actually finishes saying it.
*
For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Ryan wakes up before Jon. Not too long, the bed's still warm, but it's a little jarring to wake up alone when it's not because Jon fell asleep alone the night before.
Ryan's in the kitchen, contemplating the ingredients for pancakes laid out on the counter, munching on the blueberries that were supposed to go in the pancakes before they went in Ryan's mouth. The carton's half-empty, and Ryan’s fingers and lips are tinted purple.
"Is this a hint?" Jon asks, picks up the carton of eggs.
"I was gonna make them, but remember the French toast disaster? I can't be trusted."
"I'm starting to think you did that on purpose so you'd never have to cook," Jon says, but he plugs in the electric griddle anyway. Pancakes are always a good idea, even if they're manipulation pancakes. They might actually be better if they're manipulation pancakes, he should try that on someone sometime. Although the only people he's ever had any success manipulating are Ryan and Tom, and he doesn't really trust either of them with cooking.
"Hand over the blueberries, Ross," Jon says, then thinks better of it. "No, fuck the blueberries. I think we have chocolate chips."
"We do? I would have eaten those if I'd known."
"There's a reason they're hidden."
Jon makes giant stacks for each of them, and it's not until he sits at the table with Ryan he realizes they're out of syrup. "Dammit."
"These are, like, dripping with chocolate, do you really need them sweeter?"
"Maybe," Jon says, and doesn't admit maybe he overdid it with the chocolate chips. By the time he's halfway through his stack, though, Ryan's blueberry-purple lips are smeared with melted chocolate; he looks like an exceptionally sloppy five-year-old. Jon maybe shouldn't be watching Ryan's mouth if that's what he thinks, especially not when Ryan licks off some of the chocolate.
"I like this," Ryan says, spears another bite and puts it in his mouth just to talk around it because, yes, he's five. "Mornings."
We should do this every day, every single day, Jon doesn't say. "When are you leaving?"
Ryan blinks, swallows heavily. "Didn't we talk about this already? Cat house in my living room, bookshelf space used up, not leaving, et cetera?"
"No, no, like, leaving the apartment. You must have, like, homeowner stuff to do."
"Spencer's paying my bills for me," Ryan says with a shrug. "If 'homeowner stuff' means anything else, I wasn't doing it when I was home, so. Uh. Do you want me to leave?"
"No," Jon says, "just, I was thinking. About stuff."
Ryan nods like he knows what Jon means, doesn't ask him to clarify. "Stuff, yeah."
"Marley really likes your backyard," Jon says.
"It's a pretty sweet yard, when I can convince Spencer to mow."
"You could mow your own lawn," Jon says, then remembers who he's talking to. "I could mow your lawn."
"From Chicago?"
"From right there, I think. We could - Marley really likes it."
"Marley does, yeah," Ryan says, smiling like he gets what Jon actually means. It's Ryan, and it's Jon, so he probably does. It's a good thought, a really good thought.
"My lease isn't up for a couple months."
Ryan shrugs again. "You were gonna stay with me for, like, six months before everything, and you still owe me three of those. Ish."
It's not like Jon actually thought he intended to honor his lease, or that Ryan might not want him there long-term, but the reality of sitting here and realizing there is absolutely no reason not to do this is something else. Which is stupid, because the reasons to do it always outweighed the reasons not to. Jon can't honestly look at a month and a half home without Ryan compared to three months at Ryan's even when that means all his issues are staring him right in the face and ignoring them means a fight.
"You should move in with me," Ryan says, "for Marley."
"For Marley," Jon says. "Of course."
Ryan's smile is big and dopey and chocolate-smeared, and it would just be stupid not to kiss him. And Jon's really working on trying to be less stupid where Ryan's concerned. This particular challenge, at least, is pretty easy to meet.
For all his faults, all his fuckups, Ryan's better at reading Jon - when he wants to be - than probably anyone else. Usually when they're in bed like this, Jon on his back and Ryan on his side, head propped up on one hand, Ryan'll run his other hand up and down Jon's chest and stomach, light enough to raise goosebumps.
But Jon's almost-breasts and stomach are molehill-mountains in Jon's shirt, and he's not sure he can handle anything drawing attention to them; Ryan didn't even hesitate when they settled in, just reached out to rub Jon's arm instead.
"I can call," Ryan says. "If that's - if that's the only problem, I can call for you and set it up."
"And what happens when I'm too freaked out about it to actually go?"
"I'll drag you out."
Jon expects, from the little trying-not-to-laugh tremor in Ryan's voice, to look up and see Ryan smiling; instead he's got this weird half-smile half-grimace thing happening, like he's not sure he wanted to make a joke but can't help wanting to laugh. And Jon wants - or at least thinks he should want - to be mad, to insist this is serious, this isn't a time for fucking jokes, but the image of Ryan trying to drag Jon anywhere is fucking hilarious.
"I'll get Tom to drag you out," he amends.
"Okay, we'll pretend that's a solution. What about when we get there, when they see me?"
"If anyone says a single word you don't like," Ryan says, and suddenly the set of his mouth is serious, his eyes aren't laughing, "I will punch them in the fucking face."
That should be funny, too, because Jon's seen Ryan try to punch someone and it's never anything but funny. But Ryan's eyes are fierce and there's a lump in Jon's throat and he's not sure he could laugh if he wanted to. Jon just rolls over on his side, rests his forehead against Ryan's chest.
"Okay," he says. "Call."
*
Ryan spends half an hour typing and making increasingly frustrated noises before he shuts his laptop loudly enough to startle Clover off of Jon's lap. "This is stupid," he says. "There's literally no possible combination of words that works."
"I told you," Jon says.
"Whatever. That's what phones are for."
"Like anyone's gonna come right out and say 'yeah, no, we'll totally laugh at you and make you feel like a freak'."
"No one's gonna laugh at you."
Jon rolls his eyes, but doesn't give into any of his other urges to fight over this; it's not gonna do him any good to find out how much of a dick he has to be before Ryan stops ignoring it. "I'm taking Marley for a walk."
It's colder than Jon's usual limit, cold enough he'd normally turn back as soon as Marley'd had a chance to yellow some snow, but the sun's bright and warm on his face, and the idea of freezing his fingers off is more appealing than sitting around listening to Ryan try and make sure some random doctor isn't going to make this even worse for Jon.
Marley starts trying to turn him around before Jon's ready to go back, but if there's one thing he always puts above his own shit it's his pets, and Marley shouldn't have to freeze because Jon's a coward. Ryan's making sandwiches when they get back, even though it's too late for lunch and too early for dinner.
"Friday," he says, and, "pickles, or no?"
"Pickles. And are you sure?"
Ryan shrugs. "I was on the phone for like an hour and a half. If you didn't trust me to ask the right questions, you should have stayed."
"I trust you," Jon says, a little surprised by just how much he means that. "So, okay. Friday."
"I checked with Tom, and he's free, if you don't want me there."
"I need you there," Jon says. "Maybe Tom, too. But you're coming."
He's not sure if that's something to smile about, but he's not going to pretend he's not a little relieved when Ryan turns around to bring the sandwiches to the table and he's got that lazy pleased smile Jon always wants to kiss. Ryan puts a sandwich with at least two layers of pickles in front of Jon, and with him that close there's no reason not to go ahead and kiss him.
"I'm glad you came," he says, when Ryan pulls back, angle awkward on his neck. Ryan doesn't say anything, but his smile gets wider.
*
There are protesters outside, but not many, and Jon's so wrapped up in his own head it's easy to ignore them, to pretend there's nothing past the solidness of Tom and Ryan closing ranks on either side of him. Ryan makes some snide remark about being there to pick up loose women - he actually uses the phrase "loose women", God - and they're inside.
Everyone else in the waiting room is a woman, but the receptionist doesn't even blink when Jon checks in. Ryan must have done okay with the research.
Tom fidgets, twisting his fingers in the drawstrings of his hoodie, because when Tom's in an uncomfortable situation he takes pictures but Jon and Ryan hadn't let him bring a camera. Ryan fidgets, bouncing his leg and tapping his fingers on the arm rest. Jon sits almost completely still and focuses on breathing.
What he remembers between that and waking up in his bedroom isn't much: the nurse said his name, again without any indication "Jon" is a weird name for someone who wants an abortion, the room she took him too was freezing; he didn't want to take his pants off in front of Tom but he wanted Tom to leave even less than that; he woke up halfway to the car, leaning heavily on Tom, Ryan talking heatedly, too fast for Jon's brain to process any of the words.
When he wakes up in his own room, it's dark outside, and there are low voices coming from the kitchen. He gets up, winces at the soreness between his legs, and stumbles a little on his way down the hall.
"You should probably stay in bed," Ryan says, when he sees Jon.
"Probably," Jon agrees, but he steps into the kitchen instead of turning around. His mouth feels like cotton, but there aren't any clean glasses.
"How're you feeling, dude?" Tom asks.
"Thirsty," Jon says, because his head is still fuzzy, too fuzzy to really process anything. He's sore, and groggy, and...something else, something he can't put his finger on. He keeps looking in the cupboards, like if he stares hard enough a clean glass will materialize. There's shuffling behind him, the refrigerator opens and closes, and Ryan presses a bottle into Jon's hand. Of course Ryan would go buy water instead of doing dishes, of course he would. "Thanks."
"You should probably sit down. Or, like, can you sit down?"
"I can," Jon says, and turns so his back's resting against the counter, "but leaning's fine."
"Okay. Um. Okay. Like, do you - what can I - "
"Tell him how you almost got thrown out," Tom says.
"I didn't almost get thrown out."
"He screamed at a nurse."
"I didn't scream, I corrected him. He asked how 'she' was doing, fucking stupid."
"It was yelling, if not screaming." Tom's grinning; Jon probably shouldn't be, should be annoyed that Ryan made a scene, but he can't keep from smiling himself. He takes a few swigs, almost half the bottle, and then rests his head on Ryan's shoulder. It's getting too heavy to hold up on his own.
"Hey," Ryan says.
"Hi."
Tom rolls his eyes a little and stands up. "I was gonna walk Marley, but we couldn't find his leash."
"In the coffee table drawer," Jon says; Tom nods and leaves them alone.
"You okay?" Ryan asks, rubs Jon's shoulder a little.
"Tired," he says, because he's not sure he can really answer that question yet.
"Okay," Ryan says, "let’s go to bed."
*
Like every other time they've fallen asleep together, Jon wakes up before Ryan. Unlike almost every other time, instead of using the time to do something useful, Jon opens the closet door so he can look in the one full-length mirror in the apartment. He looks, and then he takes off his shirt and looks more, and he's so intent on the shape of his stomach he doesn't see or hear Ryan coming up behind him until Ryan's hands cover his own on his stomach.
"I don't look any different," Jon says, when it's clear Ryan isn't going to say anything.
Ryan hunches down enough to hook his chin over Jon's shoulder. "No. But it just looks like a beer gut."
It probably does, objectively; as anxious as Jon gets about passing, as sure as he is that even the littlest slip up is as obvious to the rest of the world as it is to him, a stomach like this on a short, stocky, bearded guy isn't going to say "pregnant" to anyone. But Jon isn't - can't be - objective about it. He knows what it is, and why it's there, and what it means.
"It's kind of cute," Ryan says, kisses Jon's shoulder, then up to Jon's neck. Jon is acutely aware he didn't bother to put his harness on when they got home yesterday. He shifts away; Ryan lets him.
"We should get pancakes," Jon says.
*
Jon starts jogging in the morning, which makes Marley the happiest dog in the world. It's freezing, at its warmest, and Jon's painfully out of shape, but Marley wags his tail in delight when Jon slides out of bed, toes on his sneakers, and grabs the leash, and Jon can pretend that's his motivation.
"Don't overdo it," is all Ryan says, the one morning he's awake when Jon gets back. It's the same thing he says the few times he catches Jon doing sit-ups in the living room. Jon knows his limits, though, and Ryan doesn't push.
In bed, Ryan lets his hands skim over Jon's arms, his chest, never Jon's stomach; he rolls Jon onto his back, settles between his thighs, lines their dicks up and rolls his hips until they both come. Jon doesn't take his underwear off, for sex or for sleeping; Ryan doesn't push.
"Do you need me to make your follow-up appointment for you?" Ryan asks, over grilled cheese for dinner a week after the abortion.
"Maybe," Jon says, "or I can." He doesn't call, or tell Ryan to call. Ryan doesn't push.
*
"It's like living with a fucking ghost," Jon says, ignores Tom taking a picture of him taking a picture of a tree so he won't ruin Tom's shot with awareness. "A really agreeable ghost."
Tom snaps twice as many pictures of Jon as Jon does of the tree. "The last time he argued with you, you ran halfway across the country and ignored him," he says. "I'd be agreeable, too."
"That wasn't an argument," Jon says, turns to take a picture of Tom with the camera halfway to his face.
"Point stands," Tom says; Jon can almost make out the individual words in the puffs of steam from his breath in the freezing air. "Fighting with you sucks, dude. Especially with gender stuff."
"So I should let that shit slide?"
Tom lifts the camera back up, but he doesn't take any pictures, just uses it to hide his face. It's one of the best things about photography, having an automatic way to shield yourself from the conversation; it's one of the worst things about Tom, how he uses it to keep going past the point Jon's other friends would have gotten too uncomfortable to keep talking. Maybe it's one of the best things about Tom, too.
"Maybe? Not always. Sometimes you're really cool about shit like calling you a bitch, or whatever. But I don't mean let it slide, I mean don't get so you about it. Like, you don't yell it out and get it over with, you just get all quiet and stew for weeks. It sucks."
"Ryan knew what he was getting into."
Tom shrugs. "Sure. And you knew what you were getting with Ryan. That hasn't stopped you from expecting some level of change, right? Could you be with Ryan if he was the same way about gender stuff now as he was the first time you fucked?"
There's a really great shrub Jon is so intent on taking a picture of he can't possibly answer Tom right away. Tom doesn't seem to care.
"Ryan tries, dude. And no, you don't have to put up with shit that hurts you just because he's trying. But you don't have to keep making it worse and worse for him to fuck up."
"I don't. Just when it's a bigger thing - "
"You getting pregnant wasn't just his fuckup, Jon."
There's a part of Jon's brain, a big part, that knows that; knows that even if not using a condom was all Ryan's problem, which it isn't, necessarily, he might have been better at it if Jon hasn't made such a big deal about how nothing could be different, if he didn't make it so if Ryan was anything less than perfect, they fought. And maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, maybe if Jon held his hand and coddled him every time he got confused about something he still wouldn't have asked, or thought of it. Maybe.
But.
“I don’t think you give him enough credit,” Tom says. “You were fucking psycho when you went off T, and I don’t think anyone would’ve blamed him for siding with Brendon and Spencer a lot more than he did. He puts up with so much shit from you, and I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you that maybe your reaction to that should be something other than expecting him to deal with more.”
Jon bites his lip against the urge to yell at Tom, clenches his fist against the urge to hit him. Tom’s the only person left in Jon’s life who’ll say this kind of shit to him, and yeah, Jon kind of prefers it that way, but he’s a rational enough person to know stopping Tom would be the stupidest thing he could do.
"It's fucking freezing," he says, finally. Tom just nods.
"I've got plenty, yeah. Coffee and home?"
"Coffee and home," Jon agrees. He doesn't add thank you, or I'm lucky to have you, but he buys Tom's coffee for him; he figures Tom knows what that means.
*
Jon has every intention of talking to Ryan, but when he gets home Ryan's high as a fucking kite, cooing over the texture of Dylan's fur. That's both fucking adorable and a horrible starting point for a serious talk, so Jon just packs his own pipe and sets about catching up to Ryan.
He loses track of how many bowls they go through; the clock chiming startles him twice, so at least an hour passes. At some point Ryan abandons Dylan - or Dylan finds something better to do - to pet Jon. Jon's so fucking high he manages to distract himself from that by wiggling his toes in the socks he hadn't taken off when he came in from hanging out with Tom. Tom, right, stuff he wanted to talk about because of Tom.
"I don't know why you haven't left yet," Jon says, rolls a little to rest his cheek on Ryan's stomach. The way his beard feels against the thin cotton covering Ryan's skin is amazing.
"Do you want me to? I just got here.”
"No," Jon says, "like, left me. Given up."
The way the fabric of his shirt pulls means Ryan's probably shrugging. Or yawning. "I have a shelf full of books about being transsexual and a fucking seven-foot-high cat toy in my living room," he says. "If that's what you're waiting for, you're as stupid as you think I am."
"I don't think you're stupid."
"Ignorant."
"Not in the bad way."
"Yeah, I can tell by how upset you get about it, you obviously love that about me.”
Jon sighs, pushes Ryan's shirt up so he can rest his hand on his bare stomach. Ryan's skin is so warm, so fucking soft, one of Jon's favorite things to touch. "I used to - when I got my period, I would sit in my room for, like, hours, and cry. And I would, like, try to picture myself happy. Sometimes I couldn't do it. A lot of times. Like. It only ever worked when I pretended that I hadn't been born like this. And I can't - I don't think I can be happy. If I have to acknowledge it for the rest of my life."
"Okay," Ryan says. "I - okay. That's. You get it, though, that you're kind of forcing me to acknowledge it all the time? Like I can't just treat you like I treat any other guy."
"Bullshit," Jon says; somewhere in the distant parts of his mind he's angry, but it's a slow anger, boiling just out of reach, not enough to make him sit up or stop touching.
"I can call Spencer a housewife, and Brendon a princess, and I can make fun of how Greenwald's bathroom is totally a girl bathroom with all his, like, shower stuff and hair stuff and...stuff. I have to not do that with you, which means I have to remember you're different. And it's not like I mind doing it, obviously I fuck up, but I try. But if your goal is to make me forget, that's not gonna work. I can forget the trans stuff, to an extent, and treat you like I treat everyone else, or I can remember and avoid the stuff that bothers you. I don't think it's possible to do both."
Jon rubs his cheek against Ryan's shirt, sighs a little when Ryan starts petting him again. "I don't know what to do," Jon says. "I don't know how to do this. I never - I never even bothered trying to picture myself with someone, because I thought it was stupid to expect anyone to put up with this."
"Okay," Ryan says again. "That's - it's not good, obviously, that sucks, but, like, it's good that you said that? We can work with that."
"You need to make my follow-up appointment," Jon tells Ryan's stomach. "I can't do it."
"In the morning," Ryan says, and that's probably not where the conversation should end, but the soothing motion of Ryan's fingers in his hair and the steady way his stomach rises and falls under Jon's cheek and hand is a little too much to stay awake through.
*
Jon has to stretch twice as long before his jog the next morning, stiff and achy from sleeping on the floor. He thinks, briefly, about waking Ryan up, but Ryan is fucking murderous if he doesn't wake up under his own power. That, and Jon kind of wants some time to process before they have to talk more.
There are things Jon doesn't tell people, and things he never wants people to know. Sometimes they're separate - there's plenty of stuff he doesn't care if people find out secondhand, and a few things he's willing to tell people out of necessity even if he doesn't actually want the information out there - but mostly they overlap. "I'm a transsexual" was, for a long time, both, but thanks to Ryan it's just the second thing now. "I can't ever be happy if I don't pretend I'm someone else" was, for obvious reasons, another one that fell in both categories. There were reasons, lots of reasons, some good and some bad, Jon never bothered to envision himself dating. This constant revision of his own boundaries was a big one, this constant need to move the goal posts because he has something important to lose if he won’t move them.
Ryan's awake when he gets back, curled up on the couch with his phone in his hands, staring out the window at nothing in particular.
"Next Wednesday at one-thirty," he says without looking up, when Jon gets a bottle of water and flops down on the other end of the couch.
"Okay," Jon says, and waits for Ryan to keep talking. He doesn't, though, just fiddles with his phone and keeps looking out the window long past the point the silence shifts from awkward to comfortable.
"When I was a teenager," he says, finally, "The only fantasy that ever worked was the one where Spencer and I took the world by storm, and I had eight Grammys, and a mansion with, like, my high school's football team on staff to do humiliating stuff whenever I wanted."
"Okay."
"Teenagers are stupid," Ryan says, looks away from the window. "And fantasies aren't supposed to be stuff we can have."
"It's not really the same thing."
"No," Ryan says, "not exactly. But it's not totally different, either. And, like, I don't have eight Grammys, and I'm never going to, and I like my house, and why would I want to pay those assholes for anything? I guess you could argue the taking-the-world-by-storm thing, but that didn't really go the way I planned, either. But I'm happy."
"It's not - "
"I'm glad you had that fantasy, if that's what you needed to get through how hard that stuff must have been for you. But I think you're cheating yourself if you assume if you can't have that in reality, you can't be happy. You're never gonna be a dude who was born with a dick, and I'm sorry, because I know that sucks for you, and it's bullshit what you've had to deal with. But at some point I think maybe you need to look at yourself and be able to say 'I'm never going to have that, but I like what I do have'."
"I do like what I have," Jon says, and pokes Ryan with his toe. Ryan's answering smile is wide and genuinely pleased.
"Okay," he says. "That's a start."
*
Every intention Jon had of talking through his shit with Ryan vanishes in the face of Ryan's sudden, and apparently isolated, willingness to call Jon on his bullshit. It's not like Jon doesn't think they need to talk, that Ryan's little moment of pushing back suddenly made Jon decide Tom was wrong, that he thinks he shouldn't get called on his crap, that Ryan shouldn't call him on his crap. Just, he kind of feels like there's another shoe that needs to drop, and he can't bring himself to start the conversation with that hanging over his head.
"You two should come for dinner," Jon's mom says, when he finally tells her Ryan flew up and they're working stuff out, so they do. It's exactly as awkward as it always is when Ryan has to interact with Jon's parents - he's not good with parents in general, Spencer's mom excluded, and he's convinced Jon's parents don't like him. It's nice, though, and Jon thinks that however justified he was in keeping Ryan at a distance for a while, it would have been even nicer if they could have done this for Christmas.
"I want to try something," Ryan mumbles against his lips, gangly limbs tangled up in Jon's. Jon could tense up, pull away, get mad at Ryan for pushing, for daring to think he has a right to ask for things in bed; he could say no, because whatever it is Ryan wants, Jon doesn't like to push unless it's his idea. Instead he asks what it is Ryan wants, and for the first time they fuck without Jon's underwear on, Ryan riding Jon, losing his rhythm more than once to let his hands wander, never farther than Jon's comfortable with. Jon works his harness off under the covers, after; he'd forgotten how nice it was to sleep skin-to-skin.
"The Nicks aren't ever gonna talk to you again," Andy says, laughing a little over his drink. "No one burns bridges like Jonny Walker."
Jon waits for Ryan's reaction, braces himself for the reaction he totally deserves. It was one thing to throw his fit, to run away, to make Ryan suffer through the distance and the silence, but another thing entirely to wreck his band. But Ryan just shrugs, shirt dragging against Jon's where they're pressed together in the booth. "Young Veins was a stupid band name, anyway," he says, and Jon laughs in relief.
At home, Ryan pushes him against their bedroom door and hits his knees; Jon doesn't argue when Ryan pulls his underwear down with his jeans, or make Ryan wait until he switches to the dick they usually use for sex. Ryan gives him the world's sloppiest blowjob, all tongue and spit and watching Jon through his eyelashes because as long as he uses his fist to rock the base of Jon's dick so Jon gets enough friction, the rest can be for show. Jon comes with his fingers wound tight in Ryan's hair, and forgets to care that was the first time Ryan's face has been that close without underwear hiding what Jon doesn't like the idea of him seeing.
*
"Does it make it better or worse if I remind you I've already seen everything? Tom and I both, during the thing." Ryan asks. He's spooned up behind Jon, arm around Jon's waist; when Jon shifts, he takes the hint and slides it up a little, just under his chest.
"I don't know," Jon says. "I hadn't really thought about it."
"Okay. So pretend I haven't - what do you think is going to happen, when - if - you do let me?"
It all feels far-off and unspecific, lying in their bed with Ryan wrapped warm around him, fears that make perfect sense when he doesn't think about them too hard, when he doesn't put them into words he can argue with. "I don't - I mean, I know, but I don't - I don't know how to say it."
Ryan nods, kisses Jon's shoulder. "Because it's been a week and a half, and nothing bad's happened."
"Your logic has no place here," Jon says, turns his face towards the pillow to muffle it a little. He's trying to joke, to break the suffocating tension he thinks maybe only he feels, but it's more truthful than he'd like to admit. Jon's built his life around a certain set of boundaries, and beliefs, and yeah, fears, and they're breaking through too many of them in too short a time.
"I'll back off tonight," Ryan says, "but not forever."
"No," Jon says, "you shouldn't - this is good, I think. It's just not really easy for me."
Ryan nods again. "Can I try something? You can tell me to stop anytime."
Jon takes a deep breath, turns his face into the pillow a little more, tries to focus on the last couple times he's let Ryan try things, how good it felt to push through. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
The path of Ryan's hand down Jon's stomach, past his bellybutton, down - down there - is agonizingly slow; he's giving Jon plenty of time to stop him, to draw the line, but Jon - Ryan's right, he's seen it, and he hasn't left, or suddenly forgotten not to call Jon "she", or any of the million other things Jon had convinced himself were good reasons to keep hiding. He clenches his fingers tight in the sheets, and spreads his legs a little so Ryan can cup his hand between them, lightly enough Jon can barely feel him.
"Okay?"
"Okay," Jon says, voice less shaky than he feels. Ryan pushes up a little, meets Jon with a kiss when he finally manages to look away from the pillow and face Ryan. He slips his hand out, back up to rest on Jon's waist while they kiss; when Jon wakes up, Ryan's clutching him so tightly he can't get out of bed right away.
*
The whole making progress thing is a lot less painful than Jon expected; the more they push, the more examples of how good it can be once he gets past the initial anxiety Jon has to cling to, the easier it is to push. Ryan gets him off like that one night, hand cupped between Jon's legs, holding still so Jon can grind against him, as much or as little contact as he wants.
It's only the third time in his life Jon’s come without his dick in the way; he shakes through it, has to push Ryan's hand away almost before he's finished. Ryan jerks himself off, almost frantic with it, comes over his fist and stomach before Jon's gotten over the wrung-out heaviness in his limbs, gotten past did I really just let him do that? He feels a little guilty, but Ryan doesn't seem to care, just wipes off on the sheets and nuzzles into Jon's neck, falls asleep smiling.
They shift enough in the night Jon wakes up with Ryan's thigh between his, pressed up against him. He takes a minute, a few minutes, to savor how good it feels to not panic about it.
*
"Do you think cats have souls?"
Jon's going to answer, tell Ryan of course he does, but as soon as Ryan gets the question out, Clover bats at his face then uses his bladder as a launch pad to jump to the floor, and Jon can't stop laughing at Ryan's genuinely injured look.
"He's going to pee in my shoes," Ryan says, so dismayed Jon just laughs harder.
"Serves you right," he says, when he finally catches his breath. "How the fuck would there be a cat heaven if cats didn't have souls?"
"You're high."
"Obviously," Jon says. "But I'm also right."
"Sure, okay." Ryan raises his voice, like he wants to make sure anyone who might pee in his shoes is listening. "Cats totally have souls. Totally."
*
"I want to - uh. Are you cold?"
Ryan's blinking at him in confusion, and now is maybe not the best time to think Jon should have warned him in advance what he was thinking for tonight. Ryan eyes him, the thick flannel pants over his boxers over his harness, the faded Cubs shirt covering his torso.
"No, uh, I think - with tomorrow, I think I need the night off from pushing." Jon's been mastering the skill of denial most of his life, and it's paid off, but tonight he has to set the alarm so they can go to his follow-up appointment tomorrow, and he can't just pretend that's not going to happen, or that the idea of the part of him he's most insecure about showing is going to be examined in some detail.
"I don't think that's the best idea," Ryan says; Jon rolls his eyes.
"Good for you. I do."
"And we don't have to push, but you've gone back to, like - I don’t think you should undo all your progress."
"I need to be comfortable tonight to handle tomorrow, and I'm sorry if you can't handle that."
"You are not," Ryan says. "And I don't think you're uncomfortable with stuff that's better than going back to square one. You’ve got, like, eight layers on, that’s more than you’ve worn in bed with me for years."
"And at no point in those years have I been preparing to let a doctor look at my fucking vagina, Ryan, I'm not fucking arguing about this."
"I don't want to argue, I just want to talk about it. If you're not okay with what we've been doing, we need to talk."
"I'm okay with it. But this is easier for me, and I need easy."
"Okay. I just - I think it would be good if you could, like, talk to me about this shit."
"I can. We just talked. Now I'm going to sleep." Jon slides under the covers and rolls over so his back's to Ryan, keeping enough distance between them to make a point. Ryan doesn't move or shut off his light, just sits there like he's reading. After what feels like forever goes by with no pages turning, Jon sighs and rolls over. "I can't fight tonight, because tomorrow is gonna take, like, all my coping skills."
"It doesn't have to be a fight," Ryan says, puts his book aside. "I don't get why you act like there's no difference between talking and fighting."
"Do you remember what I told you when I said I was going off T?"
"I don't know what that has to do with anything," Ryan says, frustration clear in his voice. "But it was something to do with your voice, right? You didn't want it any deeper. And side effects, maybe?"
Jon scoots over so he can rest his head on Ryan's stomach. Ryan isn't frustrated enough not to take that as a clear sign Jon wants to be pet, at least. "I went off T because my doctor was retiring, and I didn't like the idea of being forced to see a new one. Everywhere else, with everyone else, I get to decide how much of me to talk about, how much of me anyone can see. I don't like being in a situation where I can't control that."
Ryan just pets him without talking for a long time, before he finally slides down so he's face-to-face with Jon. "That," he says, and Jon's surprised a little by how relieved he is to see the smile playing at the corners of Ryan's mouth, "is a way better reason to have broken up my band."
"The band would have broken up anyway, asshole."
"Probably," Ryan says, and this time he really does smile. "But it would have been way less entertaining."
Jon barks out a laugh at that, tucks his face into Ryan's neck. "Probably."
"We'll get through tomorrow," Ryan says, into the top of Jon's head. "And then you can go back to only ever being as naked as you want."
That's probably not the best attitude; Ryan should probably be doing what Tom does, lecture him about all the risks he's taking refusing to ever go to a doctor. Right then. though, the idea that Ryan won't ever push him in this one place he really truly can't handle being pushed is enough to lull him into a far more restful sleep than he'd been expecting.
*
Ryan wraps his arm around Jon's waist as they walk out, and Jon doesn't know whether to lean into it or pull away. He wants to hold onto him, make Ryan bring him somewhere and say "this is my boyfriend" because Ryan believes it, he's never not believed that, never hesitated to refer to Jon as guy, dude, boy. He wants to hide, go somewhere and shut himself in a room with a mirror just big enough he can look at his beard, can rest his hand on the bulge in his jeans and shut his fucking brain off. He has a folder of bookmarks of people calling him Panic's real boy, laughing about how he's too manly for them, he could go read that for a few hours. He could go buy clothes, underwear, anything, and not worry like he used to the cashier thinks he must be a girl buying for her boyfriend because he has a beard and he's a man, dammit.
"I need to get drunk," Jon says, instead of any of the hundred options racing in his head. It's exactly the wrong thing; Ryan goes noticeably still for too long in the driver's seat. At least they're at a red light, fuck. Ryan's gotten receptive enough to alcohol - and a thousand other substances - Jon forgets, too often, he still has a thing about using it as a coping mechanism.
"Could you go to Tom's for that?" he asks, before Jon can apologize. "Or, I guess it's your place, I can go somewhere for a while. Andy and I were - "
"No, shit," Jon says. "You don't - that was shitty. No, I won't. Just. Fuck, that was awful, I need to - something."
Ryan reaches over, squeezes Jon's knee, keeps his hand there when he starts driving again. "We can get really, really high," he says. "Like. Super high."
It takes longer than Jon would like to get high enough to settle him down, but a lot less time than it would have taken to get drunk enough, and without the potential for feeling like shit and fighting with Ryan later. They're sprawled on the couch, and Ryan's giving Jon a foot rub because Jon was in no way above shoving his feet in Ryan's lap in anticipation of the moment he got high enough to get touch-hungry and go for the nearest skin.
"You okay?"
"Better," Jon says, because he's not sure he can say yes honestly. With his head turned towards the back of the couch, talking makes his beard rub against the fabric, and the sensation swirls through his veins and meets the fucking awesome feeling of Ryan working his long fingers between Jon's toes somewhere low in Jon's stomach. "You should," he starts, bites his lip because he's not sure he can say it. Ryan just keeps rubbing. "It's stupid that I'd let some doctor I've seen twice see more of me than you get to."
Jon’s been with Ryan for just under four years, and Jon’s only let Ryan actually touch him for three fucking weeks. It’s fucking stupid and he can be mad at himself for it, he can even get mad at Ryan for just letting him be so selfish about it, or he can stop with the fucking baby steps so in another year he won’t still have this same exact regret.
Ryan stops rubbing; Jon tries not to kick at him to get him to start again. "I try not to think about it that way," he says, and starts again. "I would - it's not fair, it's not fucking fair at all. But I don't get to tell you what to do with your body, that would suck. As much as I want to."
"You should go down on me," Jon says. "Like, me, not my dick."
Ryan blinks, twice, opens his mouth and closes it, blinks again. "You can't just say that, holy shit," he says. "You're a dude, you should understand the severity of blue balls."
"I'm serious."
"You're high."
"I'd chicken out sober, I think," he says, and finally gives in to his urge to poke Ryan with his toes. "Man up and eat me out, Ross."
"You can't just - Jesus fuck," Ryan says, and clambers over Jon to kiss him senseless.
Ryan gets Jon's harness tangled in his boxers tangled in his jeans caught around his ankle, elbows Jon twice in his pot-hazy overenthusiastic rush, wraps his lips around Jon and sucks until Jon can't breathe, can't stop jerking his hips, and when Jon comes it's intense enough he almost feels too weak to tug Ryan off when he doesn't stop.
"Like a guy," he pants, and he's not sure it's clear but Ryan gets it, at least enough to slide back up Jon's body, kiss him deep and dirty and wet.
"That was - fuck," Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jon agrees, and pushes him back against the couch to return the favor.
*
"Stop fucking smiling," Tom says, and snaps the picture without waiting for Jon to actually stop. "You're ruining the mood."
"The sky and the ground are the same color," Jon says, kicks at some snow. "I don't think my face is doing anything to change that."
"Which is why I'm going for 'bleak', and your stupid face isn't falling in line."
Jon adopts an exaggerated frown, and Tom takes five or six pictures of it, then shifts so Jon's not in the frame any more. Which is fine, because it's fucking freezing, and the sky's the same gross muted depressing-as-Hell gray as the ground, and Jon had fucking fantastic sex before he came to meet Tom, and Tom is being ridiculous about his art, and Jon doesn't see any reason to stop smiling.
"I don't really want you to stop smiling," Tom says, kicks at a pile of snow and makes his stupid I'm-contemplating-the-artistic-value-of-the-universe face before he takes a picture of the patch of gray sidewalk surrounded by the snow that doesn't look quite so gray in contrast. "I like this new, improved, not-a-sulky-asshole Jon."
"Fuck you." Jon punches his arm, just enough to get Tom smiling too. "You should like sulky, if you're after 'bleak' all of a sudden."
"I'm after 'bleak' today, because I don't think I can manage anything else. Not, like, as a lifestyle choice."
"Your apartment is the bleakest place I've ever been, dude, if you're aiming for anything else, you missed."
"It's not my fault Sean doesn't know how to do dishes or laundry."
"It's your fault you don't."
Tom thinks on that for a second, then shrugs. "If he wore more color, the piles of clothes would probably be more cheerful."
Jon doesn't say anything about Tom's black-on-gray-on-black outfit, because Tom is the kind of person who would start pointing out that his blacks are somehow more colorful than Sean's. He knows just enough color theory to make it sound logical, too, but maybe only because Jon knows about the same amount of color theory. Tom looks around, tilts his head at the dead tree stark against the sky, then shrugs and starts walking. "So when's Ross abandoning us for warmer climates?"
Uh. "He isn't, I don't think."
"Does he live here now? I kind of figured you'd go with him, since he wilts like a delicate flower in the snow."
"Marley does like his place better," Jon says. "Better backyard."
"With anyone else, I'm not sure I'd believe the dog was the deciding factor, but I'm not even gonna pretend like I don't think you'd move cross-country based on what Marley wants."
"I'm not moving based on what Marley wants. I'm not - we haven't talked about moving."
Tom stops in his tracks and lifts his camera to snap a picture of Jon's profile. "I think it's time to admit you don't have any room to act like I'm the one of us who sucks at communicating, dude."
That's the most ridiculous thing Jon's ever heard, but it might be true. Tom sucks at talking, but he's good at making his position clear other ways. If he's honest with himself, he's pretty sure the guy who can only handle the long-distance relationship thing with frequent, long visits loses to the guy who can go months without seeing his girlfriend without worrying, without the relationship suffering.
"We just haven't talked about it," Jon says. "That doesn't mean we won't."
Tom snorts in disbelief, but doesn't say anything else.
*
It's not that Jon's stupid, or oblivious, it's just that he knows Ryan, so when Tom asked him to walk around and take pictures for a while on Valentine's Day, he considered the possibility it was to get him out of the house so Ryan could make whatever arrangements he might need, and discarded it for the probability Tom was just lonely on one of the few days Skype dates don't really cut it.
When he opens the door, Marley's chewing on a plastic rose, and the cats are fighting over another one. There's a trail of them leading to the bedroom, because of course Ryan wouldn't remember that you can't just leave plastic shit all over the floors in a house full of pets who think "on the floor" means "food". Marley gives his up pretty easily, though, and the cats have forgotten there even are roses in favor of chasing their tails, so Jon's more charmed than annoyed.
Ryan is usually the kind of romantic who does things like write stupidly sweet songs just to be surprised when people actually find them stupidly sweet, or forgets all the groceries they actually need but remembers Jon wishing they had avocados for his sandwich a week ago. He's not really a roses kind of guy, or a Valentine's kind of guy; they tend to spend the day enjoying one of their favorite restaurants that has the kind of shitty ambiance that scares guys trying to impress their girlfriends away, or forgetting it happened until three days later when they've missed all the good candy sales.
Jon gathers up the roses on his way to the bedroom - there's twelve, because of course Ryan wouldn't go half-cliché - and drops them all when he opens the bedroom door. Not because there's anything surprising back there, but holy fuck the synthetic smell of cheap rose candles smacks him in the face and leaves him breathless for a second. Clearly, Ryan didn't half-ass the candles, either.
He's not in the bedroom, and Jon's going to have to have a leaving-candles-unattended talk when he has the leaving-shit-the-animals-will-choke-on-on-the-floor talk. He shoves those thoughts to the back of his mind; Ryan went to all this trouble, the least he could do is enjoy it. There are rose petals on the bed, of course there are, and a light on in the bathroom.
And, uh, a full bubble bath in the bathroom. Ryan's sitting on the edge of the tub, looking half anxious and half incredibly pleased with himself. It's, weirdly, kind of a good look on him.
"I thought you might be cold," he says, with all the fake casualness of someone who spent all day figuring out the most casual way to present a path of roses leading to a bubble bath.
"I don't think I've taken a bubble bath since I was six years old," Jon says, tugs his shirt off.
"Yeah, well, these are grownup bubbles. And if you weren't so picky about Bath & Body Works scents, it'd be easier to buy you a present there, this is like all they had that wasn’t the wrong smell.“
"I didn't get you anything," Jon says while he kicks his pants aside.
Ryan shrugs. "I kind of owe you. And you kind of have."
Jon isn't sure that's okay, that Ryan thinks Jon trying to have a healthy relationship with him is a gift instead of just something he should be doing, should have been doing from the start. He unbuckles his harness under his boxers, shoves them down together. It's not something he's let Ryan see, tends to take the last layer off in the bathroom, or under the covers, or with Ryan's back turned. Jon doesn't get naked, Jon gets down to his boxers, and then when he lets Ryan look again he just is naked.
Still, if Ryan wants to think of this stuff as a present, now would be the time to give him a little more. Ryan's eyes sliding over him don't make him feel anywhere near as uncomfortable as they used to, not uncomfortable at all, actually, just a little warm, a little turned on, a little like he might actually be nice to look at. If Ryan's not gonna act like he doesn't like what he sees, Jon's gonna try to take him at his word.
"It might be getting a little cold," Ryan says, with his eyes hovering somewhere around Jon's bellybutton. "I told Tom three o'clock."
"Tom and clocks have a weird relationship," Jon says. The water is a little cooler than he expected, but still good, nice and soothing on his cold skin. Ryan's face is all pleased, now, and Jon should maybe do more to make him look like that more often, considering how much he likes it.
Ryan kneels next to the tub to wash Jon's back when he leans forward and raises his eyebrow in question, and then keeps going, dragging the washcloth up and down Jon's legs. He lets it drift away when Jon spreads his legs a little in invitation, rubs the heel of his palm against Jon's - against Jon, kisses him thorough and eager and doesn't falter when Jon starts jerking his hips against the pressure of Ryan's hand, sloshing water and bubbles over the side of the tub.
Jon never ends up giving Ryan the lecture about his dog eating plastic roses, or how unattended candles are how houses burn down, because Ryan goes down on Jon on top of the stupid plastic rose petals, then Jon lets Ryan buckle the harness on, because it doesn't make Ryan think of him as any less of a dude, or any more of a dude, it just means Ryan can ride him, hands braced on Jon's chest and hips rolling in a rhythm that has Jon on the edge way faster than he should after two orgasms.
"I forgot to ask before I went for the second one," Ryan mumbles against Jon's chest, at least half asleep. "That was okay, though?"
The multiple orgasm thing, it turns out, isn't so much emasculating as fucking awesome. And there are plenty of guys with quick recovery times, right? Right. "It was great, Ryan, it - thank you."
Ryan presses a sleepy kiss right where he insists he can't actually tell Jon has a scar from his top surgery. "Thank you," he says; Jon's pretty sure he's asleep before he actually finishes saying it.
*
For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Ryan wakes up before Jon. Not too long, the bed's still warm, but it's a little jarring to wake up alone when it's not because Jon fell asleep alone the night before.
Ryan's in the kitchen, contemplating the ingredients for pancakes laid out on the counter, munching on the blueberries that were supposed to go in the pancakes before they went in Ryan's mouth. The carton's half-empty, and Ryan’s fingers and lips are tinted purple.
"Is this a hint?" Jon asks, picks up the carton of eggs.
"I was gonna make them, but remember the French toast disaster? I can't be trusted."
"I'm starting to think you did that on purpose so you'd never have to cook," Jon says, but he plugs in the electric griddle anyway. Pancakes are always a good idea, even if they're manipulation pancakes. They might actually be better if they're manipulation pancakes, he should try that on someone sometime. Although the only people he's ever had any success manipulating are Ryan and Tom, and he doesn't really trust either of them with cooking.
"Hand over the blueberries, Ross," Jon says, then thinks better of it. "No, fuck the blueberries. I think we have chocolate chips."
"We do? I would have eaten those if I'd known."
"There's a reason they're hidden."
Jon makes giant stacks for each of them, and it's not until he sits at the table with Ryan he realizes they're out of syrup. "Dammit."
"These are, like, dripping with chocolate, do you really need them sweeter?"
"Maybe," Jon says, and doesn't admit maybe he overdid it with the chocolate chips. By the time he's halfway through his stack, though, Ryan's blueberry-purple lips are smeared with melted chocolate; he looks like an exceptionally sloppy five-year-old. Jon maybe shouldn't be watching Ryan's mouth if that's what he thinks, especially not when Ryan licks off some of the chocolate.
"I like this," Ryan says, spears another bite and puts it in his mouth just to talk around it because, yes, he's five. "Mornings."
We should do this every day, every single day, Jon doesn't say. "When are you leaving?"
Ryan blinks, swallows heavily. "Didn't we talk about this already? Cat house in my living room, bookshelf space used up, not leaving, et cetera?"
"No, no, like, leaving the apartment. You must have, like, homeowner stuff to do."
"Spencer's paying my bills for me," Ryan says with a shrug. "If 'homeowner stuff' means anything else, I wasn't doing it when I was home, so. Uh. Do you want me to leave?"
"No," Jon says, "just, I was thinking. About stuff."
Ryan nods like he knows what Jon means, doesn't ask him to clarify. "Stuff, yeah."
"Marley really likes your backyard," Jon says.
"It's a pretty sweet yard, when I can convince Spencer to mow."
"You could mow your own lawn," Jon says, then remembers who he's talking to. "I could mow your lawn."
"From Chicago?"
"From right there, I think. We could - Marley really likes it."
"Marley does, yeah," Ryan says, smiling like he gets what Jon actually means. It's Ryan, and it's Jon, so he probably does. It's a good thought, a really good thought.
"My lease isn't up for a couple months."
Ryan shrugs again. "You were gonna stay with me for, like, six months before everything, and you still owe me three of those. Ish."
It's not like Jon actually thought he intended to honor his lease, or that Ryan might not want him there long-term, but the reality of sitting here and realizing there is absolutely no reason not to do this is something else. Which is stupid, because the reasons to do it always outweighed the reasons not to. Jon can't honestly look at a month and a half home without Ryan compared to three months at Ryan's even when that means all his issues are staring him right in the face and ignoring them means a fight.
"You should move in with me," Ryan says, "for Marley."
"For Marley," Jon says. "Of course."
Ryan's smile is big and dopey and chocolate-smeared, and it would just be stupid not to kiss him. And Jon's really working on trying to be less stupid where Ryan's concerned. This particular challenge, at least, is pretty easy to meet.