Phenomenon (4/?)
Title: Phenomenon (4/?)
Author: silver_kamoku (me)
Fandom: Panic! At the Disco
Rating: PG (this chapter)
Pairing: Brendon/Ryan
POV: 1rst Person Ryan
Summary: Ryan has his suspicions about Jon concerning Brendon. Whether it is just some sort of sick paranoia, or if something horrible actually happened to Brendon remains to be seen. Pre-split. Pretty.Odd.-centered. Really weird plot line.
Disclaimer: Completely fabricated from the catacombs of my brain.
Warnings: Nothing specific.
I wake at three in the morning, or so the radioactive numbers on my television tell me. My mouth is dry like the low tide so I roam across the floor, headed towards the bathroom. Sure, the kitchen has water, but my half-lucid mind directs my feet elsewhere. Perhaps my bladder does, as well. My feet. My shoes are still on. My feet keep climbing the stairs, despite my desire to remove the constricting brown leather foot coverings. Suddenly, the tasteful beige carpeting is turning into the forest green luxurious rug that lines the floor of my room and the cold air assaults my increasingly furrier face.
The window! Or, the jagged shards that are left of it allow for the crisp night air to permeate, and lower the temperate of the room. Is it really possible for a body to trip, break the solid glass window, fall two stories and roll down the hill? Maybe if I could just see the fall from his perspective, I can conceive it. Just a glance, to check out the terrain below that mangled our lead singer. I know what my backyard looks like, sure, but the rocks beyond remain a mystery. Not to mention, it is hard to picture the trajectory of such a fall from knowledge of how it appears from below, safe on the ground. The breeze from outside flutters in through the window, sending cool tendrils that wrap around my neck and shoulders like a deadly lover’s embrace. A part of me yearns to turn such a stupid sentiment into lyrics, but I ignore the more linear part of my brain in favor of the current task at hand.
My hips hit the windowsill, which resides exactly at that height. As a response, my spine curves forward and allows for me to crane my neck cautiously through the shards and jags. But, it isn’t enough. I have to see more…I cannot even get a look below the horizon. Maybe the window will still open. Wrapping my fingers around the white paint, I fling it upwards, shouting out when it flies like a bird and slams at the top, diamonds of broken glass raining down and out to the sea of black outside. Much better, I think to myself while inspecting the gaping frame and pathetic excuse for what is left of a window. What I have to do becomes clear, so I lift a leg and wedge my narrow foot on the outer sill, using that pressure to hoist the rest of my skeletal body off of the floor. Perfect. I can now see all the way down the hill, moonlight illuminating the boulders and occasional bush, but not much else.
No wonder he broke half of his body. Behind my backyard is an ocean of stone and trees! I suppose if he had just the right angle and momentum…suddenly, I am aware of the moon. It is very bright tonight, and is also rather large, like a harvest moon. Did the moon usually move in a diagonal direction? It blurs into a silver streak against an aubergine sky. A woozy feeling in my head confirms that I am indeed falling. But surely if I have time to realize this, I must be in danger? Yes, I am falling-no-jumping from a fucking windowsill! The irony in this is indescribable. There isn’t even any time to panic because a millisecond after I’m processing this, a sweaty palm has my wrist in a grip so fierce that I can feel my ulna and radius shift and rotate. Damn my skinny wrists. It hurts as bad as that time I broke it…
“Ouch,” I intone, mildly as I’m pulled back into the room by Spencer.
“What the fuck,” he says, and he means it. “Are you going for an instant replay of Brendon, or something? I cannot even begin to try and understand what the hell you were thinking!”
“I-“ I start to defend, not that I have anything to say in defense.
“How am I supposed to take it if you two are incapacitated? Panic isn’t much of a band with just a drummer and a bass player. We’d be booed off stage.”
I sink into the wooden chair to my left. Spencer stops pacing and just stands with his arms crossed, hair askew and eyes bloodshot.
“Things have been weird,” the drummer finally states, glumly looking at his socked feet. You don’t know the half of it. I try to picture if I had fallen, but I am Brendon in the daydream instead, and Spencer is Jon. Would we have been in the same situation we are in now? I have a flashback to the feeling of falling from that windowsill, terrified and free. I had been a second away from folding my arms in and across my chest to protect my ribcage and heart. If I kept falling, there is no way in the fiery pits of hell that I would not break something in my wrist, arm, or shoulders.
‘Where’s Jon?” I ask, looking around the half moon, half dark.
Spencer’s face softens, “Still sleeping. Didn’t want to wake him over a sound I thought I heard.”
I grimace before launching into my suspicions of the bass player. I try to lead up to it, slowly, and measuredly, but I can just see Spencer’s expression hardening and his mouth is slowly pulling into a tight little line.
“…is really freaking me out. That is why I had to inspect the supposed fall,” I conclude, biting my lower lip gently to stop a rush of air following my rant
There is a pause, the memory of my voice still lingering hot in the room. Spencer glances worriedly at the broken window, to the closed door that leads into the hallway.
“Look,” he says, clenching his hands by his hips, “I didn’t want to say anything, but I saw something. I mean, I thought I did, but now I’m pretty confident that I was dreaming. The night of Brendon’s fall, I went to the kitchen sometime in the early morning. Or, I dreamed that it was. Anyway, I went to grab a glass of water because my mouth was dry as well, but when I walked in, I could have sworn Jon was….I mean, it was just a dream. Bit, there was blood all over his arms, like he’d dipped his hands in it. And had been splashing around. And…he was using your kitchen sponge to scrub it off.”
“That’s…what did you do?” I breathe.
Spencer opens and closes his mouth before replying, “I asked him if I was dreaming, and he said yes.”
To say I am floored is an understatement. I had lots of suspicions, yes, but the reality of it is loud like an explosion. It wasn’t just me. Spencer also…there is just no way this is coincidental. Not to mention, when I was washing the dishes the next morning…it was a new sponge. Dry, and non-stinky.
Jon…? How could he have done something so…Nausea invades my mind and body. All the blood rushes to my head and I can feel my fingertips trembling as a wave of cold heat washes through my system.
Jon, who cheered Brendon up when the tour manager told him he couldn’t be shot out of a canon like he’d promised. Jon, who I sat hours with, re-tuning guitars and strumming out the same patterns until we just can’t vary it anymore. Jon, who can eat twice the amount of food that he cooks for us. Jon, the guy who likes a good whiskey or three, but never gets smashed. The guy that we all owe our careers to. I swallow hard.
A clomping is coming from the staircase. Spencer’s eyes get panicky and he flips onto the armchair that is not far from my own seat.
“Having a party without me?” Jon teases lightly, observing our state. He holds his arms out as if to complain. Spencer and I just stare. I feel myself glue to the chair, like my feet did in Brendon’s hospital room, but this time it was my butt. “Aww, c’mon Spence,” he says again, lightly punching Spencer’s shoulder and inching awkwardly towards us. “I know Ryan can be a hardass, but you’re always fun.”
Spencer flinches and readjusts in his chair to face me more directly. The bassist’s hand hangs empty in the air and his eyes darken and narrow. I clear my throat.
“Does anyone have the time?” I ask, casually, like I just need to fill the space.
“Um…” Spencer checks his silver wristwatch, “five thirty A.M. Why?”
“Because,” I shrug, “I’m starving. Anyone want to go get pancakes?”
The two are slightly taken aback, but then Spencer is muttering something to Jon about me never getting fat, no matter how many fucking pancakes I shove down my throat. I want to protest, but they both interrupt me to voice their agreement to go.
It takes us all of ten minutes to get ready, and then another ten to drive around aimlessly before we actually think to find somewhere that sells pancakes that is open at six in the morning on a Sunday. It ends up being the Denny’s just on the corner of the transfer to the freeway. Spencer grumbles about the gross, greasy conditions of the place and the lack of decent coffee as we enter through the glass doors and give the waitress a false name when she asks.
I didn’t know that Denny’s took names at the entrance, but she keeps smiling at Spencer, so I’m guessing they don’t. Unfortunately for her, Jon answered with one of his realistic-sounding names that is actually some stupid pun.
The image of Jon’s arms spotted in dark red fluid floats around my mind and I shiver. We follow like dogs behind the short waitress as she leads us to a table. Spencer and I are going around town with this….creep. But this creep is Jon. Jon. The one who fixed my guitar pedal in the nick of time and in the midst of my panicking. The guy who impressed me with his knowledge of stringed instruments, especially since he was just a tech. A guy who sang Aladdin songs with Brendon, even when they barely knew each other. The same man who is cutely obsessed with his girlfriend, Cassie.
We sit in the booth, sliding along the smelly red pleather benches and sticky white table. The saltshaker has an annoying amount of rice in it. Jon is quick to stack the jelly packets in order of flavor and in a pyramid, perhaps filling in for Brendon’s role. Spencer is trying not to falter under the desperate gaze of ‘Carla’, or so it reads on her nametag.
“What can I get you, dears?” The white-blond waitress asks, cracking her gum. Many pancakes are ordered, along with half of the rest of the menu and coffee. Even though we are used to being exhausted practically twenty-four-seven, doesn’t mean we aren’t caffeine junkies. Still, being up at seven A.M. is nothing. We haven’t even been yelled at a million times because we fucked up the choreography, again. And no screaming fans are attempting to overthrow Zack and bombard us. Pretty much, I’m content with seven in the morning if it is this peaceful. Jumping out of window incidents aside.
The silence that descends upon our threesome is friendly, but tense. At least, it is for me. Jon is drawing zombies on the paper kids’ menu with red and black crayons. Red. Scarlet, more precisely. The color of blood, fresh from the heart and glued to the sheets in globs. I steady my breathing and nearly hurl for a split second. No one is looking at me because they are hunched over their cell phones.
“So, Jon,” Spencer says suddenly, setting down his phone and talking between dignified sips of his coffee, “how’s things in paradise? Planning to spend a night with your woman?”
“No.” The red crayon scoots across the page, a grimy trail of gore leading along the trail from which the zombie supposedly traveled.
“What?” Spencer is appropriately surprised, “You never miss a chance. Especially a chance at a whole week!”
“Yeah, well, she’s in Italy with her grandparents,” he says tersely, “She can’t be at my beck and call all the time, you know?”
I shrug, and look at Spencer, who nods. The Barbie of a waitress wanders back over and asks ‘how we are doing’ before taking our plates and giving me the bill. I guess I look like the one who pays for these two? Not that I care if I pay. Jon spends a lot of money on Cassie and her family, which is fine because anyone can tell how much in love they are, so I don’t expect him to pay. Spencer will definitely find a girl one day who he wants to get seriously with, so there is no sense in him wasting his money on food. As for me…I don’t really see much in my future that doesn’t involve more music and money-making. Not that I am money hungry or shit. In fact, I could care less. I just like to do shows and be in a band. Maybe I will sponsor a charity like Fall Out Boy does for starving children in Uganda.
The three of us leave the restaurant before normal customers start piling in and recognizing us. We still wear sunglasses, just in case. I call driver, and we head back to my freaking house where we all proceed to laze around, using our computers, phones, iPods and music crap. Jon sings us a song that he improvises in the living room about the sun and moon, or something. It was actually really good, and I told him that he has to record it at some point. We did not even eat a proper meal, let alone proper food all day. Just junk food. It was actually like we are still on the road in a foreign city, lounging in the tour bus which parked at middle-of-nowhere gas station. Times like that, we weren’t even allowed outside the steel horse because Zack claimed the weirdoes would get us. They probably would. We’d probably be mugged and beaten up before we could even make promises of money if they let us go.
However, our laziness screwed us over because visiting hours at the hospital ended long before we even realized they had begun. Fuck. Well, Bren was probably sleeping like a newborn anyway. Hopefully it heals him right up. Then there is the issue that neither Spencer nor I want to do anything about; Jon may have been the reason Brendon’s in the hospital. Saying, ‘hey, beaten anyone up lately?’ isn’t exactly something well taken when it is directed towards your best friend. There isn’t any proof, anyway. Something Spencer may or may not have dreamed is not conducive for supporting evidence.
The next week was spent in a similar fashion; doing nothing much, visiting a steadily improving Brendon, answering calls from our friends who keep asking about his condition, and dancing on eggshells around Jon. The first day after a week since the accident, all four of us go for an early visit to-you guessed it-the hospital. For some reason the cheers of a bunch of little kids follows that train of thought.
But anyway, Brendon can finally open his eyes fully, and not look like a fetus. He is wearing those black-framed glasses that he loves these days, and even got a sponge bath the night before so he doesn’t smell so much like dirty socks. Not that I would ever tell him that, but he was beginning to reek.
Which is odd because he’s the holder of most days without showering on tour and he never stunk so badly then. Aside from his sweat, that is. Maybe being injured makes you smell more?
One of the funniest things, though, was how he could not sit up because his ribs are still healing. He kept apologizing and saying how stupid he feels, lying in bed like a little kid while his mommies look after him. I would have hit him for that, but the kid’s got a very effective shield of injured man persona going on. Fucker.
At least he is acting like himself again, though. Stupid jokes and everything. I ate a whole bag of skittles in front of him, ignoring the pleads that turned into pathetic little imitations of dog whimpers. I took the longest on the orange skittles because they are Brendon’s favorite. Downside to being sick; you can only eat like three different kinds of food. He did end up stealing a bag of originals once that I already ate half of, and tossed them across the room. Unfortunately, we had to clean them up because the nurse got kind of mad when she saw what he had done. I didn’t even see him grab the dang thing. Sneaky bastard.
Within all the normalcy, however, there is something off. Not quite right. Perhaps it is in the way Brendon unconsciously scoots away from us if we lean in a little bit, laughing at a joke. Perhaps it is how Spencer is going to poke his arm, but he flinches, whole body involuntarily twitching and yet not even noticing his own physical reaction. He hardly makes eye contact, either, preferring to stare at my shoulder, or the pocket on Spencer’s blue button-up. Every time he retracts, I brush it off. The general hurt feeling I get when he violently curls in on himself that one time that I was going in for a hand on the shoulder is not something I want to remember.
A/N: Oh dear. The story will start to pick up soon. It is a little bland right now...I'll admit.