In Which Rodents Are Named, Illness Is Combated, And Worldviews Are Rearranged
The rats are creatures that Brendon can talk to about whatever's on his mind, and, being rats, they don't get frustrated if that happens to be the same thing day after day, don't get irritated when he won't shut up. Maybe he runs his wooing strategy by them, even, or comes down to the sewers one day and tells them, "Guess who I just met?" the first time.He sings them songs, just works things out loud for them. A squeak is worth a thousand words.
It's how he works things out in his head, and he doesn't care if it sounds crazy, they like to hear him talk. They come out of the shadows sometimes when they realize it's him, even when he doesn't bring food. And, to be honest, when Ryan is being ornery and the wind is cold, it's nice to get out of the weather and have people-well, rats- want to be with him.
That winter when they first meet, he knows he's working towards an eventual goal, but Ryan's always on edge, and tagging after someone who doesn't seem to want you (even if you have faith that it's just an act, and inside his own mind, Brendon has doubts sometimes) can be kind of wearying, bad for the spirits, and it's always cold--his last squat got cleared out by police when they flushed out a smugglers' cache next door and Brendon hasn't found anywhere new to live yet and...
Yeah, so maybe he does spend a lot of time down in the sewers. Maybe he gives a few of the rats nicknames, maybe he's a little devastated when one he knew was killed in a fight, and a little touched when another one, obviously hurt, let Brendon tend his wounds rather than bite or run away.
So he might be spending more time than usual down there. And when the cough appears, well, so what, the winter is cold, he doesn't need to bother the doctor, and besides, he can't afford the doc's services anyway...
And Kevin looks at him one day, worried, and says, "Come back with me a bit--I've a friend who's an apothecary, or Joe could take a look--" but Brendon summons a bright smile, tosses a wave in Kevin and Ryan's direction and says, "Wouldn't want to intrude," because Ryan didn't say a single word to him today and it's been nearly two months now, and sometimes you've just got to take a hint.
Besides, Dancer's leg was healing up nicely yesterday, and Brendon should check on her again.
He feels a little better once he gets out of the wind and coughs up that ball of muck that was making it so hard to breathe before.
It's actually kind of warm in the tunnels tonight, warm and close, and...wow, Brendon's feeling a little lightheaded. Maybe he'll just sit down and rest a bit...
He wakes and it's dark, and Brendon may know the sewers, but he's not sure he wants to navigate them in the dark. He tries to stand, though, and realizes that the lightheadedness is really going to be a much bigger problem than the dark... He slithers back down the wall, and he'd really not rather think about what he's sitting in. He can hear the rats, skittering around, like something's upset them.
...
They walk out into the grey morning and the biting cold and Ryan looks around in surprise.
"He's not here."
"Who?" Kevin asks, distracted.
"Brendon. He's not here. He's always here in the morning."
Kevin glances around and then nods in silent comfirmation, not sure what to make yet of the edge in Ryan's tone. Ryan turns to him.
"Do you think something's wrong? He was coughing so much yesterday..."
"Ry," Kevin tries to say it gently, but he's exhausted and it's cold and he's been growing tired of this weird one-step-foreward-two-steps-back thing Ryan's been doing, "You've been telling him to go away for over a month, now. Maybe he finally took the hint?"
Ryan looks troubled.
Kevin knows he should get back, knows how tired he is. But Ryan's...well, Ryan's almost showing emotion. "We can swing by his squat, I think I know where it is."
But when they get there, Kevin starts to feel worry gnawing in his belly. The place is cleaned out, and it doesn't take long to find out what had happened. "Where has he been sleeping?" Ryan wondered aloud.
"Maybe he just found a new place and didn't tell us, and he's there now, sleeping it off," Kevin said, but even to his own ears, it sounds wrong.
Everyone knows Brendon. Kevin leads them down to market to start asking, but no one seems to know where he's living.
The butcher's boy, though, sweeping round the shop, has something interesting to say.
"Oh, him? Always going on about rats, that one. Fucking strange."
Kevin shrugs at him, "Well, no one likes rats, and they are everywhere--"
"Not like that. He, you know, names them. Talks to 'em. Always going on about how everything looks different from the sewers, like some kind of tale-teller."
Kevin blinks as he remembers Joe telling a story about Gerard reaming Brendon out over miasmas and starts getting a horrible horrible idea.
"In the sewers?" Ryan says in disbelief as Kevin explains.
He nods. "Down by the docks, there are the huge grates, and the tides wash it out pretty regularly, and there are always rats there."
The kid, who, for all that he's got a job, doesn't really live too near to the heart of the law, nods. "Lots of pickpockets use 'em. Good way to get across town with your stolen goods and not get nabbed."
Ryan takes a determined breath and asks, "And where would I find a way in?"
Turns out there's lots of ways in or out, hence their popularity, but just like the Hangar is divided up into territories, so are the sewers.
They end up outside a grate not too far from where they started the morning. "After you," Kevin says.
Ryan scowls, visibly braces himself, and goes in.
The sewer is filthy, grimy and dark and damp and, just as promised, filled with rats. There also doesn't seem to be any sign of Brendon, and Ryan's fuming inside his head, imagining straggling out of the sewer to find Brendon cheerful and offhand, spinning tales on a streetcorner, and if that's what happens, Ryan just might strangle Brendon himself, just out of spite--or, no, not out of spite, as a reasonable reaction to doing something as dumb as hanging out in the sewers--when he trips over what looks to be a body slumped beside the wall.
His first reaction is to move on - its not the first time Ryan has stumbled over a corpse in the dark, and he knows the best thing is to develop selective blindness.
But then Kevin raises the pathetic penny candle he brought with him, and Ryan realizes its Brendon.
For one terrifying moment, his heart stops. Then Brendon coughs, wearily lifting his head.
"Great," he grumbles in a hoarse, wrecked voice, "hallucinations. Just what I needed."
He turns and speaks, he can't be speaking to the rat, right? It really looks like he is, and maybe he is hallucinating, since he's clearly addressing a rodent when he says, "You don't see that, right? 'Cause I could have sworn I just saw Ryan Ross."
Ryan clears his throat, not really sure what to say next. "Hey, Brendon, it is me. I'm here."
Brendon doesn't miss a beat, or take his eyes off the rat. "And now I'm hearing him. Whee, at least he sounds like he likes me." Brendon gave the rat a wobbly thumbs up. "This is a nice hallucination."
Ryan gives Kevin a pleading look, and together they hoist Brendon up. He dangles between them, a lighter weight than Kevin would have expected. "Bye, bye, Blackie," Brendon coos as they head back towards the entrance to the tunnels.
Even though it's overcast, the daylight spilling into the tunnels seems blindingly bright. "Where to," Ryan asks as Brendon's giggles turn into a wet, wracking cough.
"My place. If Gerard's already been by to get Joe, we can send a runner."
Gerard was just walking out the door as they arrived. Gerard took one look at Brendon's limp limbs, his shivers, and stands aside. "Upstairs. Joe, I need clean water, boiled."
After that it's a flurry of snapped orders as they haul Brendon upstairs.
Brendon's got a deep, hacking cough that seems to tear at his lungs, he's burning up and the fever dries out his lips, leaving them cracked and bleeding. Kevin sends Nick and Frankie to stay next door at Ryan's place, since they haven't been exposed yet. Ryan tries to say something apologetic when Kevin asks if it's alright, but Kevin just says, "Don't worry about it. Just being careful, is all."
Gerard looks concerned and has Joe scurrying all over everywhere, and Ryan stands in a corner and feels useless. Joe hands him a cup of tea in a quieter moment and tells him to sit down, and Ryan wonders if Gerard's been teaching that confident, calming doctor-voice, because right now Kevin's scabby-kneed kid brother is looking like an authority figure, like someone that Ryan can look up at from his chair and ask, hesitantly, awkwardly, "Is he going to be alright?"
It's a measure of how lost he is when he does as he is told, accepts the non-specific mumurs without arguing.
Brendon stills as the fever rips through him, and he looks so tiny and lifeless without his huge smile and his bubbly attitude.
Eventually there apparently isn't anything to do but sit and wait, and Gerard has other patients he has to see, but he leaves them Joe, who has very specific instructions and the promise that Gerard will come running back if they send for him.
Ryan ends up dozing, against his will--he means to stay up, but it was a long night even before the traipsing through the sewers, and he's worried and exhausted--when he wakes up, Kevin's lacing up his boots. He says, "I'm going in to work, I was thinking it'd be a good time for you to take a night off."
"What? Why?"
"Stay with him," Kevin says, jerking his head in the direction of the bed. "You look done in anyway, going in wouldn't do anyone any good."
And Ryan knows he should argue, but he can't bring himself to, so he nods curtly, and watches Kevin leave.
He can't remember the last time he took a night off.
Joe looks over at him and says, "He's doing better now, probably going to pull through."
Ryan nods and Joe says, "You could do worse, you know. He obviously cares."
Ryan sighs, looks at his hands and asks plaintively, "Does everyone have to have an opinion?"
Joe holds up his hands in silent defeat, and stands. "I'm going going to get more fresh water. Here," he added, handing Ryan a washcloth. "For his forehead. It will help with his fever."
He leaves, swinging the bucket from one hand, and Ryan creeps closer to the sickbed.
Ryan tentatively dabs at Brendon's forhead, and sure enough, he wakes up, cracking an exhausted smile and whispering,
"You are here. Thought that was just something Joe was saying to make me shut up."
"Yeah. Really here."
"He said you found me?"
"In the sewers. Seriously, what the hell were you doing down there?"
Brendon's eyes roll back, but he's smiling weakly. "Just visiting some friends," he mumbles and then he's asleep again.
Ryan keeps dabbing his forehead gently.
"You told him I was here?" Ryan asks whe Joe walks back in.
Joe looks startled. "He remembers that? He was thrashing around earlier, I was afraid he was going to fall and hurt himself. Nothing else was working, so I told him you were sleeping and did he want to wake you." He shrugs. "I was sure he was delirious, but it worked, anyway."
Ryan has no idea what to say about that, so he accepts the fresh bowl of water, but doesn't let Joe take his spot back at Brendon's bedside.
The next time he looks up, Joe is napping by the fire, and Brendon's breathing seems to be getting easier
Ryan dozes off again sometime around dawn, waking up a couple of hours later when Kevin walks in after work.
When he opens his eyes, Brendon's looking at him.
"Ryan Ross," he says, his voice hoarse but delighted. "Did you nurse me?"
Ryan blushes hotly and gets up, and even though Brendon's laughter dissolves into a coughing fit, he's laughing and teasing again.
Ryan's world slowly starts to tilt back to centre on its axis
Ryan's a little surprised at the depth of his relief--it's just because he doesn't like things to change, he tell himself, ignoring the many changes he would welcome so as not to disprove the comfortable theory. But that's what Brendon does, he disrupts and upsets but he also soothes things over and makes them right.
It's confusing and distracting, and he volunteers to get more water just so he has some time to walk and think by himself.
When he gets inside, Brendon's talking, voice still hoarse, but apparently unable to resist a captive audience. Ryan edges into the room, relaxing in the warm atmosphere of the conversation, but when Brendon catches sight of him, he stops.
"Thank you, Ryan," he says, sounding far more serious than Ryan has ever heard him.
And for the first time since he met Brendon, he feels like an interloper in his presence. He puts the bucket down and leaves without another word, crossing the hall to his own room, which seem cold and quiet by comparison.
Brendon looks up at Kevin and Joe, at a loss.
"Did I say something wrong?"
Kevin pats Brendon's shoulder. "I think he's just needing some time to reevaluate his world," is all he says before getting up to fix a simple meal for all of them.
Ryan doesn't come back, but he doesn't go out either, not that Kevin can hear, and he takes that as a good sign.
It's the next day before Joe pronounces Brendon up to standing up, Ryan's been out to work and is back again, and the first thing Brendon does is knock at the door. He's a little cautious, but he does feel like he should at least thank Ryan again for venturing into the sewers to find him, and really, how did he know? Brendon feels like he's got some valid questions.
When he knocks, Ryan's voice threads through the door, "Yes?"
"It's Brendon. Can I come in?"
There's a pause, and a sigh, then the door swings open. Brendon takes that as invitation. "I just wanted to thank you...." is as far as he gets before Ryan is shoving a bony little finger into his chest.
"What the hell were you thinking, sleeping in the damn sewers! Why didn't you tell us you were homeless, why didn't you ask for help, you could have been killed and no-one would have found you down there, and..."
Brendon wraps his arms around Ryan, burrowing his face into Ryan's neck. "I'm sorry I scared you. Thank you for looking for me."
Ryan's tirade stops short. "I wasn't scared," he says uncertainly, but he lays his head down on Brendon's shoulder anyway.
"Slow down," Brendon says. "Just breathe." And Ryan does. Ryan relaxes against the arm tight around his lower back, the arm rubbing against his shoulders. Ryan says, so softly Brendon can barely hear, "You can stay here, if you'd like."
And that is that. Two days after Brendon moves in, it's like he's always been there, and if Ryan is perhaps a little less tense, no-one dares comment on it.
For all the months of wooing and courting and pestering and stalking leading up to it, it strikes Brendon as odd that it's such a quiet moment that everything changes, but he's not about to question it.
And after a while, it feels right, that kind of shift in everything. It had to be calm, because home was the center of their crazy universe, their moment of calm.
It wouldn't have worked if he'd been in Ryan's room and it had been chaotic.
And soon after that, its hard to remember a time when Brendon didn't share the tiny room across the landing from the Jonas'.
And that, as they say, was that.