Fic: 5 Times Ryan couldn't say I love you (whether he wanted to or not)
Title: 5 Times Ryan couldn't say I love you (whether he wanted to or not)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: P!atd, Brendon/Ryan - semi-platonic.
One.
“Your mum cries an awful lot.” Spencer says one day, rather out of the blue if you ask Ryan. Then again, they are both very young, neither older than six, and when you’re that age even questions such as ‘what would you like for breakfast?’ seem quite out of left field.
“My mum only cried,” Spencer continues, “that time I fell off the monkey bars and hit my head and accidentally fell asleep.”
Ryan nods vaguely, he remembers, he just rather hopes Spencer doesn’t elaborate on it, because he’d been crying too, and all in all that was rather embarrassing for a six year old boy.
“Gramma says,” Ryan starts, pulling a couple of blades of grass from under his feet, “Gramma says Mama has a sickness in her mind that makes her heart very sad.”
Spencer glances down at the grass too, saliva swishing from cheek-to-cheek in his kindergarten mouth, and Ryan isn’t sure that his younger friend quite understands, after all, Ryan himself never really has. Neither of them bring it up again though, they just go back to playing mutant-pirate-ninja-teddy-bears.
It’s an hour and a half before Ryan heads down the street back to his house. He pulls out the key from under the doormat, and unlocks the backdoor with a stretch and rather strenuous push. On first glance, there’s no one home, but that’s ok, because Ryan quite likes that. He thinks up his best games to play with Spencer when he’s on his own.
He crawls up the awkward staircase (still just that tiny-bit too big to walk up properly - he doesn’t have very long legs yet), and manages to get to the top in one piece, only he’s not on his own now. He can hear his mother.
She’s a very thin woman really, and with the way she’s curled right in on herself in the empty bathtub makes Ryan think of the ghastly, skeletal things that he sometimes sees if he and Spencer breathe in really hard before looking in the mirror or if they’re playing imaginary games. Only, she’s not him or Spencer at all, and she doesn’t really look like she’s trying to use her imagination. All in all, she looks very sad. Shaking and quivering and making horrible hazy noises that remind Ryan of when the television gets angry and goes all fuzzy and loud, but you can still sort of hear the Lion King playing underneath.
Rain is falling out from under the flaps covering her eyes, and Ryan doesn’t quite understand, but he knows that when people cry they usually have grazed their knees or had a cat scratch them or something.
He can’t see any cuts or grazes, but he goes to the edge of the bathtub to get a closer look, and tries to remember what Spencer’s mum says to Spencer when he’s sad.
“It’s ok,” Ryan says, “Would you like a band-aid? Or some anti-anti-anti-sep-ic cream?”
Ryan’s mum looks at him through big, round eyes where the rain is still gathering beneath the grey storm clouds of her irises.
“Please go to bed, George.”
She only calls him George when he’s been very bad. He can’t remember doing anything naughty, but he decides to take her word for it and go to bed anyway.
He hopes, as he does every night, that she won’t be hurting so bad in the morning. Hopefully those invisible scrapes and bruises will disappear truly; after all, that’s what the real ones do.
*
Two.
Ryan’s first girlfriend’s name is Laura Cotton and when he asks her out they are both 11 years old.
For their first date, they go to the movies and see ‘Roger Rabbit’. When he walks her home, she kisses him on the cheek and says that they should go out again sometime.
Their next date is at the mall, then at the arcade, the pizza-pasta restaurant which Ryan can never remember the name of, and then to a travelling Cirque Des Solei group.
But she starts asking awkward questions soon, like ‘where is your mother?’ ‘why don’t you invite me to see your father?’ ‘why can’t I come to your house?’
Ryan’s always been a rather introverted person, and well, maybe a little anti-social, so he puts the blame on these aspects of his personality as to why he can never answer these questions.
But really, he doesn’t want Laura to know about his runaway mother, his alcoholic father, the house that is filthy and broken and falling apart, because when Ryan’s dad comes home drunk, nothing stands in his way.
Ryan doesn’t want Laura to see the part of his life that’s not particularly nice.
On their sixth date, they go to the park. He pushes her on the swing, and she laughs so loud that it sort of hurts Ryan’s ears (and he really does feel bad for saying that).
They have a picnic dinner, and over the tiny baked muffins that she said she cooked but really bought at the local shop, she tries to kiss him. He shies away though, turns his attention back onto the grass that springs from beneath the flannel blanket he brought with him.
“I think I love you, Ryan.”
And when he doesn’t say anything, just continues staring inanimately, she starts to cry.
Needless to say, they broke up that night.
*
Three.
It’s the middle of August when Ryan knocks on the Smith’s door at half past three in the morning. He’s bleeding (a beautiful ruby red, he hopes, not the brownish colour in the movies that has always sort of freaked him out) from his nose, from the cuts on his back, on his neck, his face. His left eye is big and purple and swollen.
Ryan doesn’t feel particularly attractive right then.
Spencer’s mother opens the door, clothed in a blue dressing gown and cotton white pyjama pants. “Jesus Christ, Ryan, not again.”
“I’m sorry.” He mumbles.
Her face drops further, and she pulls him so close that the cuts on his back ache all that much more, and he worries about her getting blood on her white pants. He can’t remember if it stains or not.
“Not your fault, baby.” She whispers, and pulls him inside, drags him into the tiny laundry room only a few doors away from the front of the house.
She makes him take off his shirt, his pants, till he’s left sitting on top of the washing machine in only a pair of Christmas boxers his ex-girlfriend gave him last year. It might be embarrassing, if Spencer’s mum hadn’t done it so many times before.
“What happened to your back?” She whispers, pouring antiseptic (you can say it now) onto a spotty cloth.
“I fell onto a glass cabinet.”
“And of course by ‘fell’ you mean he shoved you, huh?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything, just looks down at his knees. They’re quite knobbly really.
“Mum…wha-fuck.”
“Language, Spencer.”
Spencer’s staring at him now, with an expression so worn and tired and used to this, that Ryan feels terrible, feels awful for burdening these people. They don’t need this.
“Maybe I should le-“
“Shut up, Ryan.” Spencer says, wandering over and pulling another cloth from the cupboard beside the dryer, tentatively starting work on the graze around his eye.
This is a family Ryan would rather like, a mother and a father and a child who all love each other quite a lot. A family that is very, very not his.
He winces when Spencer touches a particularly tender spot.
Or maybe it’s not what Spencer’s touching on.
*
Four.
Ryan is 18 when they’re offered a record deal.
He can’t remember how old Tom Delonge was, but he doesn’t think it was this young. Because yeah, he’ll be the first to admit that 18 is pretty fucking young.
His father would be second.
“No.” George Ross says, sprawled across a sofa, football on TV, six-pack of beer on his bloated belly.
“What do you mean ‘no’, you can do fuck all to stop me.” And he means it this time, this is everything he’s ever wanted, and his Dad can ruin everything else, but he’s not letting him ruin this.
“No.” George says again, not once taking his eyes off the television (God forbid he ever actually look at his son unless it’s to use him as a fucking punching bag).
“I’m going to LA with Spencer and Brendon and Brent, we’re going to meet up with Fall Out Boy for Christs sake, and we’re going to be famous.”
George still hasn’t looked at him, but he has finished a couple of cans of beer. That much makes Ryan a tad nervous, but he’ll stand his ground this time. He will.
“We’ll be in all the magazines, on all the radio stations; you’ll see us on Conan O’Brian, the VMA’s, we’ll be everywhere, rich, and maybe then I can pay for you to go to fucking AA, fucking rehab.”
George still hasn’t said a word, doesn’t as he pulls another can from the six-pack.
“Say something,” Ryan says, “Say something that makes me want to stay.”
George watches TV.
Ryan says, “I hate you.”
*
Five.
And yea, ok, they’re famous now, and Ryan has a better family than he’d ever thought possible as a kid, even on his most creative days. He has three amazing band mates and a whole bucket load of friends that were on posters in his bedroom a few years ago.
It’s really early when Brendon crawls into Ryan’s bunk on the tour bus, and they huddle so close to fight off the cold that they’re breathing each others air. They’re in Europe somewhere, and Ryan feels awful that even at ass-o’clock in the middle of winter that he can’t remember specifically.
Ryan’s not sure what happens, but suddenly they’re not just breathing the same air, well, they are, but they’re breathing each other as well…kissing, and sure, no big deal, they’ve done it before, only not like this, not without the cameras and the fans squealing and flashing right next to them.
Suddenly Brendon is staring at him with those really fucking big eyes, shaking a little maybe from the cold or maybe from nerves, Ryan can’t really tell.
“You probably don’t want to hear this, but, I-I think, no, I-I know that I think I’m in love with you.”
Ryan rolls over, heart causing a ruckus in his chest, a racket, beating and throbbing to some sort of imagined drum roll, climax-building. Birds are singing somewhere, trumpets sounding, fireworks setting the fire a light with artificial flames.
“I like you very, very much.”
And that’s about as close as he gets.