Fic: The Miserable have no other Medicine.
Title: The Miserable Have No Other Medicine. (1/2).
Rating: PG
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Notes: Title shamelessly stolen from Shakespeare. Fic for the lovely
dawn_afterglow
I am not destined for great things.
Ryan Ross is in the present company of two particularly intimidating objects; Pen and Paper.
Pen is rather brittle tonight, rather bitter, rather sad. Pen thinks that pulling him out of the warm, dark pencil tin at this hour of night is not only cruel, but unacceptable. Pen is choosing to refuse to write anything decent.
Or maybe, Ryan thinks, maybe its Ryan’s fingers, maybe Ryan’s brain, maybe Ryan’s heart. Must be something, because every stroke of ink that sinks into the paper tonight, every brush and dab and push, it’s just bad.
It’s stupid and bland and the metaphors would be easily interpreted by small, white chinchillas and maybe the teenies too. It’s so straight-forward. The simplicity that pours from Ryan’s head tonight scares him. Might scare Pen a little too.
Scares Pen inkless.
Ryan lets loose a damn-near overwhelming sigh, one that makes Pen roll a bit on the table, Pen figures he should be rather resentful at that, you should look after your stationary. But Ryan, his arms are shaking a little from where they rest mid-air, his breath is coming out labored and maybe he’s always been terrified of failure.
Pen tries to let loose an elaborate sigh too, but then he remembers he’s an inanimate object, and instead tries to jiggle his ink around from where it rests inside his plastic skin.
If you ask Paper though, from where she lies facedown, well, she thinks that both of them are idiots, and decides to promptly slide off the table.
*
I am unkind sometimes.
Ryan sometimes wishes he had one of the top bunks on the bus, this mostly stems from the instances of right now, when Brendon is very suddenly not asleep.
Brendon, he’s right above Ryan right now, and he’s tossing, he’s turning and he’s very, very awake. Brendon he…he’s choking, he’s coughing and maybe he’s heaving a little bit. A lot.
His breathing isn’t so much laboured, as it is desperate, and Ryan, he’s closing his eyes tighter, pressing his lips together so hard that the pressure might make the top lip rupture, crack, burst.
Ryan, he’s lying down here and maybe if he could wish himself to oblivion, he would, but he can’t, and he doesn’t want Brendon to know he’s been awake, that he is awake. Ryan doesn’t want to have to climb up to the bunk above his and play nurse, play the mother-that-he-never-had, so when Brendon’s heaving gets heavier, dryer, rawer, Ryan clenches his fingers in his pillow.
Brendon throws up though, and all Ryan can smell is the mushroom cloud of aroma de vomit, the aftermath of the implosion of bile-duct-bomb. It’ll kill the masses, that nuclear weapon, leaves damage in Ryan’s nostrils, in his lungs, in the backs of his eyelids for days to come.
Brendon’s sick and he’ll still be sick tomorrow morning.
*
I am not a doctor, a psychiatrist, a businessman or a clerk. I am not a tour guide, a cleaner or a body guard. I am not a paperclip. I cannot hold it all together.
Problem with living with a bunch of teenage boys on a bus is that most of the time you’re living in squalor, with guys who are probably less reliable than you’d like to think. So when Ryan wakes up, blankets tangled down passed his knees, it is hardly a surprise that there is no Jon in the bunk next door.
Ryan’s feet hit the floor too hard, hurts his soles, hurts his soul, and he lumbers to the room-that-is-not-the-bunk-area. The bus is not in motion.
Brendon, he’s asleep on the fold-out sofa, taking up almost the entire back space, he’s too imposing, and even in the bed he’s sprawling, snoring, choking.
There’s a post-it note on the television, Jon’s tiny block letters litter the space. Gone fishin’. Stole Spencer. Give ransom offers to the dead guy on the bed.
There’s a post-it on Brendon’s foot, PS. Back tonite.
See, Ryan, he figures that they start recording in three months, and Makeup Case is always grumpy in the mornings. She gets emotional, hasn’t had time to rub the sleep from her eyes, her mirror, hasn’t rung the alarm to wake up her insides.
Then again, Makeup Case hasn’t been happy since last week, when Brendon spilt red nail polish through her. She tells Lipgloss and Foundation that menstruation’s getting a little messy; she can’t find a tampon that works for her.
Ryan digs a hand through Makeup Case’s open chest, grips Pen’s third-cousin-twice-removed, Eyeliner, and Eyeliner, he’s more compliant than Pen ever was. Has something to do with being hot for femme boys with pretty eyelids.
Eyeliner thinks Ryan might do better if he tries writing with him, Ryan thinks it might work too. Ryan writes on his wrist, he writes on his arm, the part of his thighs not covered in boxer-fabric.
Ryan tries as hard as he can, and maybe that’s where the problem starts, Ryan’s trying. He shouldn’t have to try, and Eyeliner, he’s losing his enthusiasm. Pretty Eyelids, he’ll tell Cover-Up later, Pretty Eyelids has too much heart, more heart and brain than he knows how to put into words.
Somewhere behind them, Brendon groans, a long, disgruntled noise, that Eyeliner says reminds him of Lipstick when she gives birth.
And Ryan, he takes a deep, deep breath, inhales, exhales. Ryan works too hard on his bubble, and tonight his bubble is made of steel-walls, titanium, lead, its protection maybe, because Spencer and Jon have made their escape, ran away, eloped. Left Ryan here with disease dripping off the walls.
If Shakespeare could write in a world of poverty and shit and plague, then Ryan can write here, he can write right now, he can write in this.
“Ryan,” only he draws it out as he says it, it’s long-winded and raw from where it claws its way out of his throat.
“I’m here, Brendon.”
“Good,” Brendon says, and an eye peaks out from the crack in the blankets. “Good.”
Eyeliner totally thinks Brendon has a thing for femme boys with pretty eyelids too, and it’s the first thing he says to Blush when he gets back into Makeup Case.
*
As much as I would like to be the new cancer, I am more likely to be the next bitter head-cold.
Brendon whines too much, he complains and coughs and snorts out strange little words that would probably make a lot more sense if his throat hadn’t swollen shut with phlegm, with wayward saliva.
Ryan’s aunt, Louise, named her ugly cocker spaniel ‘Phlegm’.
Ryan thinks that she is very possibly a rather cruel woman, and maybe when the dog develops the rather over-rated talent of human speech, he’ll take the bitch on Jerry Springer.
There are too many puns in that sentence.
Ryan, he’s sitting on the grass not three feet away from the tour bus, eyeing where the grass springs from its earthy recesses. Zach sits somewhere close by, and his shadow, it’s a lot bigger than Ryan’s. Darker. More permanent.
Zach’s watching as Ryan scribbles, and, yeah, that’s what he’s doing, he’s scribbling, drawing. Nothing he writes is topping the last album. He’s not good enough here, not right now. Zach’s watching as Ryan scribbles, and so is Keychain.
Keychain hangs off Backpack, only Backpack’s too lazy, too lethargic to maintain an air of casual interest, so Keychain, she worries enough for them both. Keychain has known Ryan since highschool, and she knows how he gets with slumps, with highs, with the claustrophobia of writers-block (the four walls in his head, they start closing in, impede the creative juices, strain them).
Right now, Keychain’s kinda worried, coz Ryan, he doesn’t handle his slumps as well as he probably should. And with the way his fingers grasp Pencil too hard, with the way the scribbles on the page are just, just a mess of lines and swirls and spirals, well, Keychain, she’s worried.
Backpack thinks Keychain is too invested in Ryan Ross, but he doesn’t say anything, he’s watching her watching him, watching Keychain dangle from where she attaches to his zip.
“Ryan,” Zach says, and he rubs a hand across the back of his neck, straightens his legs on the off-green grass, “Ryan, I don’t…you’re better than this.”
“Right,” Ryan says, and Keychain loves Zach for trying, but it was the wrong thing to say, “Right.”
“Don’t lose sleep over it,” Zach says, and he’s still looking for the right words, the right thing to say, “You have plenty of time.”
“Right,” Ryan states, and he closes the notebook in his lap, “Right, but…right.”
“Yeah,” Zach says, and he’s grinning hesitantly, rubbing his hands over his thighs, “yeah.”
Zach’s smile is a little stronger, a little steadier as he stands up, and heads back to the bus.
Ryan tries to smile back, he really does, but at Zach’s retreating back, his forehead creases, and his lips droop. Ryan grabs Backpack off the ground, holds Keychain with long, spidery fingers.
“Time is relative,” Ryan tells Keychain, and promptly slides one of Backpack’s straps over his arm and sidles over to the bus.
“Ryan,” Brendon moans, from somewhere deep inside the patchwork quilt. “Ryan.”
“I’m here, Brendon.”
“Ryan,” Brendon groans, grimaces, whines. “Ryan, need you.”
“What do you need?” Ryan asks, and he slings Backpack round and down onto the floor beside the fold-out-sofa.
“Chicken soup for the soul, Ryan Ross, tomato soup for the heart.”
He can hear the smile in Brendon’s voice, he can always hear the smile in his voice, and Brendon, maybe he’s trying too hard too.
“Your attempts at poetry make me weep, Brendon Urie.”
The quilts are thrown off the side of the bed, and Brendon’s there, in all his pale and sickly glory, “Hey-“
“Weep, Brendon Urie.”
Brendon, he just pouts some more, sticks out his already fleshy lower lip. His arms though, they reach out, somehow manage to grasp Ryan by the waist and pull him over, “I thought it was pretty good.”
“Sorry,” Ryan says, but he’s smiling right now, even though the breath that Brendon’s breathing onto his waist is clammy, is disease-ridden and kinda smelling like vomit.
“Spent all morning thinking it up, I’m just that clever.”
“I don’t think clever is the right word, Brendon.”
“Then what is the right word, Ryan?”
Ryan’s grin spreads a little further over his face, and Brendon smiles up at him, holds him a little tighter.
“Your heart seems perfectly all right, right now, so I guess it’s your soul that needs the most work.” Ryan runs a hand through Brendon’s hair, fingers catching in the dark, clumpy strands, “Chicken soup then.”
“What?”
“I’ll make you chicken soup,” Ryan says, and he leans down to kiss the space on the back of Brendon’s head.
“Okay,” Brendon says, and he smiles again, “but then you come back and sit with me. No more of this going-outside-with-Zach-and-leaving-Brendon-to-rot-in-his-bed stuff, alright? I feel disgusting.”
“You need a shower, Brendon,” and when the boy snorts in agreement, Ryan wriggles out of his arms to go make the soup.
Keychain though, she smiles, because Zach might not always know what to say, but Brendon does.
*
Continue to part 2.