BBB: Sideways [Part 3]
Pairing(s): Brendon/Ryan, Cash/Singer, Jon/Spencer
Word Count: 20,603
Rating/Warnings: PG13 / 2 character deaths
Disclaimer: All of this is completely made up and not true.
Summary: Ryan runs away from home when he’s ten and begins working as a newsboy in New York City. He sells papers on the streets to make money and lives with his friends at Pete and Patrick's Home for Wayward and Runaway Children. Flash forward to the year 1898. Brendon is the son of a man who owns his own manufacturing company and is in with high class society. One day they meet in the park and Ryan’s world is turned upside down.
master post | part one | part two | part three | extra stuff
February 1899
February goes by in much the same fashion as January. It elapses in a haze of melting snow and even more snow falling turning everything into a slushy, ice-covered mess.
Jon’s cough becomes unrelenting.
Ryan sees it first hand the day he forgets his hat and has to go back inside to get it after promising Spencer to be no more than two minutes.
He bounds up the stairs and stops in the doorway because Jon is sitting on the floor by his and Spencer’s bed in the middle of a coughing fit. His thin shoulders shake with the effort of keeping himself upright as his body is racked. The handkerchief he holds to his mouth is dotted with red as he pulls it away and when he glances up he catches sight of Ryan still standing silently in the doorway. His mouth twists into a pained smile.
“Don’t tell Spencer.”
Ryan takes a slow step backwards, and then another and then flees with the forgotten hat still on his bed.
Jon stops going out during the day.
March 1899
When March comes he’s glad. Relieved. Because March brings sunshine and the snow begins to melt faster than it came be replaced. March means he can stay out of the house longer without getting too wet and cold to move. March brings with it crisp, new air and that feeling of anything being possible and fresh beginnings.
Stretching his arms above his head Ryan tilts his face to catch the sunshine and sighs contentedly.
----------
“Ryan.”
Ryan jerks his head up, hat falling off of his face into his lap and back scratching against the tree trunk, at the sound of his voice.
Brendon’s standing in front of him with a hesitant, crooked smile. “Hey.”
His heart twists and stops a little as he stares. “Brendon. Hey.” It sounds almost as confused as he is. He blinks, and stares some more because what the hell?
There’s an awkward moment of silence wherein Brendon rocks back and forth on his heels and chews on his lower lip while attempting to smile. It’s so familiar, so Brendon, and Ryan still can’t do anything more than stare with his mouth hanging slightly open.
Beside him Singer shifts uncomfortably. “Ryan, I gotta get back.” He says as he climbs to his feet and smiles wanly at Brendon greeting him with a quiet, “Good to see you again, Brendon.” Brendon nods to him in return as Singer makes his way back down the hill, stopping only once to give Ryan a puzzled look before disappearing out of sight.
Once he’s gone the two boys look everywhere they can but at each other. Brendon stares down at his feet and Ryan shifts his stare to the tiny bud of a flower that’s trying to push its way up to life too soon near Cash’s cross.
“What -“ it’s strangled and cracked so he clears his throat and starts again, “What are you doing here?”
Brendon’s gaze drifts over Ryan’s form and comes to rest on his face and he watches him steadily as he shifts from foot to foot, jingling some of the coins in his pocket. “I just,” he falters on the words, glancing away, and hunches in on himself the tiniest bit before straightening up and looking Ryan square in the eye. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine.” Ryan informs him.
Brendon nods. “Yeah.” He huffs out a sigh and moves to sit in the spot Singer had vacated.
“You’ll get your nice clothes all dirty.” Ryan tells him but he sits down anyway.
“Good.”
Ryan watches him carefully from the corner of his eye as the other boy settles his back against the tree. “You cut your hair.” He offers up as way of conversation because he can’t think of anything else to say.
Laughing, Brendon reaches up, almost unconsciously, to run his fingers through it and Ryan wonders for a split second how it would feel to run his fingers through it now that it’s short, so short, before mentally shaking himself.
“Yeah, well. I’m taking over the business soon.” He says, almost bitterly. Looking towards the cross in the ground Brendon’s voice gets the slightest bit distant. “Pa says I need to set an example now.”
Ryan stays quiet, ignores the way his heart is pounding away behind his ribcage like a trapped bird. March was supposed to be a time of starting fresh. Brendon wasn’t supposed to show up and make his heart start beating and cause the ice to melt from his limbs.
“Ryan I - “ Brendon starts but cuts himself off with a frustrated sound and then starts again. “How are you really doing?”
Ryan tells him for a second time, “I’m fine,” with less conviction and Brendon tips his head back to rest against the tree.
“I still come here sometimes.” The admission from Brendon is sudden. “I’ll come up here when things get crazy at home and I have no one to talk to. Cash…Cash is a good listener.” The last bit is said on a quiet exhale and he leans forward to wrap his arms around his knees.
Ryan says equally as sudden, “Jon’s sick and he and Spencer won’t talk about it. They keep acting like nothing is wrong and won’t tell me anything.”
“Oh, Ryan.” Brendon’s voice is soft and aghast. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be.” Ryan tells him quickly. Now that the words are out it suddenly feels more real. Suddenly feels like it’s actually happening. He had been trying so hard to pretend like it wasn’t. “It’s not a big deal, right? Because. Because this,” he waves a hand around absently and Brendon tracks its movement with solemn eyes, “this is. He’ll get better. This is Jon and. I mean. It’s. It’s Jon.” His voice is edging on slightly hysterical, panic seizing him around the waist and shaking him up so that his words come out jumbled.
Brendon watches his outburst silently, with sad eyes and a downturned mouth, and when Ryan’s done he puts an arm around his shoulders. Ryan flinches at too much contact from the other boy all at once but doesn’t pull away. He melts into Brendon like he’s trying to fuse their bodies together. Going limp against his side and letting his warmth bleed into him.
“Why did you really come here, Brendon?” Ryan asks quietly, fingers reaching over from where they had been resting on his knee to play with a loose thread on the other boy’s shirt. He winds it around his finger and Brendon strokes through the hair at the nape of his neck.
Brendon’s mouth quirks into a sad, half smile. “Because I miss you, Ryan Ross. I fucking miss you a lot, and I wanted to,” he sighs and shrugs, the movement jostling Ryan, “I don’t know. I wanted to see you again.”
But his coming back hasn’t changed anything and Ryan knows it. It hasn’t changed the fact that he can do so much better, can do so much more with his life. He could go all sorts of places if he wanted to. He doesn’t need to, can’t, be part of this life.
Moving away from him, out from the comforting circle of his arm Ryan takes a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have come. Go home.”
“Didn’t you miss me at all?”
Ryan closes his eyes, briefly and when he opens them again they’re hardened as he looks Brendon in the face and lies, “No. I didn’t.”
----------
“A little bird told me that you had a visitor yesterday.” Spencer confronts him, sitting down beside Jon on the bed and handing him a glass of water before turning to Ryan.
Ryan glares over at Singer who shrugs, looking completely at ease under the sternest scowl Ryan can manage, and not anywhere near sorry enough for his taste as he goes calmly about his business.
“Yeah.” He gives up trying to make Singer cower and faces Spencer with feigned nonchalance. “I did.”
Spencer raises an eyebrow at him, “Well?”
“Well nothing,” Ryan retorts quickly, “he told me that he missed me and I told him that I didn’t miss him and that he needed to go home.”
Spencer groans. “Ryan, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
Jon looks amused as he shakes his head, “What are we going to do with you, Ryan Ross?”
A stab of pain goes through him as he looks at his best friends sitting together on the bed and he crosses over to them, crawls in with them and rests his head in Jon’s lap. Jon pats him affectionately and Ryan murmurs, “I don’t know. I guess you’ll just have to keep me.”
April 1899
There’s scuffling coming from downstairs with muffled voices and the sound of the door slamming as it’s pushed closed with unnecessary force but Ryan can’t be bothered to get up from his bed to find out what is going on until he hears an all too familiar voice.
“Let me go! Seriously, you guys! This isn’t funny!”
There’s no reply to his pleads but the footsteps are coming slowly up the stairs and then suddenly Spencer and Pete are there, each gripping one of Brendon’s wrists tightly as he squirms, and twists, and digs his heels into the ground in failed get away tactics.
“This is kidnapping!” He screeches. “You’ve kidnapped me!”
“Shut up, Brendon.” Pete says cheerily as they push him into the room and he stumbles, almost colliding with the nearest bed but somehow manages to catch himself just in time to avoid a bad head injury.
Once he’s righted himself he looks at them reproachfully and rubs at his wrists and pouts when he says, “That hurt.”
“I gave you fair warning.” Pete grins at him, all teeth and pointy edges, and Brendon glowers at him.
Spencer turns and lets his gaze drift over the other people staring at them from various places in the room before barking out a gruff, “Everybody out now.”
The room is emptied in record time leaving Ryan, Jon, Pete, Spencer and Brendon. Jon gets carefully to his feet and ruffles Ryan’s hair as he passes to make his way over towards the stairs.
“Good luck.”
Spencer stops him when he gets there - arm darting out to wrap around his waist and pull him close as he stares down the other two boys.
“You two are staying up here until you’ve worked things out.” Spencer states firmly. Ryan opens his mouth to protest but Spencer surges on ahead before he has the chance, “No, you haven’t worked things out. You need to get over your stupid hang ups, Ryan, because I am so sick of you being miserable and moping. You’re no fun anymore.”
Brendon swivels to stare at Ryan at that. “You’ve been miserable?” He asks almost hesitantly with one eyebrow raised.
“No.” Ryan’s response is abrupt and final. He squares his jaw stubbornly.
In exasperation Spencer throws his hands up and cries, “Ryan!”
“Fine! Yes! Maybe just a little.” He concedes, glaring hard over Brendon’s shoulder at Spencer who glares right back at him before nodding his approval.
“You said you didn’t miss me.” Brendon wrinkles up his nose as he says it slowly, looking confused and hurt and like he’s all of six years old and trying to understand something that’s greater than he is. “Why’d you say you didn’t?”
Ryan tears his eyes away from Spencer to the boy standing, wounded, in front of him.
Brendon’s voice is still quiet when he demands, “Why, Ryan?”
He’s so focused on Brendon that he misses Jon tugging on Spencer’s arm to lead him from the room. Spencer goes easily, stopping only to reach back and yank Pete along by the back of his shirt.
Brendon’s scuffing a toe against the floor and he shoves his hands into his pockets and Ryan opens his mouth to explain, to say something. “It was for your own good.” He finally manages to get out.
His eyes widen and then narrow in the span of a few seconds. “Says who?” he spits out, glowering and striding quickly across the room. “You? You don’t get to make decisions about my welfare for me.”
Ryan steps back as Brendon surges forward, covering himself in a protective circle of his own arms and states firmly, “I do when you know nothing about what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Ryan…” Brendon’s face is a mixture of fury, irritation and frustration when he runs a hair carelessly through his hair and says, “you can’t just - “
“Do you have any idea what you’d give giving up? Why would you give all of it away to live a life like this?”
Stepping over to him Brendon grabs Ryan’s forearms but Ryan refuses to uncurl them from around his body and tries to catch his eyes while stressing, “But I don’t want that life, Ryan! I don’t want that. Stop trying to be like my parents! Stop trying to force me to do things that I don’t want to do.”
“I went home, and I tried. I tried because I knew that you wanted me too. I knew that you wanted me to be better and I thought that maybe if I was better I could somehow win you back or something.” Laughing he pulls away again and throws his hands up in the air and continues with, “I don’t know, Ryan. The point is that I tried. I did what my parents told me. I cut my hair. I went to formal dinners. I started being the son they’ve wanted for so long and I was miserable.”
Running a tired hand across his face he lets it fall limply to his side and shrugs. “I’m not meant for high class society. I can’t run a company. I’m shit and I came back because I thought maybe if I saw you, even one more time, it would make things easier. I wasn’t going to talk to you, Ryan. I wasn’t. I was just going to see you and then leave but then you were sitting there with your hat covering your face just like the first time we met and I thought I can’t do this anymore.”
“I told my parents about you,” he looks up from his shoes, head tilted to the side just slightly, “I told them all about you and then…then I told them I was leaving. That they could give the company over to my brothers and that I was going. They told me if I left I shouldn’t come back.”
Ryan’s arms drop to his side in astonishment. “Shit, Bren.”
Brendon turns towards him, eyes wide and bright with tears that he’s struggling to keep back and Ryan takes a step forward. Brendon’s there in an instant, clutching at his shirt and burying his face against the curve of his neck.
“Please don’t send me away again,” Brendon sobs against his throat and his voice breaks but he manages to get out, “I don’t have anyone else. I don’t know where else to go now.”
He is clinging to Ryan like Ryan’s the only thing keeping him upright, the only thing keeping him from crumbling into pieces and Ryan holds on to him, hands running up and down the other boy’s back, fingers tripping over his spine.
He finds himself saying, “Brendon, Brendon, Bren,” until his eyes are met with a pair of watery, wretched ones and Brendon sniffs, pulling away but Ryan pulls him right back and kisses him fiercely.
“Never again.” He tells him when they move back, “I won’t. Not ever.”
Epilogue
Jon Walker dies in the early summer of 1899.
They bury him next to Cash on a hot day under trees full of leaves that are impossibly green as birds sing and fly in circles and dips over their heads.
On that day Ryan thinks the world is going to end. Thinks that it should end. He cries for hours in Brendon’s arms, the two of them tucked away in Ryan’s little alleyway. Brendon cries with him, kisses him, tries to chase everything away with lips and tongue and teeth and fingers that leave bruises on pale skin.
They have sex for the first time that day. Ryan’s back rubbed raw from the brick. It’s slow and sweet, turned desperate and needy as Ryan wants more. Wants the scraped skin and the bruised flesh. Wants to remember that he’s alive.
Spencer puts on a brave face, doesn’t shed a single tear all day, but Ryan knows him better than that. He crawls into bed with him that night, leaving Brendon in his own. Spencer cries silently with his face pressed up against Ryan’s chest and his shoulders shaking so hard that Ryan can do nothing more than wrap his arms around him and press kisses to the top of his head.
And life goes on. The world keeps turning.
Brendon moves in permanently to Pete and Patrick’s Home for Wayward and Runaway children, much to the delight of everyone.
“I am wayward,” he tells Ryan one night, spooned up behind him, their fingers laced together over Ryan’s heart, “I am a wayward and runaway child. Where else would I be?”
Ryan hums his agreement and shifts in his arms until they’re face to face. “You weren’t always.” He whispers, tilting his head to kiss Brendon gently, “You weren’t until you met me.”
“No, but you weren’t always either,” Brendon returns the kiss and then pulls Ryan tighter to him and rests his forehead against the other boy’s to whisper back, “but it’s better. Isn’t it?”
And Ryan thinks that, yeah, even after everything it is.
FIN.
master post | part one | part two | part three | extra stuff
Word Count: 20,603
Rating/Warnings: PG13 / 2 character deaths
Disclaimer: All of this is completely made up and not true.
Summary: Ryan runs away from home when he’s ten and begins working as a newsboy in New York City. He sells papers on the streets to make money and lives with his friends at Pete and Patrick's Home for Wayward and Runaway Children. Flash forward to the year 1898. Brendon is the son of a man who owns his own manufacturing company and is in with high class society. One day they meet in the park and Ryan’s world is turned upside down.
master post | part one | part two | part three | extra stuff
February 1899
February goes by in much the same fashion as January. It elapses in a haze of melting snow and even more snow falling turning everything into a slushy, ice-covered mess.
Jon’s cough becomes unrelenting.
Ryan sees it first hand the day he forgets his hat and has to go back inside to get it after promising Spencer to be no more than two minutes.
He bounds up the stairs and stops in the doorway because Jon is sitting on the floor by his and Spencer’s bed in the middle of a coughing fit. His thin shoulders shake with the effort of keeping himself upright as his body is racked. The handkerchief he holds to his mouth is dotted with red as he pulls it away and when he glances up he catches sight of Ryan still standing silently in the doorway. His mouth twists into a pained smile.
“Don’t tell Spencer.”
Ryan takes a slow step backwards, and then another and then flees with the forgotten hat still on his bed.
Jon stops going out during the day.
March 1899
When March comes he’s glad. Relieved. Because March brings sunshine and the snow begins to melt faster than it came be replaced. March means he can stay out of the house longer without getting too wet and cold to move. March brings with it crisp, new air and that feeling of anything being possible and fresh beginnings.
Stretching his arms above his head Ryan tilts his face to catch the sunshine and sighs contentedly.
----------
“Ryan.”
Ryan jerks his head up, hat falling off of his face into his lap and back scratching against the tree trunk, at the sound of his voice.
Brendon’s standing in front of him with a hesitant, crooked smile. “Hey.”
His heart twists and stops a little as he stares. “Brendon. Hey.” It sounds almost as confused as he is. He blinks, and stares some more because what the hell?
There’s an awkward moment of silence wherein Brendon rocks back and forth on his heels and chews on his lower lip while attempting to smile. It’s so familiar, so Brendon, and Ryan still can’t do anything more than stare with his mouth hanging slightly open.
Beside him Singer shifts uncomfortably. “Ryan, I gotta get back.” He says as he climbs to his feet and smiles wanly at Brendon greeting him with a quiet, “Good to see you again, Brendon.” Brendon nods to him in return as Singer makes his way back down the hill, stopping only once to give Ryan a puzzled look before disappearing out of sight.
Once he’s gone the two boys look everywhere they can but at each other. Brendon stares down at his feet and Ryan shifts his stare to the tiny bud of a flower that’s trying to push its way up to life too soon near Cash’s cross.
“What -“ it’s strangled and cracked so he clears his throat and starts again, “What are you doing here?”
Brendon’s gaze drifts over Ryan’s form and comes to rest on his face and he watches him steadily as he shifts from foot to foot, jingling some of the coins in his pocket. “I just,” he falters on the words, glancing away, and hunches in on himself the tiniest bit before straightening up and looking Ryan square in the eye. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine.” Ryan informs him.
Brendon nods. “Yeah.” He huffs out a sigh and moves to sit in the spot Singer had vacated.
“You’ll get your nice clothes all dirty.” Ryan tells him but he sits down anyway.
“Good.”
Ryan watches him carefully from the corner of his eye as the other boy settles his back against the tree. “You cut your hair.” He offers up as way of conversation because he can’t think of anything else to say.
Laughing, Brendon reaches up, almost unconsciously, to run his fingers through it and Ryan wonders for a split second how it would feel to run his fingers through it now that it’s short, so short, before mentally shaking himself.
“Yeah, well. I’m taking over the business soon.” He says, almost bitterly. Looking towards the cross in the ground Brendon’s voice gets the slightest bit distant. “Pa says I need to set an example now.”
Ryan stays quiet, ignores the way his heart is pounding away behind his ribcage like a trapped bird. March was supposed to be a time of starting fresh. Brendon wasn’t supposed to show up and make his heart start beating and cause the ice to melt from his limbs.
“Ryan I - “ Brendon starts but cuts himself off with a frustrated sound and then starts again. “How are you really doing?”
Ryan tells him for a second time, “I’m fine,” with less conviction and Brendon tips his head back to rest against the tree.
“I still come here sometimes.” The admission from Brendon is sudden. “I’ll come up here when things get crazy at home and I have no one to talk to. Cash…Cash is a good listener.” The last bit is said on a quiet exhale and he leans forward to wrap his arms around his knees.
Ryan says equally as sudden, “Jon’s sick and he and Spencer won’t talk about it. They keep acting like nothing is wrong and won’t tell me anything.”
“Oh, Ryan.” Brendon’s voice is soft and aghast. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be.” Ryan tells him quickly. Now that the words are out it suddenly feels more real. Suddenly feels like it’s actually happening. He had been trying so hard to pretend like it wasn’t. “It’s not a big deal, right? Because. Because this,” he waves a hand around absently and Brendon tracks its movement with solemn eyes, “this is. He’ll get better. This is Jon and. I mean. It’s. It’s Jon.” His voice is edging on slightly hysterical, panic seizing him around the waist and shaking him up so that his words come out jumbled.
Brendon watches his outburst silently, with sad eyes and a downturned mouth, and when Ryan’s done he puts an arm around his shoulders. Ryan flinches at too much contact from the other boy all at once but doesn’t pull away. He melts into Brendon like he’s trying to fuse their bodies together. Going limp against his side and letting his warmth bleed into him.
“Why did you really come here, Brendon?” Ryan asks quietly, fingers reaching over from where they had been resting on his knee to play with a loose thread on the other boy’s shirt. He winds it around his finger and Brendon strokes through the hair at the nape of his neck.
Brendon’s mouth quirks into a sad, half smile. “Because I miss you, Ryan Ross. I fucking miss you a lot, and I wanted to,” he sighs and shrugs, the movement jostling Ryan, “I don’t know. I wanted to see you again.”
But his coming back hasn’t changed anything and Ryan knows it. It hasn’t changed the fact that he can do so much better, can do so much more with his life. He could go all sorts of places if he wanted to. He doesn’t need to, can’t, be part of this life.
Moving away from him, out from the comforting circle of his arm Ryan takes a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have come. Go home.”
“Didn’t you miss me at all?”
Ryan closes his eyes, briefly and when he opens them again they’re hardened as he looks Brendon in the face and lies, “No. I didn’t.”
----------
“A little bird told me that you had a visitor yesterday.” Spencer confronts him, sitting down beside Jon on the bed and handing him a glass of water before turning to Ryan.
Ryan glares over at Singer who shrugs, looking completely at ease under the sternest scowl Ryan can manage, and not anywhere near sorry enough for his taste as he goes calmly about his business.
“Yeah.” He gives up trying to make Singer cower and faces Spencer with feigned nonchalance. “I did.”
Spencer raises an eyebrow at him, “Well?”
“Well nothing,” Ryan retorts quickly, “he told me that he missed me and I told him that I didn’t miss him and that he needed to go home.”
Spencer groans. “Ryan, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
Jon looks amused as he shakes his head, “What are we going to do with you, Ryan Ross?”
A stab of pain goes through him as he looks at his best friends sitting together on the bed and he crosses over to them, crawls in with them and rests his head in Jon’s lap. Jon pats him affectionately and Ryan murmurs, “I don’t know. I guess you’ll just have to keep me.”
April 1899
There’s scuffling coming from downstairs with muffled voices and the sound of the door slamming as it’s pushed closed with unnecessary force but Ryan can’t be bothered to get up from his bed to find out what is going on until he hears an all too familiar voice.
“Let me go! Seriously, you guys! This isn’t funny!”
There’s no reply to his pleads but the footsteps are coming slowly up the stairs and then suddenly Spencer and Pete are there, each gripping one of Brendon’s wrists tightly as he squirms, and twists, and digs his heels into the ground in failed get away tactics.
“This is kidnapping!” He screeches. “You’ve kidnapped me!”
“Shut up, Brendon.” Pete says cheerily as they push him into the room and he stumbles, almost colliding with the nearest bed but somehow manages to catch himself just in time to avoid a bad head injury.
Once he’s righted himself he looks at them reproachfully and rubs at his wrists and pouts when he says, “That hurt.”
“I gave you fair warning.” Pete grins at him, all teeth and pointy edges, and Brendon glowers at him.
Spencer turns and lets his gaze drift over the other people staring at them from various places in the room before barking out a gruff, “Everybody out now.”
The room is emptied in record time leaving Ryan, Jon, Pete, Spencer and Brendon. Jon gets carefully to his feet and ruffles Ryan’s hair as he passes to make his way over towards the stairs.
“Good luck.”
Spencer stops him when he gets there - arm darting out to wrap around his waist and pull him close as he stares down the other two boys.
“You two are staying up here until you’ve worked things out.” Spencer states firmly. Ryan opens his mouth to protest but Spencer surges on ahead before he has the chance, “No, you haven’t worked things out. You need to get over your stupid hang ups, Ryan, because I am so sick of you being miserable and moping. You’re no fun anymore.”
Brendon swivels to stare at Ryan at that. “You’ve been miserable?” He asks almost hesitantly with one eyebrow raised.
“No.” Ryan’s response is abrupt and final. He squares his jaw stubbornly.
In exasperation Spencer throws his hands up and cries, “Ryan!”
“Fine! Yes! Maybe just a little.” He concedes, glaring hard over Brendon’s shoulder at Spencer who glares right back at him before nodding his approval.
“You said you didn’t miss me.” Brendon wrinkles up his nose as he says it slowly, looking confused and hurt and like he’s all of six years old and trying to understand something that’s greater than he is. “Why’d you say you didn’t?”
Ryan tears his eyes away from Spencer to the boy standing, wounded, in front of him.
Brendon’s voice is still quiet when he demands, “Why, Ryan?”
He’s so focused on Brendon that he misses Jon tugging on Spencer’s arm to lead him from the room. Spencer goes easily, stopping only to reach back and yank Pete along by the back of his shirt.
Brendon’s scuffing a toe against the floor and he shoves his hands into his pockets and Ryan opens his mouth to explain, to say something. “It was for your own good.” He finally manages to get out.
His eyes widen and then narrow in the span of a few seconds. “Says who?” he spits out, glowering and striding quickly across the room. “You? You don’t get to make decisions about my welfare for me.”
Ryan steps back as Brendon surges forward, covering himself in a protective circle of his own arms and states firmly, “I do when you know nothing about what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Ryan…” Brendon’s face is a mixture of fury, irritation and frustration when he runs a hair carelessly through his hair and says, “you can’t just - “
“Do you have any idea what you’d give giving up? Why would you give all of it away to live a life like this?”
Stepping over to him Brendon grabs Ryan’s forearms but Ryan refuses to uncurl them from around his body and tries to catch his eyes while stressing, “But I don’t want that life, Ryan! I don’t want that. Stop trying to be like my parents! Stop trying to force me to do things that I don’t want to do.”
“I went home, and I tried. I tried because I knew that you wanted me too. I knew that you wanted me to be better and I thought that maybe if I was better I could somehow win you back or something.” Laughing he pulls away again and throws his hands up in the air and continues with, “I don’t know, Ryan. The point is that I tried. I did what my parents told me. I cut my hair. I went to formal dinners. I started being the son they’ve wanted for so long and I was miserable.”
Running a tired hand across his face he lets it fall limply to his side and shrugs. “I’m not meant for high class society. I can’t run a company. I’m shit and I came back because I thought maybe if I saw you, even one more time, it would make things easier. I wasn’t going to talk to you, Ryan. I wasn’t. I was just going to see you and then leave but then you were sitting there with your hat covering your face just like the first time we met and I thought I can’t do this anymore.”
“I told my parents about you,” he looks up from his shoes, head tilted to the side just slightly, “I told them all about you and then…then I told them I was leaving. That they could give the company over to my brothers and that I was going. They told me if I left I shouldn’t come back.”
Ryan’s arms drop to his side in astonishment. “Shit, Bren.”
Brendon turns towards him, eyes wide and bright with tears that he’s struggling to keep back and Ryan takes a step forward. Brendon’s there in an instant, clutching at his shirt and burying his face against the curve of his neck.
“Please don’t send me away again,” Brendon sobs against his throat and his voice breaks but he manages to get out, “I don’t have anyone else. I don’t know where else to go now.”
He is clinging to Ryan like Ryan’s the only thing keeping him upright, the only thing keeping him from crumbling into pieces and Ryan holds on to him, hands running up and down the other boy’s back, fingers tripping over his spine.
He finds himself saying, “Brendon, Brendon, Bren,” until his eyes are met with a pair of watery, wretched ones and Brendon sniffs, pulling away but Ryan pulls him right back and kisses him fiercely.
“Never again.” He tells him when they move back, “I won’t. Not ever.”
Epilogue
Jon Walker dies in the early summer of 1899.
They bury him next to Cash on a hot day under trees full of leaves that are impossibly green as birds sing and fly in circles and dips over their heads.
On that day Ryan thinks the world is going to end. Thinks that it should end. He cries for hours in Brendon’s arms, the two of them tucked away in Ryan’s little alleyway. Brendon cries with him, kisses him, tries to chase everything away with lips and tongue and teeth and fingers that leave bruises on pale skin.
They have sex for the first time that day. Ryan’s back rubbed raw from the brick. It’s slow and sweet, turned desperate and needy as Ryan wants more. Wants the scraped skin and the bruised flesh. Wants to remember that he’s alive.
Spencer puts on a brave face, doesn’t shed a single tear all day, but Ryan knows him better than that. He crawls into bed with him that night, leaving Brendon in his own. Spencer cries silently with his face pressed up against Ryan’s chest and his shoulders shaking so hard that Ryan can do nothing more than wrap his arms around him and press kisses to the top of his head.
And life goes on. The world keeps turning.
Brendon moves in permanently to Pete and Patrick’s Home for Wayward and Runaway children, much to the delight of everyone.
“I am wayward,” he tells Ryan one night, spooned up behind him, their fingers laced together over Ryan’s heart, “I am a wayward and runaway child. Where else would I be?”
Ryan hums his agreement and shifts in his arms until they’re face to face. “You weren’t always.” He whispers, tilting his head to kiss Brendon gently, “You weren’t until you met me.”
“No, but you weren’t always either,” Brendon returns the kiss and then pulls Ryan tighter to him and rests his forehead against the other boy’s to whisper back, “but it’s better. Isn’t it?”
And Ryan thinks that, yeah, even after everything it is.
FIN.
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