i lost myself - BBB - part one
masterpost
It’s hard for Ryan to sleep during the first week in March - he’s anxious and jittery and so excited, ready to tour again after years of feeling things pass him by in a blur. He hasn’t felt present for a long time, letting himself be pulled along rather than pushing through on his own, but the days before the tour seem to promise a different direction.
Sleeping is the last thing on his mind before they’re set to leave. He wants to, and he knows he should, but instead he’d rather be up packing or writing or playing or talking or smoking. The restless hours in bed drive him insane.
One night in particular, Ryan gets fucking sick of it - in the middle of tossing and turning in his empty bed, he remembers he’s still got half full bottle of sleeping pills in his bathroom cabinet. They worked like a charm the first few times he used them, but made his night terrors worse than usual. Ryan hates feeling like he’s not in control and the nightmares suck away all the authority he has over his thoughts, but in the end he talks himself into it, tired of being tired.
He takes four pills instead of two and falls asleep in a half hour, sprawled comfortably under his heavy blankets.
--
Ryan wakes up feeling like absolute shit. He keeps his eyes closed to try and dull the stinging pain in his head, but it doesn’t seem to help - his legs feel sore, too, when he tries to stretch his body.
All in all, it takes him about ten seconds to realize he’s not in his bed, even though it feels like much longer. When he forces his eyes open he can immediately tell he’s in a hospital, and his heart starts pounding. An awful synthesized sound expresses this - the whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep of his blood pressure being monitored speeds up, and Ryan turns his head with a bit of difficulty to see an IV line going into his arm.
He has no fucking idea what’s going on.
There’s no way it’s sleep paralysis, because he can move - the “paralyze” part is missing. Could he have over-dosed? Twice the recommended amount of anything probably isn’t a great idea, but enough to land him in the goddamn hospital? He wants to cry, but his head feels too swollen for him to do anything but rest, breathe, and think (circularly and ineffectively).
It feels like a long time passes before Ryan hears the sound of a door handle - his eyes snap open of their own accord, and he’s genuinely surprised to see Brendon, of all people, walking inside his room.
“Holy shit,” Brendon says, hushed like he’s surprised and forcing himself to be quiet. He sits beside Ryan’s hip on a fraction of the mattress, “Fuck, you’re awake.”
“Mm,” Ryan groans, closing his eyes against the dim lights. He tries to speak, but his throat feels raw and it hurts like hell - “Happened?”
“You got hit,” Brendon practically whispers. “Onstage. You fell off and hit your head, after.”
Ryan suddenly becomes very scared of amnesia. He can’t remember anything after taking the sleeping pills - did he really go on tour and miss something? Why the hell is Brendon the one telling him this? Ryan figures Brendon would only visit him if he were dying, which. Fuck.
He forces his eyes open again and finds Brendon staring straight at him - he’s in a dirty old t-shirt and his hair style reminds Ryan of when he was a kid and kept trying to cut it himself.
“D’you cut your hair,” Ryan asks slowly; he adds on, as an afterthought at this point, “Am I dying?”
Brendon laughs softly - kind of sad, even - and Ryan squints to see tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. Shit.
“You scared everybody there for a while. They kept telling us you’d be fine, but…” Brendon mumbles, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was always embarrassed to cry around other people, Ryan remembers. It makes him feel bad. He rests his hand a little closer to Brendon’s body, still too awkward to touch him, to try and say he’s okay.
He thinks.
“Everybody,” Ryan says, flatly - it’s meant to be a question, who is everybody? but he can hardly manage a few words at a time and practically no vocal infliction except pain. Brendon inhales deeply though, with a pathetic sniffling sound, and nods.
“Jon, Spencer… Zack. Nobody else could come out this far. Spencer’s sleeping at the hotel for a while, Jon and Zack are eating right now… I came to check on you.”
Ryan has to close his eyes again to try and process everything - Spencer? Zack? Maybe he and Jon were visiting Panic on tour? But Brendon said he was the one onstage - if he and Jon somehow decided to get together and do a tour with them, he’s missing a hell of a lot of memory. Maybe they were just in the area on their own tour?
“Day s’it,” Ryan asks, licking his parched lips. Brendon does that fucking sad laugh again.
“Happy birthday,” he murmurs, and Ryan gapes at him. He missed... five months, almost six? The hand resting beside Brendon unconsciously grips onto the sheets, searching for an anchor. He knows a few things - he fell offstage while performing, he’s not in California, either Brendon and Spencer are back in his life or they just happened to be passing through where Ryan was… But it’s August 30th. He’s forgotten half a year.
“Jesus,” Ryan mumbles, suppressing the urge to cry himself. “Thanks. For staying.”
Brendon’s response, a quiet of course, gets cut off by the door opening again. Ryan manages to roll his head to the side and see Zack strolling in with Jon behind him - seeing Jon confuses him even more. They both look excited with his being awake, but Jon’s face looks unusually young.
He doesn’t say anything when they’re both inside, but Zack does: “Oh my God, dude. Fuck. Why didn’t you call us in here, Brendon?”
“I just saw him, I-- I didn’t want to overwhelm him,” Brendon says, and Ryan really appreciates the sentiment.
“Well I’m gonna have to overwhelm him right now, this is-- Fuck. I’ve got a nice birthday present for you, dude.”
Ryan hums to show his interest, but he’d really rather just go to sleep - he’s not ready to be 24 yet, not ready to deal with Brendon again or figure out why the fuck Zack’s here, or care about a birthday present. Zack holds up his index finger and pulls out his phone - even after not hearing it for a few months, Ryan recognizes Spencer’s voice on the speakerphone when he answers.
“I’ve got the two best pieces of news you’re going to hear all year,” Zack tells him, and Ryan feels Brendon stand up, extra weight on one side gone.
“Ryan’s awake?” Spencer asks, right away. It makes Ryan’s chest hurt a little.
“And talking!” Brendon adds. Jon’s still silent.
“That’s the most important one,” Zack says, over Spencer’s relieved sigh. “But. Guess which band just won Best Video of the Year?”
“No fucking way,” Brendon gasps, and Ryan feels his perception muddle even more - video of the year? It has to be one of Panic’s videos. Why would Ryan care that they won something? There’s no way he’s part of the band again. It’s not an option.
Zack goes on explaining logistics to Brendon and Spencer over the phone - how they should submit a video of thanks if they want, whether to update people about Ryan, where to send the award, when Zack will come pick up Spencer. They both keep glancing at him and grinning tentatively, like they’re unsure of how Ryan feels. Ryan is unsure of how Ryan feels. Jon comes over and hovers beside Ryan’s bed, teasing, “Happy 20th, man, welcome to adult life.”
Suddenly, everything happening around him makes much more sense and much less sense, simultaneously.
--
Ryan tunes out after that. Zack leaves to pick up Spencer, and Brendon resumes his spot on the bed, talking excitedly at Jon about the award. Everything feels surreal. He tries to convince himself he’s dreaming - lucid dreaming isn’t impossible, it’s common - but this feels too real. When Spencer shows up at the hospital, Ryan pretends to be asleep. He feels kind of shitty about it, but his head is spinning, and he doesn’t know if he could handle looking at another person and realizing they’re nearly four years younger than he expects them to be.
“He’s probably exhausted.” Ryan hears Brendon whispering softly to Spencer - it has to be getting dark, and the lights are dimmed down lower than before. He’s catching on to their routine, picking up bits and pieces of the story; instead of Brendon getting bottled at Reading and Leeds, like what happened in real fucking life, Ryan got hit. He can remember back to that day, how high that stage was off the ground - it must’ve been a long fall. Apparently he’s been unconscious for four days, and they’ve been rotating who spends the night with him at the hospital - tonight it’s Brendon and Spencer.
“It’s been a fucking long day,” Spencer sighs. Ryan suddenly wants to laugh, out of pure hysteria - Spencer hasn’t got the slightest idea how long of a day it’s been.
“I’m so glad he’s awake,” Brendon murmurs softly after a while. It makes Ryan’s entire body itch. He’s uncomfortable just with the tone of Brendon’s voice - he remembers how close they were and how much it hurt him to see Brendon get hit onstage. There’s nothing there now except for a hollow, static feeling in his veins, half-empty from where Brendon cares but Ryan doesn’t know if he can say the same anymore. He hasn’t heard Brendon sound that grateful for him, for Ryan, in longer than he wants to remember.
The feeling intensifies when Spencer speaks again, “He’ll be fine.” Ryan wants nothing more than for them to leave, to go to their hotel so he can fall asleep in peace and wake up again in 2010, and he feels like the worst friend (ex-friend, ex-bandmate, human fucking being) alive for it.
If he is alive. People don’t just wake up in the past.
A nurse comes in at some point, after the boys have gone quiet in their corner chairs, and attaches a new bag of liquid to his IV line. He falls asleep peacefully, gently, and hopes while he’s drifting off that tomorrow he’ll have some answers.
--
Ryan wakes to the whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep and tears immediately prickle behind his eyelids. He strains his ears for any sounds from across the room, and opens his eyes when he hears nothing - Brendon and Spencer aren’t there. It’s all the incentive he needs to let himself cry, silently and pitifully. He feels like a child, clutching the flimsy hospital gown underneath his sheets, and wishes he could kick his feet and throw a tantrum to be sent back home.
When he goes to wipe the tears from his face, Ryan catches sight of his bare wrists - they make him feel more wrong than anything else since the sleeping pills. Ryan knows the day he got his wrist tattoos, how much they hurt, and how much he likes them. He ends up staring at his naked wrists until Spencer comes in his room by himself - Ryan quickly looks up, but can’t shake the feeling of being incomplete.
“I brought you mashed potatoes, cause they told me not to try and feed you solids,” Spencer says, smiling through a shrug, and Ryan croaks out a thanks. He manages to find the remote control attached to his bed, and pushes an up arrow to make the back rise - he feels like he’s been lying down for months, and sitting at an incline makes his aching head feel a bit better.
“Are you hungry?” Spencer asks, and Ryan nods. He sits in the same spot Brendon sat in last night, and Ryan rests his head back against the pillow for a second. Too fucking surreal. Spencer keeps talking, “I’m guessing you can feed yourself, so I’ll just leave this here” setting the bowl and spoon on Ryan’s built-in meal tray, “and go get you a drink.”
--
The day passes slowly, and Ryan cries twice more before he drifts to sleep again. Before he slips completely away, he hears his primary doctor talking to Zack about discharging him in the next few days. He tries to look at that as a positive, but can’t bring himself to be excited about anything except the possibility of waking up in the right year.
--
“He’s an absolutely astounding patient,” Ryan hears first thing in the morning, and he clenches his teeth so hard he’s afraid they may chip. 2006. “The bandages on his legs are just for the lacerations, since there were no broken bones. I’m planning on releasing him soon, so I’d like to try and get him up and walking today, just to see what we’re working with. If he’s stable on his feet I see no reason to keep him another night. I’ll be back later on to see how things go!”
The doctor leaves to a chorus of affirmative hums, and his thick accent makes its way sluggishly through Ryan’s brain. He briefly considers faking an inability to walk, for no logical reason - maybe if he puts too much effort into this alternate reality, he’ll be stuck here for good. If he just waits it out, he could be sent home and not have to go through some bizarre “choose your own adventure” life, one with a different ending. He’s perfectly happy in 2010 with his friends and his music and the first tour where he hasn’t had to fight to get his say in things - he doesn’t want a different ending. He doesn’t need one.
The whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep is the only sound to accompany his thoughts, and Ryan briefly wonders if everyone left with the doctor, but he isn’t brave enough to open his eyes and find out. He still feels uncomfortable around these people, even Jon; he has no idea how to act around them, what they might consider normal. They’re all just kids, they think he’s just a kid, how is he supposed to talk to them now? There’s a huge, gaping chasm in their levels of understanding, and even if they don’t notice it now with Ryan drugged up in a hospital bed, the minute he leaves they’ll probably see right through him. It’s inexplicable.
“Should I wake him up?” Brendon asks, quiet and tentative, and Ryan has his answer - all still here. “It’s after noon, and if he’s going to be walking for a while…”
“Probably should,” Zack says, and in the next few seconds Ryan feels the bed dip on his left side, Brendon settling in close. He tries not to twitch or turn his head away when Brendon pushes the hair back from his forehead, but it makes that chasm feel even wider - he doesn’t want Brendon to touch him, but that’s the only way Brendon knows to make him feel better. Usually it would; maybe even if it was actually 2010 and Ryan was dying, maybe being touched by an old friend would comfort him. But knowing he’s in some minor physical pain but major psychological confusion, all he wants is to be left alone.
“Hey,” Brendon whispers, fingertips grazing his scalp, and Ryan considers his options. Feign sleep, grogginess, headaches, anything - who knows how long Brendon would sit and just touch him if he stayed in bed, trying to let him know he’s got company. The tightness in his skin would keep building. Or, he could announce he’s awake and get up, walk, get the fuck out of the hospital so he could at least sleep and wait out this…whatever it is, without being rubbed or watched or hooked to machines.
He yawns, “M’awake.”
“Ready to get the fuck out of here?” Brendon asks, and Ryan almost considers smiling. He’ll stick it out in the past for a few days if it means escaping the technological beeps that have occupied every second of the few days he’s been awake.
“Think so.”
--
Walking sucks a lot more than Ryan anticipated. He feels shaky and shivery a few minutes after being on his feet, and he moves like a fucking snail, inching along the bright corridors with his IV scooting beside him. The fresh bandages on his legs make them feel taut and swollen, his feet tingle painfully as the blood rushes back to them, and he’s sweating by the time he’s back in his room. The doctor, however, declares this as fantastic progress - he’s discharged before sundown, and Ryan thinks he might even be happy about it.
His clothes, however, he’s ambivalent about. He’s torn between laughing at his teenage self and resenting the fact that he has to become his teenage self again - he quickly realizes the only clothes he wore back then were tight jeans and tight t-shirts. After a quick shower to clean off, Ryan tries to avoid looking at himself in a mirror; he feels silly enough wearing the clothes, even though he knows they think he looks perfectly normal. It’s weird.
“Feel good to be wearing normal shit again?” Zack asks, walking him out to the cab with a big hand on his shoulder.
It would, Ryan thinks, if these were his normal clothes. Out loud, he agrees, “Yeah, definitely.”
--
At the hotel, he lets out a quiet sigh of thanks when he realizes he has his own room. However, Spencer and Brendon take it upon themselves to settle in two of the chairs adjacent to the bed, eyeing him. Ryan tries to ignore them - the TV is on but only as background noise, and no one talks - but with every move he makes he can see their heads turned toward him, and it sets off the staccato rhythm of annoyance in his pulse.
“Um,” he sighs, standing still at the end of his bed. He can practically see their ears perk up at the chance to help him (since, he remembers, he was never very good at helping himself). “When are we going back? To the states.”
“Flight leaves at 8,” Brendon says, and Spencer chips in with, “We’ll probably have to check out here at, like, 7:15.”
“Too fucking early,” Ryan grumbles, largely to himself, but they laugh softly in commiseration. Ryan wonders if he’s the only one who feels awkward. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”
He turns before they have a chance to respond, dragging his palm along the wall to support himself - he still feels too goddamn shaky on his feet. The short walk to the bathroom dizzies him enough to make him sit carefully on the closed toilet seat, clenching his eyes shut against the surreal spin of his vision. No matter how long he goes without seeing them, Ryan still knows Brendon and Spencer, and he knows they’re still waiting in his room to make sure he can clean himself without dying. He leans over and turns on the tap so they’ll hear the water and realize that he can handle himself - the more he tries to gear himself to stand up again, though, the better a bath sounds instead of a shower.
While he lets the tub fill, Ryan peels off the bandages on his legs and wrinkles his nose at the sight underneath them. His entire body still looks pretty much the same, but there’s a bruise that stretches from his left knee all the way up to his hip, and it’s pretty unsettling. The middle is a dark, menacing eggplant color that fades away to sickly yellow around the edges, and both of his shins are littered with smaller bruises and a few cuts that are scabbed over. From the looks of his legs, he’s actually surprised the fall didn’t break any bones.
He still makes sure the door’s unlocked before letting himself sink into the water. If he does manage to accidentally kill himself in the tub, at least no one will have to break down a door to find out.
--
Ryan smiles when he wakes up, because he doesn’t hear anything. No whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep, no medical jargon, no nothing - for one brief, incredible moment, he’s sure he’s home in his bed, in the right year. It feels fantastic.
When he goes to turn over and gets an earful of lukewarm water, it doesn’t feel so fantastic anymore. He thrashes once, out of surprise, and knocks his foot against the faucet of the bathtub - after he gets through the split second of searing pain, he opens his eyes to see Brendon crouching on the floor beside the tub. He tries not to jump.
“Shit,” he says instead, “the fuck?”
“You fell asleep in there,” Brendon informs him, barely quirking his lips like he’s trying not to smile. “Spence told me to come check on you, you’ve been in here for like an hour and a half.”
“Was just resting,” Ryan tries, but it sounds like bullshit even to his own ears.
Brendon laughs like it’s a great joke and springs up from his squatting position, “You might as well just go to bed, dude.”
“I came in here to get clean and I haven’t even done anything yet,” Ryan says, keeping his tone level despite the frustration he feels in every joint. He’s gone back in time, can hardly walk, and apparently he’s a goddamn narcoleptic.
“The bathroom’ll still be here in the morning, c’mon. Do you need help getting up?”
Ryan moves to sit up and wants to snap at Brendon, no I don’t need any fucking help, but the floor of the tub doesn’t have any rubber grips and as his ass slides along the bottom, he keeps his mouth shut. He sits quietly for a second instead, and Brendon takes that as his answer, offering both hands, “Come on.”
Maneuvering himself onto his knees is pretty easy, albeit painful - he grabs Brendon’s hands and manages some secure footing long enough to stand up. Ryan pauses to regain his balance, and the few seconds he takes are incredibly awkward. Brendon’s grip is light but firm, waiting for him to step out, but Ryan becomes suddenly aware of his nakedness in the cold air and without thinking he twitches a hand away with the intention of covering himself up. Instead, he loses his footing and slips sideways, clutching Brendon’s t-shirt to keep from falling. Brendon laughs, “Jesus, Ryan,” and manages to grip Ryan’s slick sides tight enough to pull him closer - Ryan lets himself cling to Brendon’s shoulders to step onto dry land.
Brendon doesn’t let go; he slides one palm to the small of Ryan’s back, probably to make sure he’s steady, but it’s the closest thing to a hug Ryan’s gotten in this world and hits him like a punch to the gut. Without thinking, he drops his forehead down onto Brendon’s shoulder and breathes out shakily, “Fuck, I just want to go home.”
“Tomorrow,” Brendon murmurs next to Ryan’s ear, in his best soothing voice, “tomorrow you can.” The words make his muscles tense - he thinks, I want to go home, but you’re not a part of that anymore.
--
“Nothing feels right,” Ryan says sullenly, inspecting the dirt under his fingernails that he didn’t manage to wash out in the morning’s pathetic shower (that he mostly spent sitting on the floor of the tub, letting the water rush over his aching back). He speaks quietly enough for Jon to ignore him if he wants, even in the close quarters of the plane seating - he doesn’t, though.
“You need to readjust,” he offers, giving Ryan’s shoulder a friendly nudge. “Things aren’t gonna go back to normal after just a day or two.”
Ryan doesn’t reply, just rests his temple against the cool glass and stares at the airport outside his window, waiting to take off.
--
They land somewhere on the East coast. Before Jon leaves on his connecting flight to Chicago, Ryan watches them together and feels a pang of loneliness so sudden his breath catches in his throat. When Brendon hugs Jon, he curls in close, tangling his fingers through his hair - he tucks his face against Jon’s neck long enough for Ryan to feel uncomfortable and pulls away with a lingering kiss to his cheek. Spencer isn’t nearly as tactile with his affection, but Ryan can tell from the bulge of muscle in his skinny arms that he’s holding on tight.
Jon hugs him, too, before he leaves - it’s a loose, easy embrace, and it makes Ryan even lonelier. This isn’t the Jon he was about to go on tour with, the Jon he shared beds and beers and breakfast with - this is a different person, who thinks he is a different person. Ryan realizes that in this world, he doesn’t even have the same Jon.
He feels like a stranger intruding on someone else’s life, with Brendon’s fingers on his wrist and Spencer’s steadying hand on his back.
--
Ryan spends both the plane and car rides submerged in his head, his thought process sluggish as molasses. In a brief moment of hysteria he chants there’s no place like home over and over and over until even the voice inside his mind gets tongue-tied, tripping over the syllables. He spends time counting his heartbeats in an effort to stop thinking at all, but the rhythm is too uneven and he loses count; instead he tries measuring his breaths, matching them with whoever’s beside him, but words inevitably creep their ways back into his brain.
The only time language escapes him entirely for the quickest of seconds is when Spencer pats his thigh, “We’re here,” and Ryan finally opens his eyes again. The car, Zack in the driver’s seat, is parked on Ryan’s childhood street in front of his childhood house that he sold as soon as he possibly could. His father’s rusted car sits silently in the paved driveway, and for the first time in years Ryan misses him so bad it hurts.
He looks forward, along the endless rows of happy houses in suburban Nevada, and starts to cry without even realizing it.
It takes him nearly ten minutes to gather enough energy to step outside of the car. Zack insists on carrying every one of his bags inside, and Spencer and Brendon offer to keep him company repeatedly until Ryan finally croaks out, “I’ll be fine.” They leave reluctantly, after Ryan resolutely ignores their offers for help - Brendon kisses his cheek before they leave, just like he did to Jon, and Spencer promises to come visit after they all get some rest.
After they’re gone, Ryan climbs the stairs and immediately goes into his dad’s room, locking the door behind him. He curls up on the bed, under the covers, and cries himself to sleep just like he did on the night of the funeral.
--
Ryan doesn’t even entertain the idea of being back home when he wakes up - he knows where he is just from the smell. His father’s bedding is musty and cold from lack of use, even with him burrowed under the sheets, and it makes his eyes sting with fresh tears he’s too lethargic to hold back. There’s hardly any light creeping through the crack in the curtain when he opens one eye - the pastel shades of pink and yellow hint to him it’s just barely sunrise.
His head feels full and empty, filled to the brim with nothing. His thoughts seem to go in circles, why am I here and what did I do and what do I do now - in the time it takes him to study the woven threads on his father’s pillow case, the sun begins streaming in brightly. Ryan gets up without thinking and tries to stretch the curtain to cover the spots of window letting in light, but when he yanks it to one side the sun just spills out of a new place.
The house is quiet like Ryan remembers it being, but that silence is ended abruptly when his phone - that ancient Sidekick - starts ringing. He knows it’s the default ring tone because he never bothered to change it in all the years he owned the thing; he didn’t use it that much for calls, anyway. It stops ringing long before Ryan manages to trudge his way downstairs to look through the bags he doesn’t remember packing - when he finds the right one, he’s not surprised to see Spencer was the one calling. He thumbs over the keys, not even used to his phone in this year, and curiosity gets the best of him - he settles down cross-legged on the dusty couch and opens up his old text messages.
Every message from after he woke up is some variation of hope you get better soon. He bypasses them all with the smallest amount of nostalgia (messages from Patrick, he hasn’t spoken to him in what, a year? More?), but the earlier ones, hidden behind the good vibes, hit a little harder. A lot are from Pete - maybe half a lyric in quotes followed by a what do u think? or both of them complaining about something, writer’s block or trouble sleeping or when they’re gonna meet up again. One is from Spencer, do European stores have Tostitos? buy me some, and Ryan remembers that. He went out with Zack and Jon, browsing the grocery stores for everything on their junk food list, and he remembers but it happened years ago, even though this phone is telling him it’s hardly been a week.
Most messages, though, are from Brendon. It doesn’t surprise him. The very first thing in his inbox is from Brendon in the beginning of 2006, months before any other message - wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
--
He eats breakfast, lunch and dinner alone.
--
“We’ve decided to cancel the rest of the European tours this year,” Spencer tells him. The kitchen looks barren, Ryan notices, even with every appliance and piece of cookery strewn about like they were when he was a kid. It reminds him of a movie, how filmmakers use color filters to set the mood for a scene. If this were a movie, he thinks, his color filter would be blue, a muted blue. It sets a barren tone.
“And right now, like, you have two months to decide, but if you need more time we can cancel the headliner, too,” Brendon offers. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan sees Spencer nod his agreement. “Or reschedule it. We just want to make sure you’re okay before we do anything big.”
“I’m not an invalid, Brendon, I think I can handle it,” Ryan says, too suddenly, and he foolishly expects Brendon to recoil.
Instead he gets a sharp response, “You were unconscious for four fucking days, I want to make sure you can handle it.”
“Brendon,” Spencer warns, and they both sigh.
“I’ll be fine by then,” Ryan says, a little more reserved, and no one says anything for a while.
--
After a week at his father’s house (that he still feels too detached from to call home), the monstrous bruise on his thigh begins fading. Ryan spends practically all day in bed, sleeping only part of that time - he’ll brush his fingertips along the sickly green-yellow skin as it heals and wonder when he stopped noticing the pain. He still has a limp to his walk - when his body finally convinces him he needs to get up after twenty hour naps - but he doesn’t feel much any more. The most he feels is a vague sense of guilt; what if life in 2010 is going on without him, and no one knows where he is? He could be dead, and he’d never it know it. (Time travel is impossible, spontaneous time travel has to be even more impossible, and this isn’t even-- history didn’t go like it should’ve gone, something happened that made him get hit instead of Brendon.) Ryan doesn’t know which is worse - the fact that he may be dead, or the fact that in the future he wants to call his, his friends might not even know him. No one might know him. He may not even exist.
The ideas are too philosophic for his drowsy brain - he tries to ignore them, but it’s hard to scroll through the contacts on his phone to see numbers he doesn’t remember of people he doesn’t care about instead of his best friends and his band. Brendon still talks to him the most. It’s one-sided, but he doesn’t seem to mind - he usually only uses text messages, maybe so he doesn’t have to hear Ryan’s sighs and know how little he cares, but one day Brendon calls him.
“Our costumes came in today,” he says after Ryan’s gruff hello, without so much as a greeting in return. “The ones for the circus tour.”
“Mm,” Ryan mumbles. Brendon’s voice is full of barely concealed excitement and Ryan remembers from experience how easily he alone could crush that in him. He tries to inflict the syllable to offer Brendon a chance to talk more without feeling discouraged.
“Yeah, they sent them to Spence’s house and he just brought them over. Mom told me to ask if you wanted to come see them, but I figured, just-- I told her no, so. You can, though? If you want.”
The clock on Ryan’s father’s night stand is one with hands, not digital numbers - it’s hard to read in the dark, but Ryan thinks it says it’s close to 2 o’clock. He figures it must be cloudy outside.
“Tell me about them,” he says.
“You’ve already seen them,” Brendon laughs, but he continues on anyway. “Yours is pretty cool. It’s got that shirt with all the ruffles and shit with the ribbon that ties around your neck, and that brown vest. I don’t think it’s the one you wanted but it’s pretty nice. And the pants are kind of… they’re interesting. Kinda thin. They’re gonna smell so bad by the end of tour. And yours tie up on the sides, that’s pretty awesome.”
Ryan tries to laugh but has to stifle a yawn instead, turning his face against the pillow. “What about yours?” he mumbles, and hears Brendon hum.
“I really like my gold jacket thing.” He doesn’t say anything more, and Ryan glances at the clock again.
It takes him a few moments to decide, and as he’s opening his mouth Ryan hears Brendon take in a breath, like he’s getting ready to speak, too. “You can come pick me up,” he says softly.
“Yeah?” Brendon sounds tentatively excited again, and Ryan nods before he realizes no one can see him.
“Yeah.”
When they get off the phone, Ryan drags himself out of bed to take the first shower since Europe. He even feels a little less dead when he gets out.
--
“Jesus, we got these things tailored so they’d fit,” Spencer laughs, picking uselessly at the baggy shirt hanging over Ryan’s torso. “You should eat more.”
“You know, I’ve never seen you with facial hair, Ryan,” Brendon’s mother says. He manages a sheepish laugh, but he couldn’t convince himself to shave when he looked in the mirror - his hands are still shaky, and with his luck, he’d have slit his throat.
“Haven’t seen curly hair in a while, either,” Brendon teases, “somebody’s gotten lazy the last few days.” He brings a hand up to twirl a strand of Ryan’s hair around his finger - Ryan ducks his head, partially out of embarrassment and partially to avoid the touch.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, in the same warning tone Ryan remembers from days before. It annoys him more than any off-hand playful comment Brendon could make, hearing someone get scolded like a child on his behalf, like they had to have a conversation about how to act around him before he came over.
“I’ve got better things to do than worry about looking pretty for you assholes,” Ryan says, trying for a joke, and Brendon nudges him with a golden-clad shoulder.
--
Ryan goes back home and stays in bed until the first of November.
--
On the first of November, Ryan wakes up some time between four and five in the morning (his vision is too blurry to pick apart the notches between the clock’s hands). The dream hangs heavily behind his eyelids, taunting him in a way he’s been ignoring for too long, even before he woke up strapped to whirring monitors. It’s the first dream he can remember having in this place.
Keltie was wearing one of her long, long sundresses, one so long the skirt wisped over the gravel when she walked. They had settled on the grass behind the beach, after strolling along the shore, and Ryan stretched out beside her to brush his fingers along the frayed hem near her feet. He set his head on the hard ground and kissed the curve of her ankle, and he felt the grains of sand prickle against his lips instead of her skin. He woke up.
Ryan knows exactly where they were and exactly which dress she had on and it feels like less of a dream than a memory. Suddenly, he’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t write it down - afraid that he might forget everything, like he forgot the timbre of his mother’s voice after less than a month and like he forgot the smell of his father before he came back after he died. Like he forgot the freckles on the bridge of Brendon’s nose until he saw him again and like he forgot the way Jon tugged on his earlobe when he was nervous until he didn’t know him any more. He crawls out of bed in the dark and fumbles aimlessly, mind racing to retain everything he knows is still there - the first light he turns on is a pathetic lamp, but it bleeds through the room enough for Ryan to find a notebook that doesn’t belong to him, numbers scrawled only on the first page. He rips off the sheet and tugs open the nightstand drawer, snatching the first pen he sees - it feels necessary to hurry, and he writes as quickly as his unpracticed hand will let him:
blue and white paisley
January, Hawaii
She liked the turtles better than dolphins
He tries to pause and rest his hand, cramped from the unexpected tension, but the words flow quicker than he’s ever had them flow before. It’s not lyrical but he doesn’t give a fuck - it’s not for the craftsmanship, it’s for his goddamn sanity,
It should’ve been a birthday present (hers) but the dates didn’t work out well enough. She let me stay on the boat until I had enough pictures of her with the dolphins but I could’ve gotten better ones. Remember thinking I was fucking stupid when I took her dress off of her with the patio (do they call them patios in Hawaii?) doors open but t
She tanned but I burned there and I forgot to tell him that it’s funny a girl from Canada tans but a Hawaiian guy burns like I do
January 28th
After he puts down Keltie’s birthday, Ryan lets his hand relax and sinks back onto the bed. His eyes still sting from sleep and he wants to let himself cry, because he hasn’t even thought about her for months - instead he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes hard enough to start a new, dull throb in place of the sharp sting. He won’t think about her now, either.
--
Ryan wakes up three days later sandwiched between cardboard boxes full of his father’s country western novels and disassembled shelves. Brendon is sitting on the couch, off to the side, and Ryan hopes that if he stays very still, Brendon will leave.
“I’ve been trying to wake you up for the last hour,” he says, too jovially for Ryan’s tastes this soon after becoming conscious. “Everybody was a little worried, you stopped answering messages a few days ago, you know?”
“Mh,” Ryan says.
Brendon nudges his foot against a stack of boxes beside Ryan, “What’s up with all this shit? What have you been doing?”
The notebook Ryan found after his dream (already a quarter of the way full) sits heavily between the boxes and Ryan’s side. He rests his temple against the cardboard and closes his eyes - he thinks about getting up days earlier and going to the attic for every extra box he had, packing up the house slowly and respectfully, not unlike he did the first time. He has no idea what he’s doing.
“Putting away some stuff I don’t need,” he mumbles, curling his fingers around the metal spiraling edge of his notebook.
“You should probably put away some stuff you do need,” Brendon laughs. “We’ve gotta leave day after tomorrow to catch our flight.”
Ryan cracks one eye open and looks at Brendon - he’s looking right back at him, legs tucked up under himself Indian style on Ryan’s couch. He can remember watching cartoons with Spencer on that couch; staying up all night just because it was a weekend and his dad said they were allowed.
“You know, ever since you fell I’ve woken you up in some pretty weird places. Sure something didn’t get knocked loose in there?” he asks, teasing, and it makes Ryan laugh because he’s feeling a little masochistic - he’s not sure something didn’t get knocked loose in his head. In fact, he’s pretty goddamn sure something did.
Instead of responding, he closes his eyes again and hums, “I wonder if it’s still warm in Florida in November.”
--
It’s still warm in Florida, but Ryan doesn’t really notice. The air conditioner inside their bus is on, and he makes it his personal goal to stay inside as long and as often as possible - especially if it means staying inside alone. After actively secluding himself from the band (he can’t even call them friends inside his head again yet, and it makes him feel queasy), being in the company of anyone for more than a few minutes makes his head pound.
They’re a few hundred miles from the first venue they’re supposed to play, and they don’t go on for another day and a half - everyone around him is fucking vibrating with energy, and it’s not like Ryan can blame them. The first time he did this tour, it was just as bad. Then, though, they’d been playing constantly for nearly a year - they were well practiced and ready to play a huge arena tour.
Ryan hasn’t picked up a guitar since he woke up in the wrong year, and he hasn’t played a single song from the first album since the last show he did with Panic - more than a year ago. Brendon makes a show of prancing around the tour bus halls, doing vocal exercises to prepare himself for “the real fucking deal”, and it jolts Ryan back into reality.
Two fucking months, Ryan writes in the margins of a page already filled to the brim with his words. MORE than two months. These songs embarrass me.
He tries to say more, but he doesn’t want to. Instead, he buries his face in his hands and focuses hard on playing an acoustic in front of a tiny crowd, in the smallest club he’s ever been in. The songs are easy to remember - he played them hundreds of times - and with Brendon’s voice flitting back and forth between octaves he can piece the words with the chords like he’s done with every lyric he’s written since he first heard Brendon sing.
--
The first show, unsurprisingly, is awful. Ryan’s actually a little bit glad to know it wasn’t just him who fucked up - as soon as they get offstage they’re practically giddy, letting everyone know about the mistakes no one else noticed.
“I forgot an entire fucking verse,” Jon says. “A verse. What the fuck?” Brendon cackles from across the room and Ryan doesn’t even try to suppress a smile. The adrenaline makes him feel like a fucking human being again, something he hasn’t felt since he got here - even if he’s already done all this before. He’s willing to take any brief moment of normalcy he can get. The screams from the crowd are still buzzing in his ears, and despite the fact that this isn’t what he wants…it feels good.
“Thank god for muscle memory,” he mumbles, and Spencer ruffles his hair with a damp palm.
“I’ve gotta be honest,” Brendon says, coming up to sling an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. There’s a thin film of sweat covering every area of skin Ryan can see. “I was waiting for a chance to bitch at you for not practicing, but I think you did better than the rest of us.”
“I am better than the rest of you,” Ryan teases, glancing up at them.
Both Spencer and Jon scoff incredulously, but Brendon leans in to stage whisper into Ryan’s ear, playfully, “You sure are.”
--
Being in a bunk again makes Ryan reconsider feeling good about the tour. The space has never bothered him before, but after sprawling in his father’s bed for two months with hardly anything on his mind, the bunk almost resembles his head. It’s too small for him to think, too many ideas packed inside a space that’s not big enough to hold them. It feels like every memory from the first time he lived this is competing for room with experiences from the second time - Ryan knows that if this were four years ago, he’d be texting Keltie, telling her how bad the first show went and how fantastic it felt.
It’s fruitless and childish, but he tries hard to remember the things they told each other. She was part of the Knicks dance team and would always tease him, telling him stories about the things he didn’t get to see in the changing rooms - it’s embarrassing, honestly, and he feels his face redden from the memory of her telling him (in more detail than he was expecting) how she’d congratulate him on his first successful arena tour show.
When his phone buzzes noisily beside his head, Ryan’s heart jumps into his fucking throat. He tries not to get his hopes up (it’s stupid, it can’t be her, there’s no way), but before he flips open the screen he holds his breath anyway.
He’s not surprised to see it’s a message from Brendon. you awake?
Ryan takes his time to reply, letting himself come down from the irrational disappointment. He types out a quick yep, and Brendon doesn’t even bother replying - Ryan can hear him in the bunk directly below, the whisper of his blankets being pushed down. He’s not particularly in the mood to share his space right now, but it’s hard for him to refuse Brendon’s soft smile when he’s already out of his bed, “Can I climb up?”
“Don’t elbow me,” is the only thing Ryan can think to say in response - Brendon grins and climbs in carefully, pressing close. Ryan feels warmer the second he settles.
“Heard you sighing up here,” Brendon murmurs. He’s not wearing his glasses, and Ryan knows he takes his contacts out before he tries to sleep. He wonders how much of his face Brendon can see.
“I’ve got a lot to think about,” he says. Even when he concentrates, he can’t feel a single place where his body is touching Brendon’s. It still feels intimate enough for Ryan’s heart to stutter.
“You do enough of that already,” Brendon whispers. Ryan closes his eyes and tries to keep his breathing even - he can feel every breath Brendon takes fluttering between his eyelashes, and he thinks Brendon can probably feel his, too. The months that he spent without Brendon in his life seem just as unreal as the months he’s spent in this alternate universe he isn’t meant to be in; every second that passes with this body in front of him winds his muscles tighter, until he’s digging his nails into the flesh of his palms. It doesn’t matter how hard Ryan wishes himself away, wishes this world away - Brendon still purrs his name, “Ryan,” and he can’t make himself move.
Their noses brush before anything else, just barely, and Ryan knows that Brendon’s waiting for him to smile or pull away or move, anything, but he can’t. It feels like his body is on the verge of a sob, and when Brendon’s lips touch his he exhales harshly, all at once. Ryan can’t tell how long it lasts - just breathing against Brendon’s mouth - but his mind leaves him entirely when Brendon bridges the gap, leaning forward the few vital centimeters to have their bodies touching almost everywhere. Their mouths against each other turn into kisses; shaky, tentative, terrifying kisses, and Ryan lets his fingers twist around the fabric of his bedsheets to keep himself from holding Brendon’s body.
Brendon is the one who moves away. He doesn’t go far - Ryan can still feel him, panting quietly against his cheek. Neither of them say anything and Ryan’s too fucking petrified to open his eyes; Brendon places a more chaste, still tentative kiss on his lips, and Ryan tries to return the gesture.
He keeps his eyes closed even as Brendon is leaving, and doesn’t open them again.
part two
It’s hard for Ryan to sleep during the first week in March - he’s anxious and jittery and so excited, ready to tour again after years of feeling things pass him by in a blur. He hasn’t felt present for a long time, letting himself be pulled along rather than pushing through on his own, but the days before the tour seem to promise a different direction.
Sleeping is the last thing on his mind before they’re set to leave. He wants to, and he knows he should, but instead he’d rather be up packing or writing or playing or talking or smoking. The restless hours in bed drive him insane.
One night in particular, Ryan gets fucking sick of it - in the middle of tossing and turning in his empty bed, he remembers he’s still got half full bottle of sleeping pills in his bathroom cabinet. They worked like a charm the first few times he used them, but made his night terrors worse than usual. Ryan hates feeling like he’s not in control and the nightmares suck away all the authority he has over his thoughts, but in the end he talks himself into it, tired of being tired.
He takes four pills instead of two and falls asleep in a half hour, sprawled comfortably under his heavy blankets.
--
Ryan wakes up feeling like absolute shit. He keeps his eyes closed to try and dull the stinging pain in his head, but it doesn’t seem to help - his legs feel sore, too, when he tries to stretch his body.
All in all, it takes him about ten seconds to realize he’s not in his bed, even though it feels like much longer. When he forces his eyes open he can immediately tell he’s in a hospital, and his heart starts pounding. An awful synthesized sound expresses this - the whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep of his blood pressure being monitored speeds up, and Ryan turns his head with a bit of difficulty to see an IV line going into his arm.
He has no fucking idea what’s going on.
There’s no way it’s sleep paralysis, because he can move - the “paralyze” part is missing. Could he have over-dosed? Twice the recommended amount of anything probably isn’t a great idea, but enough to land him in the goddamn hospital? He wants to cry, but his head feels too swollen for him to do anything but rest, breathe, and think (circularly and ineffectively).
It feels like a long time passes before Ryan hears the sound of a door handle - his eyes snap open of their own accord, and he’s genuinely surprised to see Brendon, of all people, walking inside his room.
“Holy shit,” Brendon says, hushed like he’s surprised and forcing himself to be quiet. He sits beside Ryan’s hip on a fraction of the mattress, “Fuck, you’re awake.”
“Mm,” Ryan groans, closing his eyes against the dim lights. He tries to speak, but his throat feels raw and it hurts like hell - “Happened?”
“You got hit,” Brendon practically whispers. “Onstage. You fell off and hit your head, after.”
Ryan suddenly becomes very scared of amnesia. He can’t remember anything after taking the sleeping pills - did he really go on tour and miss something? Why the hell is Brendon the one telling him this? Ryan figures Brendon would only visit him if he were dying, which. Fuck.
He forces his eyes open again and finds Brendon staring straight at him - he’s in a dirty old t-shirt and his hair style reminds Ryan of when he was a kid and kept trying to cut it himself.
“D’you cut your hair,” Ryan asks slowly; he adds on, as an afterthought at this point, “Am I dying?”
Brendon laughs softly - kind of sad, even - and Ryan squints to see tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. Shit.
“You scared everybody there for a while. They kept telling us you’d be fine, but…” Brendon mumbles, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was always embarrassed to cry around other people, Ryan remembers. It makes him feel bad. He rests his hand a little closer to Brendon’s body, still too awkward to touch him, to try and say he’s okay.
He thinks.
“Everybody,” Ryan says, flatly - it’s meant to be a question, who is everybody? but he can hardly manage a few words at a time and practically no vocal infliction except pain. Brendon inhales deeply though, with a pathetic sniffling sound, and nods.
“Jon, Spencer… Zack. Nobody else could come out this far. Spencer’s sleeping at the hotel for a while, Jon and Zack are eating right now… I came to check on you.”
Ryan has to close his eyes again to try and process everything - Spencer? Zack? Maybe he and Jon were visiting Panic on tour? But Brendon said he was the one onstage - if he and Jon somehow decided to get together and do a tour with them, he’s missing a hell of a lot of memory. Maybe they were just in the area on their own tour?
“Day s’it,” Ryan asks, licking his parched lips. Brendon does that fucking sad laugh again.
“Happy birthday,” he murmurs, and Ryan gapes at him. He missed... five months, almost six? The hand resting beside Brendon unconsciously grips onto the sheets, searching for an anchor. He knows a few things - he fell offstage while performing, he’s not in California, either Brendon and Spencer are back in his life or they just happened to be passing through where Ryan was… But it’s August 30th. He’s forgotten half a year.
“Jesus,” Ryan mumbles, suppressing the urge to cry himself. “Thanks. For staying.”
Brendon’s response, a quiet of course, gets cut off by the door opening again. Ryan manages to roll his head to the side and see Zack strolling in with Jon behind him - seeing Jon confuses him even more. They both look excited with his being awake, but Jon’s face looks unusually young.
He doesn’t say anything when they’re both inside, but Zack does: “Oh my God, dude. Fuck. Why didn’t you call us in here, Brendon?”
“I just saw him, I-- I didn’t want to overwhelm him,” Brendon says, and Ryan really appreciates the sentiment.
“Well I’m gonna have to overwhelm him right now, this is-- Fuck. I’ve got a nice birthday present for you, dude.”
Ryan hums to show his interest, but he’d really rather just go to sleep - he’s not ready to be 24 yet, not ready to deal with Brendon again or figure out why the fuck Zack’s here, or care about a birthday present. Zack holds up his index finger and pulls out his phone - even after not hearing it for a few months, Ryan recognizes Spencer’s voice on the speakerphone when he answers.
“I’ve got the two best pieces of news you’re going to hear all year,” Zack tells him, and Ryan feels Brendon stand up, extra weight on one side gone.
“Ryan’s awake?” Spencer asks, right away. It makes Ryan’s chest hurt a little.
“And talking!” Brendon adds. Jon’s still silent.
“That’s the most important one,” Zack says, over Spencer’s relieved sigh. “But. Guess which band just won Best Video of the Year?”
“No fucking way,” Brendon gasps, and Ryan feels his perception muddle even more - video of the year? It has to be one of Panic’s videos. Why would Ryan care that they won something? There’s no way he’s part of the band again. It’s not an option.
Zack goes on explaining logistics to Brendon and Spencer over the phone - how they should submit a video of thanks if they want, whether to update people about Ryan, where to send the award, when Zack will come pick up Spencer. They both keep glancing at him and grinning tentatively, like they’re unsure of how Ryan feels. Ryan is unsure of how Ryan feels. Jon comes over and hovers beside Ryan’s bed, teasing, “Happy 20th, man, welcome to adult life.”
Suddenly, everything happening around him makes much more sense and much less sense, simultaneously.
--
Ryan tunes out after that. Zack leaves to pick up Spencer, and Brendon resumes his spot on the bed, talking excitedly at Jon about the award. Everything feels surreal. He tries to convince himself he’s dreaming - lucid dreaming isn’t impossible, it’s common - but this feels too real. When Spencer shows up at the hospital, Ryan pretends to be asleep. He feels kind of shitty about it, but his head is spinning, and he doesn’t know if he could handle looking at another person and realizing they’re nearly four years younger than he expects them to be.
“He’s probably exhausted.” Ryan hears Brendon whispering softly to Spencer - it has to be getting dark, and the lights are dimmed down lower than before. He’s catching on to their routine, picking up bits and pieces of the story; instead of Brendon getting bottled at Reading and Leeds, like what happened in real fucking life, Ryan got hit. He can remember back to that day, how high that stage was off the ground - it must’ve been a long fall. Apparently he’s been unconscious for four days, and they’ve been rotating who spends the night with him at the hospital - tonight it’s Brendon and Spencer.
“It’s been a fucking long day,” Spencer sighs. Ryan suddenly wants to laugh, out of pure hysteria - Spencer hasn’t got the slightest idea how long of a day it’s been.
“I’m so glad he’s awake,” Brendon murmurs softly after a while. It makes Ryan’s entire body itch. He’s uncomfortable just with the tone of Brendon’s voice - he remembers how close they were and how much it hurt him to see Brendon get hit onstage. There’s nothing there now except for a hollow, static feeling in his veins, half-empty from where Brendon cares but Ryan doesn’t know if he can say the same anymore. He hasn’t heard Brendon sound that grateful for him, for Ryan, in longer than he wants to remember.
The feeling intensifies when Spencer speaks again, “He’ll be fine.” Ryan wants nothing more than for them to leave, to go to their hotel so he can fall asleep in peace and wake up again in 2010, and he feels like the worst friend (ex-friend, ex-bandmate, human fucking being) alive for it.
If he is alive. People don’t just wake up in the past.
A nurse comes in at some point, after the boys have gone quiet in their corner chairs, and attaches a new bag of liquid to his IV line. He falls asleep peacefully, gently, and hopes while he’s drifting off that tomorrow he’ll have some answers.
--
Ryan wakes to the whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep and tears immediately prickle behind his eyelids. He strains his ears for any sounds from across the room, and opens his eyes when he hears nothing - Brendon and Spencer aren’t there. It’s all the incentive he needs to let himself cry, silently and pitifully. He feels like a child, clutching the flimsy hospital gown underneath his sheets, and wishes he could kick his feet and throw a tantrum to be sent back home.
When he goes to wipe the tears from his face, Ryan catches sight of his bare wrists - they make him feel more wrong than anything else since the sleeping pills. Ryan knows the day he got his wrist tattoos, how much they hurt, and how much he likes them. He ends up staring at his naked wrists until Spencer comes in his room by himself - Ryan quickly looks up, but can’t shake the feeling of being incomplete.
“I brought you mashed potatoes, cause they told me not to try and feed you solids,” Spencer says, smiling through a shrug, and Ryan croaks out a thanks. He manages to find the remote control attached to his bed, and pushes an up arrow to make the back rise - he feels like he’s been lying down for months, and sitting at an incline makes his aching head feel a bit better.
“Are you hungry?” Spencer asks, and Ryan nods. He sits in the same spot Brendon sat in last night, and Ryan rests his head back against the pillow for a second. Too fucking surreal. Spencer keeps talking, “I’m guessing you can feed yourself, so I’ll just leave this here” setting the bowl and spoon on Ryan’s built-in meal tray, “and go get you a drink.”
--
The day passes slowly, and Ryan cries twice more before he drifts to sleep again. Before he slips completely away, he hears his primary doctor talking to Zack about discharging him in the next few days. He tries to look at that as a positive, but can’t bring himself to be excited about anything except the possibility of waking up in the right year.
--
“He’s an absolutely astounding patient,” Ryan hears first thing in the morning, and he clenches his teeth so hard he’s afraid they may chip. 2006. “The bandages on his legs are just for the lacerations, since there were no broken bones. I’m planning on releasing him soon, so I’d like to try and get him up and walking today, just to see what we’re working with. If he’s stable on his feet I see no reason to keep him another night. I’ll be back later on to see how things go!”
The doctor leaves to a chorus of affirmative hums, and his thick accent makes its way sluggishly through Ryan’s brain. He briefly considers faking an inability to walk, for no logical reason - maybe if he puts too much effort into this alternate reality, he’ll be stuck here for good. If he just waits it out, he could be sent home and not have to go through some bizarre “choose your own adventure” life, one with a different ending. He’s perfectly happy in 2010 with his friends and his music and the first tour where he hasn’t had to fight to get his say in things - he doesn’t want a different ending. He doesn’t need one.
The whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep is the only sound to accompany his thoughts, and Ryan briefly wonders if everyone left with the doctor, but he isn’t brave enough to open his eyes and find out. He still feels uncomfortable around these people, even Jon; he has no idea how to act around them, what they might consider normal. They’re all just kids, they think he’s just a kid, how is he supposed to talk to them now? There’s a huge, gaping chasm in their levels of understanding, and even if they don’t notice it now with Ryan drugged up in a hospital bed, the minute he leaves they’ll probably see right through him. It’s inexplicable.
“Should I wake him up?” Brendon asks, quiet and tentative, and Ryan has his answer - all still here. “It’s after noon, and if he’s going to be walking for a while…”
“Probably should,” Zack says, and in the next few seconds Ryan feels the bed dip on his left side, Brendon settling in close. He tries not to twitch or turn his head away when Brendon pushes the hair back from his forehead, but it makes that chasm feel even wider - he doesn’t want Brendon to touch him, but that’s the only way Brendon knows to make him feel better. Usually it would; maybe even if it was actually 2010 and Ryan was dying, maybe being touched by an old friend would comfort him. But knowing he’s in some minor physical pain but major psychological confusion, all he wants is to be left alone.
“Hey,” Brendon whispers, fingertips grazing his scalp, and Ryan considers his options. Feign sleep, grogginess, headaches, anything - who knows how long Brendon would sit and just touch him if he stayed in bed, trying to let him know he’s got company. The tightness in his skin would keep building. Or, he could announce he’s awake and get up, walk, get the fuck out of the hospital so he could at least sleep and wait out this…whatever it is, without being rubbed or watched or hooked to machines.
He yawns, “M’awake.”
“Ready to get the fuck out of here?” Brendon asks, and Ryan almost considers smiling. He’ll stick it out in the past for a few days if it means escaping the technological beeps that have occupied every second of the few days he’s been awake.
“Think so.”
--
Walking sucks a lot more than Ryan anticipated. He feels shaky and shivery a few minutes after being on his feet, and he moves like a fucking snail, inching along the bright corridors with his IV scooting beside him. The fresh bandages on his legs make them feel taut and swollen, his feet tingle painfully as the blood rushes back to them, and he’s sweating by the time he’s back in his room. The doctor, however, declares this as fantastic progress - he’s discharged before sundown, and Ryan thinks he might even be happy about it.
His clothes, however, he’s ambivalent about. He’s torn between laughing at his teenage self and resenting the fact that he has to become his teenage self again - he quickly realizes the only clothes he wore back then were tight jeans and tight t-shirts. After a quick shower to clean off, Ryan tries to avoid looking at himself in a mirror; he feels silly enough wearing the clothes, even though he knows they think he looks perfectly normal. It’s weird.
“Feel good to be wearing normal shit again?” Zack asks, walking him out to the cab with a big hand on his shoulder.
It would, Ryan thinks, if these were his normal clothes. Out loud, he agrees, “Yeah, definitely.”
--
At the hotel, he lets out a quiet sigh of thanks when he realizes he has his own room. However, Spencer and Brendon take it upon themselves to settle in two of the chairs adjacent to the bed, eyeing him. Ryan tries to ignore them - the TV is on but only as background noise, and no one talks - but with every move he makes he can see their heads turned toward him, and it sets off the staccato rhythm of annoyance in his pulse.
“Um,” he sighs, standing still at the end of his bed. He can practically see their ears perk up at the chance to help him (since, he remembers, he was never very good at helping himself). “When are we going back? To the states.”
“Flight leaves at 8,” Brendon says, and Spencer chips in with, “We’ll probably have to check out here at, like, 7:15.”
“Too fucking early,” Ryan grumbles, largely to himself, but they laugh softly in commiseration. Ryan wonders if he’s the only one who feels awkward. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”
He turns before they have a chance to respond, dragging his palm along the wall to support himself - he still feels too goddamn shaky on his feet. The short walk to the bathroom dizzies him enough to make him sit carefully on the closed toilet seat, clenching his eyes shut against the surreal spin of his vision. No matter how long he goes without seeing them, Ryan still knows Brendon and Spencer, and he knows they’re still waiting in his room to make sure he can clean himself without dying. He leans over and turns on the tap so they’ll hear the water and realize that he can handle himself - the more he tries to gear himself to stand up again, though, the better a bath sounds instead of a shower.
While he lets the tub fill, Ryan peels off the bandages on his legs and wrinkles his nose at the sight underneath them. His entire body still looks pretty much the same, but there’s a bruise that stretches from his left knee all the way up to his hip, and it’s pretty unsettling. The middle is a dark, menacing eggplant color that fades away to sickly yellow around the edges, and both of his shins are littered with smaller bruises and a few cuts that are scabbed over. From the looks of his legs, he’s actually surprised the fall didn’t break any bones.
He still makes sure the door’s unlocked before letting himself sink into the water. If he does manage to accidentally kill himself in the tub, at least no one will have to break down a door to find out.
--
Ryan smiles when he wakes up, because he doesn’t hear anything. No whoosh-beep, whoosh-beep, no medical jargon, no nothing - for one brief, incredible moment, he’s sure he’s home in his bed, in the right year. It feels fantastic.
When he goes to turn over and gets an earful of lukewarm water, it doesn’t feel so fantastic anymore. He thrashes once, out of surprise, and knocks his foot against the faucet of the bathtub - after he gets through the split second of searing pain, he opens his eyes to see Brendon crouching on the floor beside the tub. He tries not to jump.
“Shit,” he says instead, “the fuck?”
“You fell asleep in there,” Brendon informs him, barely quirking his lips like he’s trying not to smile. “Spence told me to come check on you, you’ve been in here for like an hour and a half.”
“Was just resting,” Ryan tries, but it sounds like bullshit even to his own ears.
Brendon laughs like it’s a great joke and springs up from his squatting position, “You might as well just go to bed, dude.”
“I came in here to get clean and I haven’t even done anything yet,” Ryan says, keeping his tone level despite the frustration he feels in every joint. He’s gone back in time, can hardly walk, and apparently he’s a goddamn narcoleptic.
“The bathroom’ll still be here in the morning, c’mon. Do you need help getting up?”
Ryan moves to sit up and wants to snap at Brendon, no I don’t need any fucking help, but the floor of the tub doesn’t have any rubber grips and as his ass slides along the bottom, he keeps his mouth shut. He sits quietly for a second instead, and Brendon takes that as his answer, offering both hands, “Come on.”
Maneuvering himself onto his knees is pretty easy, albeit painful - he grabs Brendon’s hands and manages some secure footing long enough to stand up. Ryan pauses to regain his balance, and the few seconds he takes are incredibly awkward. Brendon’s grip is light but firm, waiting for him to step out, but Ryan becomes suddenly aware of his nakedness in the cold air and without thinking he twitches a hand away with the intention of covering himself up. Instead, he loses his footing and slips sideways, clutching Brendon’s t-shirt to keep from falling. Brendon laughs, “Jesus, Ryan,” and manages to grip Ryan’s slick sides tight enough to pull him closer - Ryan lets himself cling to Brendon’s shoulders to step onto dry land.
Brendon doesn’t let go; he slides one palm to the small of Ryan’s back, probably to make sure he’s steady, but it’s the closest thing to a hug Ryan’s gotten in this world and hits him like a punch to the gut. Without thinking, he drops his forehead down onto Brendon’s shoulder and breathes out shakily, “Fuck, I just want to go home.”
“Tomorrow,” Brendon murmurs next to Ryan’s ear, in his best soothing voice, “tomorrow you can.” The words make his muscles tense - he thinks, I want to go home, but you’re not a part of that anymore.
--
“Nothing feels right,” Ryan says sullenly, inspecting the dirt under his fingernails that he didn’t manage to wash out in the morning’s pathetic shower (that he mostly spent sitting on the floor of the tub, letting the water rush over his aching back). He speaks quietly enough for Jon to ignore him if he wants, even in the close quarters of the plane seating - he doesn’t, though.
“You need to readjust,” he offers, giving Ryan’s shoulder a friendly nudge. “Things aren’t gonna go back to normal after just a day or two.”
Ryan doesn’t reply, just rests his temple against the cool glass and stares at the airport outside his window, waiting to take off.
--
They land somewhere on the East coast. Before Jon leaves on his connecting flight to Chicago, Ryan watches them together and feels a pang of loneliness so sudden his breath catches in his throat. When Brendon hugs Jon, he curls in close, tangling his fingers through his hair - he tucks his face against Jon’s neck long enough for Ryan to feel uncomfortable and pulls away with a lingering kiss to his cheek. Spencer isn’t nearly as tactile with his affection, but Ryan can tell from the bulge of muscle in his skinny arms that he’s holding on tight.
Jon hugs him, too, before he leaves - it’s a loose, easy embrace, and it makes Ryan even lonelier. This isn’t the Jon he was about to go on tour with, the Jon he shared beds and beers and breakfast with - this is a different person, who thinks he is a different person. Ryan realizes that in this world, he doesn’t even have the same Jon.
He feels like a stranger intruding on someone else’s life, with Brendon’s fingers on his wrist and Spencer’s steadying hand on his back.
--
Ryan spends both the plane and car rides submerged in his head, his thought process sluggish as molasses. In a brief moment of hysteria he chants there’s no place like home over and over and over until even the voice inside his mind gets tongue-tied, tripping over the syllables. He spends time counting his heartbeats in an effort to stop thinking at all, but the rhythm is too uneven and he loses count; instead he tries measuring his breaths, matching them with whoever’s beside him, but words inevitably creep their ways back into his brain.
The only time language escapes him entirely for the quickest of seconds is when Spencer pats his thigh, “We’re here,” and Ryan finally opens his eyes again. The car, Zack in the driver’s seat, is parked on Ryan’s childhood street in front of his childhood house that he sold as soon as he possibly could. His father’s rusted car sits silently in the paved driveway, and for the first time in years Ryan misses him so bad it hurts.
He looks forward, along the endless rows of happy houses in suburban Nevada, and starts to cry without even realizing it.
It takes him nearly ten minutes to gather enough energy to step outside of the car. Zack insists on carrying every one of his bags inside, and Spencer and Brendon offer to keep him company repeatedly until Ryan finally croaks out, “I’ll be fine.” They leave reluctantly, after Ryan resolutely ignores their offers for help - Brendon kisses his cheek before they leave, just like he did to Jon, and Spencer promises to come visit after they all get some rest.
After they’re gone, Ryan climbs the stairs and immediately goes into his dad’s room, locking the door behind him. He curls up on the bed, under the covers, and cries himself to sleep just like he did on the night of the funeral.
--
Ryan doesn’t even entertain the idea of being back home when he wakes up - he knows where he is just from the smell. His father’s bedding is musty and cold from lack of use, even with him burrowed under the sheets, and it makes his eyes sting with fresh tears he’s too lethargic to hold back. There’s hardly any light creeping through the crack in the curtain when he opens one eye - the pastel shades of pink and yellow hint to him it’s just barely sunrise.
His head feels full and empty, filled to the brim with nothing. His thoughts seem to go in circles, why am I here and what did I do and what do I do now - in the time it takes him to study the woven threads on his father’s pillow case, the sun begins streaming in brightly. Ryan gets up without thinking and tries to stretch the curtain to cover the spots of window letting in light, but when he yanks it to one side the sun just spills out of a new place.
The house is quiet like Ryan remembers it being, but that silence is ended abruptly when his phone - that ancient Sidekick - starts ringing. He knows it’s the default ring tone because he never bothered to change it in all the years he owned the thing; he didn’t use it that much for calls, anyway. It stops ringing long before Ryan manages to trudge his way downstairs to look through the bags he doesn’t remember packing - when he finds the right one, he’s not surprised to see Spencer was the one calling. He thumbs over the keys, not even used to his phone in this year, and curiosity gets the best of him - he settles down cross-legged on the dusty couch and opens up his old text messages.
Every message from after he woke up is some variation of hope you get better soon. He bypasses them all with the smallest amount of nostalgia (messages from Patrick, he hasn’t spoken to him in what, a year? More?), but the earlier ones, hidden behind the good vibes, hit a little harder. A lot are from Pete - maybe half a lyric in quotes followed by a what do u think? or both of them complaining about something, writer’s block or trouble sleeping or when they’re gonna meet up again. One is from Spencer, do European stores have Tostitos? buy me some, and Ryan remembers that. He went out with Zack and Jon, browsing the grocery stores for everything on their junk food list, and he remembers but it happened years ago, even though this phone is telling him it’s hardly been a week.
Most messages, though, are from Brendon. It doesn’t surprise him. The very first thing in his inbox is from Brendon in the beginning of 2006, months before any other message - wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
--
He eats breakfast, lunch and dinner alone.
--
“We’ve decided to cancel the rest of the European tours this year,” Spencer tells him. The kitchen looks barren, Ryan notices, even with every appliance and piece of cookery strewn about like they were when he was a kid. It reminds him of a movie, how filmmakers use color filters to set the mood for a scene. If this were a movie, he thinks, his color filter would be blue, a muted blue. It sets a barren tone.
“And right now, like, you have two months to decide, but if you need more time we can cancel the headliner, too,” Brendon offers. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan sees Spencer nod his agreement. “Or reschedule it. We just want to make sure you’re okay before we do anything big.”
“I’m not an invalid, Brendon, I think I can handle it,” Ryan says, too suddenly, and he foolishly expects Brendon to recoil.
Instead he gets a sharp response, “You were unconscious for four fucking days, I want to make sure you can handle it.”
“Brendon,” Spencer warns, and they both sigh.
“I’ll be fine by then,” Ryan says, a little more reserved, and no one says anything for a while.
--
After a week at his father’s house (that he still feels too detached from to call home), the monstrous bruise on his thigh begins fading. Ryan spends practically all day in bed, sleeping only part of that time - he’ll brush his fingertips along the sickly green-yellow skin as it heals and wonder when he stopped noticing the pain. He still has a limp to his walk - when his body finally convinces him he needs to get up after twenty hour naps - but he doesn’t feel much any more. The most he feels is a vague sense of guilt; what if life in 2010 is going on without him, and no one knows where he is? He could be dead, and he’d never it know it. (Time travel is impossible, spontaneous time travel has to be even more impossible, and this isn’t even-- history didn’t go like it should’ve gone, something happened that made him get hit instead of Brendon.) Ryan doesn’t know which is worse - the fact that he may be dead, or the fact that in the future he wants to call his, his friends might not even know him. No one might know him. He may not even exist.
The ideas are too philosophic for his drowsy brain - he tries to ignore them, but it’s hard to scroll through the contacts on his phone to see numbers he doesn’t remember of people he doesn’t care about instead of his best friends and his band. Brendon still talks to him the most. It’s one-sided, but he doesn’t seem to mind - he usually only uses text messages, maybe so he doesn’t have to hear Ryan’s sighs and know how little he cares, but one day Brendon calls him.
“Our costumes came in today,” he says after Ryan’s gruff hello, without so much as a greeting in return. “The ones for the circus tour.”
“Mm,” Ryan mumbles. Brendon’s voice is full of barely concealed excitement and Ryan remembers from experience how easily he alone could crush that in him. He tries to inflict the syllable to offer Brendon a chance to talk more without feeling discouraged.
“Yeah, they sent them to Spence’s house and he just brought them over. Mom told me to ask if you wanted to come see them, but I figured, just-- I told her no, so. You can, though? If you want.”
The clock on Ryan’s father’s night stand is one with hands, not digital numbers - it’s hard to read in the dark, but Ryan thinks it says it’s close to 2 o’clock. He figures it must be cloudy outside.
“Tell me about them,” he says.
“You’ve already seen them,” Brendon laughs, but he continues on anyway. “Yours is pretty cool. It’s got that shirt with all the ruffles and shit with the ribbon that ties around your neck, and that brown vest. I don’t think it’s the one you wanted but it’s pretty nice. And the pants are kind of… they’re interesting. Kinda thin. They’re gonna smell so bad by the end of tour. And yours tie up on the sides, that’s pretty awesome.”
Ryan tries to laugh but has to stifle a yawn instead, turning his face against the pillow. “What about yours?” he mumbles, and hears Brendon hum.
“I really like my gold jacket thing.” He doesn’t say anything more, and Ryan glances at the clock again.
It takes him a few moments to decide, and as he’s opening his mouth Ryan hears Brendon take in a breath, like he’s getting ready to speak, too. “You can come pick me up,” he says softly.
“Yeah?” Brendon sounds tentatively excited again, and Ryan nods before he realizes no one can see him.
“Yeah.”
When they get off the phone, Ryan drags himself out of bed to take the first shower since Europe. He even feels a little less dead when he gets out.
--
“Jesus, we got these things tailored so they’d fit,” Spencer laughs, picking uselessly at the baggy shirt hanging over Ryan’s torso. “You should eat more.”
“You know, I’ve never seen you with facial hair, Ryan,” Brendon’s mother says. He manages a sheepish laugh, but he couldn’t convince himself to shave when he looked in the mirror - his hands are still shaky, and with his luck, he’d have slit his throat.
“Haven’t seen curly hair in a while, either,” Brendon teases, “somebody’s gotten lazy the last few days.” He brings a hand up to twirl a strand of Ryan’s hair around his finger - Ryan ducks his head, partially out of embarrassment and partially to avoid the touch.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, in the same warning tone Ryan remembers from days before. It annoys him more than any off-hand playful comment Brendon could make, hearing someone get scolded like a child on his behalf, like they had to have a conversation about how to act around him before he came over.
“I’ve got better things to do than worry about looking pretty for you assholes,” Ryan says, trying for a joke, and Brendon nudges him with a golden-clad shoulder.
--
Ryan goes back home and stays in bed until the first of November.
--
On the first of November, Ryan wakes up some time between four and five in the morning (his vision is too blurry to pick apart the notches between the clock’s hands). The dream hangs heavily behind his eyelids, taunting him in a way he’s been ignoring for too long, even before he woke up strapped to whirring monitors. It’s the first dream he can remember having in this place.
Keltie was wearing one of her long, long sundresses, one so long the skirt wisped over the gravel when she walked. They had settled on the grass behind the beach, after strolling along the shore, and Ryan stretched out beside her to brush his fingers along the frayed hem near her feet. He set his head on the hard ground and kissed the curve of her ankle, and he felt the grains of sand prickle against his lips instead of her skin. He woke up.
Ryan knows exactly where they were and exactly which dress she had on and it feels like less of a dream than a memory. Suddenly, he’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t write it down - afraid that he might forget everything, like he forgot the timbre of his mother’s voice after less than a month and like he forgot the smell of his father before he came back after he died. Like he forgot the freckles on the bridge of Brendon’s nose until he saw him again and like he forgot the way Jon tugged on his earlobe when he was nervous until he didn’t know him any more. He crawls out of bed in the dark and fumbles aimlessly, mind racing to retain everything he knows is still there - the first light he turns on is a pathetic lamp, but it bleeds through the room enough for Ryan to find a notebook that doesn’t belong to him, numbers scrawled only on the first page. He rips off the sheet and tugs open the nightstand drawer, snatching the first pen he sees - it feels necessary to hurry, and he writes as quickly as his unpracticed hand will let him:
blue and white paisley
January, Hawaii
She liked the turtles better than dolphins
He tries to pause and rest his hand, cramped from the unexpected tension, but the words flow quicker than he’s ever had them flow before. It’s not lyrical but he doesn’t give a fuck - it’s not for the craftsmanship, it’s for his goddamn sanity,
It should’ve been a birthday present (hers) but the dates didn’t work out well enough. She let me stay on the boat until I had enough pictures of her with the dolphins but I could’ve gotten better ones. Remember thinking I was fucking stupid when I took her dress off of her with the patio (do they call them patios in Hawaii?) doors open but t
She tanned but I burned there and I forgot to tell him that it’s funny a girl from Canada tans but a Hawaiian guy burns like I do
January 28th
After he puts down Keltie’s birthday, Ryan lets his hand relax and sinks back onto the bed. His eyes still sting from sleep and he wants to let himself cry, because he hasn’t even thought about her for months - instead he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes hard enough to start a new, dull throb in place of the sharp sting. He won’t think about her now, either.
--
Ryan wakes up three days later sandwiched between cardboard boxes full of his father’s country western novels and disassembled shelves. Brendon is sitting on the couch, off to the side, and Ryan hopes that if he stays very still, Brendon will leave.
“I’ve been trying to wake you up for the last hour,” he says, too jovially for Ryan’s tastes this soon after becoming conscious. “Everybody was a little worried, you stopped answering messages a few days ago, you know?”
“Mh,” Ryan says.
Brendon nudges his foot against a stack of boxes beside Ryan, “What’s up with all this shit? What have you been doing?”
The notebook Ryan found after his dream (already a quarter of the way full) sits heavily between the boxes and Ryan’s side. He rests his temple against the cardboard and closes his eyes - he thinks about getting up days earlier and going to the attic for every extra box he had, packing up the house slowly and respectfully, not unlike he did the first time. He has no idea what he’s doing.
“Putting away some stuff I don’t need,” he mumbles, curling his fingers around the metal spiraling edge of his notebook.
“You should probably put away some stuff you do need,” Brendon laughs. “We’ve gotta leave day after tomorrow to catch our flight.”
Ryan cracks one eye open and looks at Brendon - he’s looking right back at him, legs tucked up under himself Indian style on Ryan’s couch. He can remember watching cartoons with Spencer on that couch; staying up all night just because it was a weekend and his dad said they were allowed.
“You know, ever since you fell I’ve woken you up in some pretty weird places. Sure something didn’t get knocked loose in there?” he asks, teasing, and it makes Ryan laugh because he’s feeling a little masochistic - he’s not sure something didn’t get knocked loose in his head. In fact, he’s pretty goddamn sure something did.
Instead of responding, he closes his eyes again and hums, “I wonder if it’s still warm in Florida in November.”
--
It’s still warm in Florida, but Ryan doesn’t really notice. The air conditioner inside their bus is on, and he makes it his personal goal to stay inside as long and as often as possible - especially if it means staying inside alone. After actively secluding himself from the band (he can’t even call them friends inside his head again yet, and it makes him feel queasy), being in the company of anyone for more than a few minutes makes his head pound.
They’re a few hundred miles from the first venue they’re supposed to play, and they don’t go on for another day and a half - everyone around him is fucking vibrating with energy, and it’s not like Ryan can blame them. The first time he did this tour, it was just as bad. Then, though, they’d been playing constantly for nearly a year - they were well practiced and ready to play a huge arena tour.
Ryan hasn’t picked up a guitar since he woke up in the wrong year, and he hasn’t played a single song from the first album since the last show he did with Panic - more than a year ago. Brendon makes a show of prancing around the tour bus halls, doing vocal exercises to prepare himself for “the real fucking deal”, and it jolts Ryan back into reality.
Two fucking months, Ryan writes in the margins of a page already filled to the brim with his words. MORE than two months. These songs embarrass me.
He tries to say more, but he doesn’t want to. Instead, he buries his face in his hands and focuses hard on playing an acoustic in front of a tiny crowd, in the smallest club he’s ever been in. The songs are easy to remember - he played them hundreds of times - and with Brendon’s voice flitting back and forth between octaves he can piece the words with the chords like he’s done with every lyric he’s written since he first heard Brendon sing.
--
The first show, unsurprisingly, is awful. Ryan’s actually a little bit glad to know it wasn’t just him who fucked up - as soon as they get offstage they’re practically giddy, letting everyone know about the mistakes no one else noticed.
“I forgot an entire fucking verse,” Jon says. “A verse. What the fuck?” Brendon cackles from across the room and Ryan doesn’t even try to suppress a smile. The adrenaline makes him feel like a fucking human being again, something he hasn’t felt since he got here - even if he’s already done all this before. He’s willing to take any brief moment of normalcy he can get. The screams from the crowd are still buzzing in his ears, and despite the fact that this isn’t what he wants…it feels good.
“Thank god for muscle memory,” he mumbles, and Spencer ruffles his hair with a damp palm.
“I’ve gotta be honest,” Brendon says, coming up to sling an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. There’s a thin film of sweat covering every area of skin Ryan can see. “I was waiting for a chance to bitch at you for not practicing, but I think you did better than the rest of us.”
“I am better than the rest of you,” Ryan teases, glancing up at them.
Both Spencer and Jon scoff incredulously, but Brendon leans in to stage whisper into Ryan’s ear, playfully, “You sure are.”
--
Being in a bunk again makes Ryan reconsider feeling good about the tour. The space has never bothered him before, but after sprawling in his father’s bed for two months with hardly anything on his mind, the bunk almost resembles his head. It’s too small for him to think, too many ideas packed inside a space that’s not big enough to hold them. It feels like every memory from the first time he lived this is competing for room with experiences from the second time - Ryan knows that if this were four years ago, he’d be texting Keltie, telling her how bad the first show went and how fantastic it felt.
It’s fruitless and childish, but he tries hard to remember the things they told each other. She was part of the Knicks dance team and would always tease him, telling him stories about the things he didn’t get to see in the changing rooms - it’s embarrassing, honestly, and he feels his face redden from the memory of her telling him (in more detail than he was expecting) how she’d congratulate him on his first successful arena tour show.
When his phone buzzes noisily beside his head, Ryan’s heart jumps into his fucking throat. He tries not to get his hopes up (it’s stupid, it can’t be her, there’s no way), but before he flips open the screen he holds his breath anyway.
He’s not surprised to see it’s a message from Brendon. you awake?
Ryan takes his time to reply, letting himself come down from the irrational disappointment. He types out a quick yep, and Brendon doesn’t even bother replying - Ryan can hear him in the bunk directly below, the whisper of his blankets being pushed down. He’s not particularly in the mood to share his space right now, but it’s hard for him to refuse Brendon’s soft smile when he’s already out of his bed, “Can I climb up?”
“Don’t elbow me,” is the only thing Ryan can think to say in response - Brendon grins and climbs in carefully, pressing close. Ryan feels warmer the second he settles.
“Heard you sighing up here,” Brendon murmurs. He’s not wearing his glasses, and Ryan knows he takes his contacts out before he tries to sleep. He wonders how much of his face Brendon can see.
“I’ve got a lot to think about,” he says. Even when he concentrates, he can’t feel a single place where his body is touching Brendon’s. It still feels intimate enough for Ryan’s heart to stutter.
“You do enough of that already,” Brendon whispers. Ryan closes his eyes and tries to keep his breathing even - he can feel every breath Brendon takes fluttering between his eyelashes, and he thinks Brendon can probably feel his, too. The months that he spent without Brendon in his life seem just as unreal as the months he’s spent in this alternate universe he isn’t meant to be in; every second that passes with this body in front of him winds his muscles tighter, until he’s digging his nails into the flesh of his palms. It doesn’t matter how hard Ryan wishes himself away, wishes this world away - Brendon still purrs his name, “Ryan,” and he can’t make himself move.
Their noses brush before anything else, just barely, and Ryan knows that Brendon’s waiting for him to smile or pull away or move, anything, but he can’t. It feels like his body is on the verge of a sob, and when Brendon’s lips touch his he exhales harshly, all at once. Ryan can’t tell how long it lasts - just breathing against Brendon’s mouth - but his mind leaves him entirely when Brendon bridges the gap, leaning forward the few vital centimeters to have their bodies touching almost everywhere. Their mouths against each other turn into kisses; shaky, tentative, terrifying kisses, and Ryan lets his fingers twist around the fabric of his bedsheets to keep himself from holding Brendon’s body.
Brendon is the one who moves away. He doesn’t go far - Ryan can still feel him, panting quietly against his cheek. Neither of them say anything and Ryan’s too fucking petrified to open his eyes; Brendon places a more chaste, still tentative kiss on his lips, and Ryan tries to return the gesture.
He keeps his eyes closed even as Brendon is leaving, and doesn’t open them again.
part two