Big Bang Fic, Part 2
A Finer Command of Language
Band(s): Panic at the Disco
Pairing(s): Jon/Ryan
Word Count: 32,021
Rating/Warnings: NC-17/none that I know of
Author Notes: Thank you to Luc, for alphaing and betaing the fic, particularly when it meant dealing with me being a child. Untappedbeauty, for her thorough, awesome grammar beta. Finally, Rossetti, for making sure the sign language in this was actually informed by reality, and really helping me to rework the story in more interesting ways around that.
There was very little research that went into this, Aphasia doesn't work precisely like this and the type of injuries Ryan occurs are probably unlikely to happen in concert.
Title comes from a Sam Rayburn quote: "No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut."
Summary: I called this the bus accident!fic while I was writing it. Largely because the premise is that Panic gets in a bus accident. I'm clever like that.
Part One
Jon told Spencer about the blip on the "make Ryan functional again" radar, and Spencer told Darcy at some time when Ryan wouldn't have to hear him. On the one hand, Ryan was kind of glad he didn't have to see or hear Darcy's reaction to the fact that Ryan was even stupider than he'd evidently been told. On the other, he didn't want Spencer thinking he couldn't handle hearing it. Ryan was nothing if not able to face up to the negative facts of reality.
In any case, Darcy didn't seem to think it was that big a deal. He said, "Yeah, my friend who does a lot of work with Aphasics told me that might be a problem." He shrugged. "Weird Aphasia or no, I'm not surprised."
That made sense. It didn't really make Ryan feel that much better about being completely illiterate, but it made sense. Darcy dove into teaching them all the major interrogatives, simple greetings, and directions. Ryan wasn't sure how talking this way was ever going to feel natural. He hadn't even been the kind of person who used his hands to illustrate his point before all this. It felt cumbersome, and Ryan wasn't all that positive there would ever be a day where he wouldn't have to think forever and ever to remember which sign he needed.
Brendon, unsurprisingly, was enthusiastic about the whole project. He kept asking Darcy to teach them entirely useless words like "bumblebee" or "anti-establishment." And, okay, maybe that last one wasn't so useless, but it was one of those things Ryan could wait to know until he could say, "I need to go to the bathroom again."
Admittedly, when Brendon said, "Oh no, you really can't leave without teaching him a couple of dirty words. He needs it, man," Ryan remembered why he'd been completely in love with Brendon for a year and a half before he grew out of it and into the friendship they had.
Darcy hesitated for a second, then he said, "Yeah, he totally does," and went to town, teaching Ryan more swear words than he'd probably known when he could verbally express them. Ryan signed the one thing he knew that Darcy hadn't taught him, which was, "I love you."
Darcy laughed. "Tell it to my mom. She was the one who was in the Navy."
If he ever met her, Ryan totally would. Jon laughed and got up to let Darcy out. Ryan was already going over "who," "what," "when," "where," "why" and "how" by the time he heard the door open and Jon's amiable goodbye. Jon came back and flopped down on the couch, laying his head carefully in Ryan's lap. He looked over at Spencer, his eyes focusing in on the cast. "You get that thing off in two weeks, right?"
"He's not the only one," Brendon said, with a real sense of anticipation. They'd both had to keep the casts on for a full two months, on top of the metal pins that had been put in initially to hold the bones in place.
"You start physical therapy immediately?" Jon asked.
"Couple of days after," Spencer nodded. Then he looked at Ryan. "You too."
Ryan knew. He wasn't looking forward to it. It would be awesome to have his own freedom of movement back, but he had a feeling the process was going to be excruciatingly painful, especially given that he'd weaned himself off the painkillers against the advice of his doctors.
"You're going to talk to them about how long it'll be before you can play again, right?"
Spencer hedged. "Jon. I told you. They didn't sound--"
"You'll talk to them, Spence, right?" Jon said it evenly, as though Spencer had completely ignored his first question, not denied its validity.
"We'll talk to them, Jon," Brendon said softly, sounding a little unsure of himself. Ryan understood. It was usually Jon and Spencer who held things together. But Ryan was pretty sure the time for proscribed roles had flown out the window, along with half their possessions, on a highway somewhere in the middle of America.
Jon nodded approvingly. "Good. Because it's time we got back to playing."
Ryan didn't know what it was time for at all anymore, but Ryan was willing to trust Jon's judgment. At the very least, assuming Spencer could still play, music was the one thing they all had left between them. If Spencer couldn't-- Ryan's mind pulled back in panic from the thought. Jon was right. He was. Spencer could still play. It would just take some time. Everything was going to take time.
*
Jon drove them to the hospital for the first day of physical therapy. Pete had made sure that there would be security crawling over the facility. Pete had controlled what information was released to the media as best he could, but the media was its own creature, as always. Getting to and from Ryan's place had become something of an ordeal as the press outlets figured out where they were holing up. Ryan, in particular, was an issue, given that walking was still a serious feat that had to be performed with the aid of another person, or not at all. For the most part, Ryan used the chair. He didn't want to hurt the others in an attempt to salvage his pride.
When they got to the hospital and were ushered safely inside, it was to the sight of Haley sitting in the waiting room, looking somewhat shaken up. Ryan blinked. He knew she'd called Spencer upon learning about the accident and that they'd been talking again, but Spencer was with him almost all the time. When they would have gotten to the stage where Haley was coming to meet him at first physical therapy appointments was a mystery to Ryan. Then again, she appeared nervous, like Spencer maybe hadn't given her permission to be there. She was clutching a stuffed dog that looked a lot like Boba. Spencer blinked and said, "Hey, um. Hi?"
"Um," she said, squeezing the dog to her chest, "there might be-- I didn't think-- They took my picture."
Spencer's eyes narrowed. "Did they hurt you?"
"No, no, I just. I didn't mean to start rumors. I just wanted to wish you good luck." She held the dog out steadily, a parcel of good intent. He took it with his stronger arm. He still kept the weaker one tucked to him most of the time. Haley canted her head to the side and smiled. "Um. Hi." Ryan had forgotten how pretty her smile was.
She said, "Um, so, I mean, I should probably just--"
Spencer said, "You're not gonna say hi to the guys?"
Haley looked over and it was like she was seeing them for the first time. Ryan understood. Spencer could be blinding like that, as could Jon and Brendon, given the right circumstances. Ryan spent a whole six months having to forcibly pay attention to other things in the room when Jon first saved their asses. He was better about it now, but the feeling had never completely faded. Haley said, "Hi guys," soft and sincere.
Jon said, "Good to see you."
Brendon said, "What, I don't get any puppies?"
Ryan touched his hand to his temple and brought it down and outward, the way Darcy had taught him. Haley cupped her hands so that her thumbs were touching, her knuckles facing Ryan. Then she brought them around in a circle so that her palms were upward. She brought her pointer finger and her middle finger to her lips and then brought them downward in and arc before pointing to Ryan. She said, "Um, I think that's right. I'm learning from a book, so I think I get things wrong sometimes. 'How are you,' right?"
Ryan grinned. He formed the letter "I" with his pinky, which he could evidently remember in its word form or free of the other letters, but not in concert with them. He curled his hand into a fist and brought it outward from touching his lips and then brought his open hand parallel to his chest. He was still a little weirded out by the lack of tense in sign language, but he was learning to work with it, beginning to find a rhythm that wasn't interrupted by the new syntax.
"He says he's fine," Spencer interpreted.
"I know," she said, "I got it."
Ryan wasn't fine, not really, he just didn't have a large number of adjectives or moods that he could sign yet. The fact that she had understood him, though, that he hadn't needed any of them to read his pidgin sign and explain him to the rest of the world, made him pretty happy. Not that he minded the guys being the only people on the planet who understood him, but he preferred that to be metaphorical, rather than literal.
Ryan tugged at Spencer's elbow. Spencer looked down and Ryan concentrated to find the sign for "ask" only to realize he didn't know the sign for "stay". He shook his head in frustration, but Spencer relaxed his arm and put his free hand to the back of Ryan's neck. "Um, Hay?"
She looked at him, clearly unsure of what to do next or what his next move would be. He said, "You wanna stay? Maybe have lunch with us after?"
She bounced a little on the heels of her feet before settling. "Yeah, I'd-- That would be awesome."
Ryan felt another hand, this one on his shoulder, and looked over to see Jon giving him a squeeze and looking like Ryan was awesome. Ryan had missed the part where he had been, but he was willing to take Jon's word for it.
*
By the time Jon and Ryan got home that night, it was pretty much all Ryan could do not to throw up--or something else melodramatic and unnecessary--from the pain. He wheeled himself into the kitchen, where they had taken to keeping a couple of glasses on the counter so that Ryan could reach them. He tried to pour himself some water, but the effort of leaning forward and straining upward was just too much, and he made a cut off sound of frustration in his throat. Jon took the glass from him. It was a smooth action, as though he had been watching, waiting; waiting for Ryan to fail. He poured the water and asked, "You want some ice?"
Ryan wanted to throw something. Instead he nodded, and when Jon handed him the glass, he downed four ibuprofen at once. When he had them down, he looked over to see Jon staring at him with an assessing look. Jon asked, "Want a bath?"
Ryan considered the process of getting into the bath with some trepidation, but in the end he nodded. Ryan followed Jon down the hall, pushing the chair more slowly than usual. Jon was good about not helping Ryan with things unless he really needed the help, or unless Jon had asked if he could. He started the water running for Ryan, but then he left him alone, closing the door behind him. He called, "Want me to set out some sweats?"
Ryan struggled for a moment with having Jon do anything more than he was already doing and the fact that he was in pain and exhausted. Jon peeked his head back in the door. Ryan hesitated for a second and then nodded. Jon said, "Hey. Um. Tell me with your hands?"
Jon looked like he felt so bad about asking that Ryan didn't have the heart to sneer at him. Jon was right; he was supposed to be saying as much in sign as he could. He tucked his hand into a fist and raised and lowered it at the wrist. Jon grinned at him and then used both his hands to fan at his neck. Ryan frowned and struck his index finger down his palm--he was getting good at the questions; the guys were always doing shit that made him go, "Huh?"
Jon laughed. "Yeah, I looked up 'cool' on the internet. I'm willing to bet it's different in slang, but it was the best I had."
Ryan imitated the fanning motion and raised an eyebrow. It was early, but he was already figuring out that a significant portion of speaking with his hands was also in his expression, that his face affected his "tone". It was just one more thing to think about, something he never had needed to concentrate on before, and at times even harder than remembering all the things his hands were supposed to do.
Jon must have gotten the implication, though, because he flipped Ryan off. "You try coming up with sign slang, jerk." Then he closed the door again, and left Ryan in peace with the hot water.
Getting himself out of his clothes was a long and agonizing process, but Ryan managed and all but pulled himself into the tub. He hit the button for the jets and sat carefully in between two of them, where the movement of the water would be soothing, but wouldn't hit him directly. Ryan rested his head against the back of the tub and closed his eyes.
He woke to Jon pounding on the door. He tried to say, "I'm here, I'm fine," out of pure instinct and instead opened his mouth to a jumbled bunch of syllables. Jon said, "I'm coming in," and opened the door. He said, "Sorry, sorry, but you've been in here for forty-five minutes and you weren't making any sound and--"
As though Jon telling him how long it had been jogged something in Ryan's sensory perceptions, he noticed how cold the water was and started to shiver. Jon said, "Fuck. Okay, I know usually I let you take care of things yourself, but I'm just going to--" He grabbed one of the towels that they'd taken to keeping right by the tub and opened it up, setting it down so that he could carefully pull Ryan to his feet. Then he wrapped Ryan in the towel, reached in and pulled Ryan out, into his arms. Ryan splashed water onto the floor, onto Jon, but he didn't seem to notice.
Some of the worst of the tension had seeped from the muscles in the soaking, so instead of the pain being sharp, it had receded to an ever-present throb. Jon was extremely careful not to jostle him any more than he had to. He laid Ryan on the bed and got him into his pajamas as quickly as he could without hurting Ryan any more than necessary. He towel-dried Ryan's hair before tucking him under the covers. As he was soothing over the covers, Ryan noticed how badly his hands were shaking.
Ryan made a "j" with his pinky--like "i" he could figure out what it meant if he thought of it as a word. Then he splayed his thumb, pointer finger and middle finger on each of his hands, tucking the other two in and moved his hands back and forth in counterpoint. They had agreed on the combined symbols for "J" and "walk" being Jon's name. Ryan hadn't quite learned how to infuse their names with intonation through his fingers, but he figured his confused face was enough. Jon put his face to Ryan's chest and breathed, in and out, for long moments. Ryan brought a hesitant hand up to the back of Jon's head, soothed it down to the back of his neck. He wasn't sure what Jon wanted, what he needed. It sucked, when Jon had been doing nothing but those things for Ryan for weeks and weeks now.
Jon turned his face so that he was still lying on Ryan's chest, but his mouth wasn't muffled by it. "Ry. You can't-- I know you can't call for me if there's a problem, and that fucks me up enough, but you can't just-- What if you'd fucking slipped under the water? I-- Fuck. Fuck."
All of Jon was shaking by that point, and Ryan tugged at him, made him crawl into the bed where Ryan could curl into him, let Jon know that he hadn't slipped under the water, he hadn't. If an SUV going the wrong way at eighty miles an hour hadn't killed Ryan, no stupid bathtub was going to. But he took the point. No more scaring the shit out of Jon. Clearly, the SUV had left Jon with marks that just weren't as apparent as everybody else's. Ryan suspected they all had them, but they were just too busy concentrating on other things. Jon had been able to access the damage more quickly. Ryan didn't envy him.
It hurt when Jon squeezed a little too hard, but that was okay. Ryan could take it.
*
Ryan fucking hated speech therapy. Physical therapy was beyond painful, and the sign lessons could be frustrating in how long it was taking Ryan to learn enough words that he could actually say what he wanted to say, but speech therapy was simply humiliating and entirely useless all at once.
Because Ryan's Aphasia didn't affect his ability to put together thoughts, many of the normal aspects of speech therapy--such as putting pictures together to convey thoughts--weren't really useful. Or, they were useful in the sense that they allowed Ryan to "speak" but not in the sense of actually getting him to talk. Instead they did a lot of facial exercises and sound exercises. But Ryan's face worked just fine; he hadn't had a stroke, and the sounds never came out the way they were supposed to.
All in all, Jon had gotten used to the fact that Ryan was generally a complete bitch when he finished speech therapy. Most of the time, Jon just plunked Ryan's guitar into his arms and said, "Get it out," and then left Ryan to his demons. They were beginning to have a code made up of keys and notes, and when Ryan felt like he could be human enough to be in Jon's company, he would play the series of notes that would let Jon know. Ryan wasn't even sure how it had developed, since they'd definitely never discussed it, but it was there. Jon could ask Ryan how he was feeling with a series of strums, and Ryan could give a variety of answers with his responding chord.
They didn't do it in front of the others. Ryan was pretty sure Brendon would catch on fairly quickly, which was nice, but it would mean leaving Spencer out, and no way was that going to happen. Ryan would sit Spencer down and teach him the guitar without aid of words before that happened. Still, when it was just the two of them, it was easier than Ryan having to remember exactly how to position his hands, Jon having to try and think about what he was saying with them.
Ryan would try sometimes, when he could focus enough, to teach himself to play new things. It was a slow process. He could still understand written music to some extent, the same way he could understand pictures, but it took him a lot longer to puzzle it out than it had before. Brendon, the fucker, could play just about anything by ear, and Ryan felt, honestly and truly, that if he was going to have developed this handicap that that ability should have sprung up in its wake. After all, he always heard about blind people hearing better or deaf people being more perceptive to physical cues.
Ryan evidently wasn't the kind of guy who developed super powers just because his brain had become a twisted knot of uselessness. He couldn't say that he was horribly surprised.
He managed, slowly, to teach himself things that he'd never thought to try before--a mariachi song, "The Flight of the Bumblebee," a gospel song that he found stuck in one of the music books. He thought it might have been Brendon's. He wasn't going to ask. Brendon could still be a little bit touchy about the parts of G-d he'd chosen to keep for himself, and Ryan, as a recovering Catholic, respected that.
Jon followed his paper trail, learning the stuff in turn, and before Ryan knew exactly what was happening, between their new forays into music, their code made of strings and sound and Ryan's general desire to bury himself in something that he still could do, they were writing songs. Well, Jon was writing them. Ryan would come at him with ideas, and between the two of them, they would fiddle around until they had something--a solid melody, a haunting harmony, whatever--and then Jon would record the notes. Ryan could see how neatly he kept them. Ryan knew that Jon hadn't done that before, but it was as though now that he was writing for both of them, he just couldn't take the chance that the notes would somehow be obscured or misunderstood.
They needed Spencer to write the drums and Brendon to write the central orchestrations, or at least to brainstorm on them, but they were the beginnings of songs. They didn't show the others. Spencer was still fighting his way to having some ease of movement with his arm. More often than not, he came away from physical therapy with tear tracks down his face. Ryan wasn't even sure Spencer knew they were there. They were at odds with the fierceness in Spencer's eyes. On the days when Haley showed--which was becoming more often than not--she never said anything to him.
Somehow it was more than just that Ryan didn't want to shove the fact that he could still play in Spencer's face, though. Ryan didn't know exactly how to explain it, but the unfinished music felt like part of Jon's and his code, like they were saying something and the sentence hadn't come to a stopping point yet. Until it reached the period, Ryan wasn't really ready to show it to anyone.
It was also just music. Ryan had never done that before--written the music entirely without the words. He had words--oh, he had plenty and plenty of words--just no way of getting them out, no way of putting them on paper for the others to see. Ryan had a feeling that was the period he was waiting for. He wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't be waiting forever.
*
Darcy said, "Look, it's none of my business, but can I make a suggestion?"
Ryan put his index finger to his mouth and then moved it straight outward and down. "Sure."
"Hobo, I've noticed that she's pretty well trained, like, when the others say 'sit' and stuff."
Ryan nodded with his head and his fist. It wasn't that one wouldn't have conveyed the sentiment, but he was trying to make himself talk with his hands as much as possible, get used to the feeling of it, make it muscle memory the same way playing the guitar evidently was for him.
"You should try and train her to respond to sign commands as well. And to come for sounds other than her name, like, a whistle, if you can, or clapping, that sort of thing."
"Can you whistle?" Brendon asked slowly, not so much because the question warranted it, but because Brendon was also trying to speak with his hands, even as he spoke aloud--in this case, he had to stop to look at Darcy for the word for "whistle." Ryan thought that Brendon's compulsion to learn quickly was more out of the desire to impress Darcy than anything else, but whatever. Brendon had always sang his words for him before. He would work quite well as a translator.
"I don't know," Ryan said--fairly fluidly--with his hands. Ryan actually sort of liked the way each motion could flow into the next, pointing to himself, striking his hands flatly over each other, bringing the fingers of his right hand to his temple. Ryan trusted his hands, as ungainly as they were.
Brendon said, "Try," forming the "a" shape with both fists and pushing them in a curving shape forward. Ryan had noticed that Brendon was ten times more emphatic when speaking with his hands, which, honestly, was a little scary. Spencer leaned forward on his knees, carefully crossing his arms atop them and settling his chin there. Bending his arm was getting much easier with the help of the therapy, and Ryan refused to say anything, but privately he thought it was giving them all hope.
Jon said, "Could you whistle before?" and like Brendon it was a slow process, because he had to remember each word with his hands as well. Jon, though, Ryan was pretty sure, was doing that all for him. The thought was a little overwhelming, so he tended to steer clear of it as much as possible.
Ryan wanted to say, "Badly," but ASL didn't have adverbs, so he settled for, "bad," and hoped they would follow the thought. They usually could, but signs were limiting and Ryan hadn't quite gotten to proficiency at using his expressions and body language. He was lucky the guys knew him as well as they did. He was lucky Spencer could all but read his mind.
He put his lips together and tried blowing. It took a couple of attempts, but it always had. Right when he was about to give up, a sound emerged, wispy and thin, but definitely a whistle. Brendon gave his own responding whistle of victory. It, of course, came out perfectly.
"Wow," Darcy said. "Those are some serious whistling skills you've got there, Urie." He used the sign they'd made up for Brendon to represent "Urie," putting his hand into the formation for a letter B to make the swishing sign for music, rather than leaving his thumb out to the side.
For the first time in a while, Spencer spoke up. "He's good with his mouth." Spencer's signing was slightly hampered by the soreness in his arm, but otherwise he managed to somehow make it as quick and sharp as his tone was.
Brendon flipped him off, but he was totally blushing. Ryan turned to Spencer and made the sign for "mean." He'd had to learn that one quickly. Spencer smiled unrepentantly. Darcy, who had figured out that the best way to deal with the four of them was mostly to ignore them, said, "I'd noticed."
Ryan, who was beginning to understand that Darcy often put more inflection in his fingers than in his voice, noticed the way Darcy's hands canted slightly toward Brendon, the way his own cheeks weren't entirely pale. He thought, "huh," but unlike Spencer, he wasn't willing to get involved, not even if just to help out. Brendon could handle things on his own. Or, well, Brendon could handle things as long as Spencer was there to make sure they got handled. Ryan had every faith that Jon was waiting in the wings as well. Brendon didn't need Ryan for that. Brendon needed him for his words, so really, Brendon didn't need him.
Brendon turned entirely to them and very clearly signed, "assholes," the strength of the sign symbolizing his emphasis. Spencer laughed. Jon said, "Hey, I didn't do anything," forgetting to sign entirely. Ryan chose solidarity with Spencer and smiled a little. Brendon pouted at both of them before turning back and saying, "I apologize for my asshole friends," with his hands and his--evidently coveted--mouth.
Darcy looked over his shoulder at the three of them. Ryan imagined they appeared a bit like naughty schoolboys, caught out on the schoolyard after recess had been declared over. Darcy grinned and said, "Don't."
*
The videophone by Ryan's bed woke him up, ringing and lighting up all at once. Ryan looked at the clock with hands that Brendon had gotten him, glowing on his nightstand. Brendon had been the one to figure out that even if Ryan couldn't read digital clocks, he could figure out the time from where the hands on traditional ones. It was definitely after two, creeping on to three. Spencer's picture was flashing on the screen with each ring. Ryan hit the green button. Green meant go.
"Spencer?" Ryan tucked both his hands into the "s" position and twirled them in circles a few inches from each other. Ryan had chosen that symbol for Spencer, a modification on the word for "brotherhood." Spencer had looked at Ryan a long time and then just pressed his forehead to Ryan's and whispered, "Okay," his hand forming the symbol between their bodies.
Spencer was shaking clearly enough that Ryan could see it. He was sweaty and his skin was pale. He said, "I tried," his fingers making the words--well, "I try," but Ryan was almost as good at reading Spencer's mind as Spencer was at reading his. "I-- I talked to Bryar." He tucked his thumb in to create a B and made a motion like he was hitting the bongos. Ryan thought that was as good a choice for Bob Bryar as any. "He said," Spencer paused, clearly thinking about which signs he needed, "it was like riding a bike." Spencer looked at him questioningly. Ryan shrugged. Why the fuck would he know the sign for "bike"? Spencer shook his head and continued. "I just had to get back on."
"Did you?" One thing Ryan had gotten excellent at was keeping his statements and questions to the bare minimum of what they needed to be.
"I--" Spencer stopped, nodded. Ryan just waited. Spencer said, "I don't know. I-- It hurts. But it hurts not to, too. And I think my rhythm is off."
Ryan was glad they'd made Darcy do an entire lesson on musical terms. Ryan said, "That will come back."
"I have to hit with different force, move my body at a different...angle," he finished, his hands dropping to his side at a loss on the last word.
Ryan showed him the word. Not that that was the point; it just gave Ryan some time to think. Finally he asked, "Is it wrong?"
Spencer was slow to shake his head, slow to answer, "No. Just different."
Ryan signed out, "I think," and then stopped, as though moving his fingers in the correct formation would change more than had already been changed. In the end he made himself finish. "I think everything is."
Spencer tilted his head. "You and Jon. You've been writing?"
"Music."
Spencer nodded, didn't ask about how they were going to get lyrics. "Maybe. Maybe we should start over. Whole new record."
It had been less than a year since they'd released their last. It was still on its third single. Ryan signed, "I think we have to."
"Brendon's been writing, too."
Ryan knew. "He always does when--" Ryan had no idea what the sign for "crushing" was. He tried not to let frustration overwhelm him, as that wouldn't help him say what he wanted to say, but sometimes he couldn't help it, it just overrode anything else, clogged his throat and his eyes and even his ears. Which was why it took him a while to hear Spencer saying, "Ryan. Ryan. Ryan Ross."
Ryan blinked a couple of times and made himself breathe. He signed, "Here. Sorry."
Spencer said, "When he has a crush," his hands at his side.
Ryan nodded. Spencer said, "He does when he's worried, too." He signed that. It was conjugated incorrectly, Ryan could see, but whatever, he could hear just fine. He could understand just fine. It was the one part of him that wasn't completely, heinously, unforgivably stupid.
"I know," Ryan said, his fingers wilted, as helpless as the rest of him. Usually Brendon let them hear. Usually Brendon wouldn't stop bugging them until they fucking listened. Ryan wondered if anyone was listening to him. They'd have to figure that out. One more thing to think about. At least it wasn't him. One thing that wasn't him.
"Ryan."
Ryan looked straight at Spencer. Spencer smiled a little. "I can play."
Ryan couldn't help grinning at that. He had known he was scared, but he hadn't realized just how much until he'd heard Spencer say that he could and had his heart pound so hard it was all he could do not to rub his chest. Spencer took a bit, but he grinned back. "Yeah. Yeah. We could do a fucking instrumental album if we wanted, okay? Whatever. Whatever. This is ours to do. To start over again."
It wasn't that easy at all, and new beginnings were only possible with the ending of something that had come before, something that had been all Ryan had ever wanted, really, well, except-- All Ryan had ever wanted. Ryan tried not to ask for too much. He said, "Start over again," keeping his fingers as straight and his actions as clean as he could.
*
Jon usually drove them to physical therapy and stayed, mostly, Ryan had surmised, so that he could know exactly what exercises Ryan was supposed to be doing and get on Ryan's ass about it as much as humanly possible. Ryan was a bit surprised, then, when Jon dropped them off at the door one Tuesday and said, "I'll see you guys in a couple of hours."
Ryan frowned. "Not coming?" He was getting fairly fluent at inflecting tone by way of facial expression, if not in the actual movement of his hands.
Jon took his hands off the wheel to say, "Sorry. I have some errands." His hands said "things to do."
They had their groceries delivered, and ordered pretty much everything they needed online, so Ryan couldn't really imagine what the hell Jon had to do, but he shrugged. Spencer said, "See ya," Brendon waved, and they went on their not-so-merry way. Ryan could actually walk short distances now without wanting to curl up into a ball and die. This sign of progress didn't keep him from glaring at his physical therapist, a lot. Alternatively, Ryan still couldn't so much as say the word "cat" coherently. He tried not to blame his speech therapist. Realistically, he knew it wasn't her fault.
Jon still wasn't there when they were done. Brendon tried his best to cajole Ryan to come get a snack in the cafeteria, but Ryan really didn't like being around a lot of people he didn't know at the moment. He stayed in the waiting area and looked at the pictures in the society magazines. Jon came running in about fifteen minutes late and said, "Sorry, sorry, I suck," flustered enough that he didn't use his hands at all.
Ryan said, "Yes," and then forgave him. He was weak when it came to Jon Walker, terribly, terribly weak.
Spencer and Brendon returned with coffee and bagels, and Ryan forgave them for abandoning him, too. It was possible that one of these days, Ryan was going to have to face the fact that he was easy for his entire band.
They filed into the car, Spencer sitting in the back with Ryan. Purely with his hands, he asked, "Okay if I go to Haley?" He stroked the "H" formation of fingers along the line of his jaw to form her name. It always made Ryan think of it as "haygirl" in his mind. But he knew what it meant, all the same.
Ryan assumed he meant Haley's place. He nodded his head. "Good, then?"
Spencer nodded a little. He signed, "Afraid to push my luck."
Ryan didn't think he was going to. Spencer, whether he ignored the ability at times or no, was good at reading people. He knew just when to stay and when to go. Shit, he knew it for Ryan, and really, once you conquered that human obstacle, there wasn't much left in a guy's way. Haley was easier. Ryan was glad for that; Spencer deserved easy occasionally. Ryan smiled at Spencer. "Invite her, some time."
"Yeah?"
Ryan nodded. It was hard giving Spencer to someone outside of them, even Haley, but if he was going to do it, then she was damn well going to remember how to play nice with them. Ryan wasn't worried. Haley had never had a problem sharing Spencer, understanding the need to share. Whatever else their issues had been, that hadn't been on the list.
"Okay." Spencer said it softly, along with the sign.
Brendon asked, "You fucktards having a secret conversation back there?"
"If we were, would we tell you?" Spencer asked reasonably. "Hey Jon, drop me off at Haley's? Please?" Ryan was amazed at how Spencer would keep signing even when it would have been much faster to just ask, just say, and the recipient of the question or statement couldn't even see his hands. Ryan had to admit, though, it did seem to be becoming more and more habitual for all of them. Ryan thought it was becoming most so for him, but then, he was forced to do it.
"Yeah, Spence, that's fine." Jon took a hand off the wheel to muss Brendon's hair. Brendon muttered something that Ryan didn't catch. Jon said, "You wanna come back with us?"
Brendon thought for a moment, but then shook his head. "Nah, I'm gonna try and do some writing."
Brendon had been doing a lot of writing on his own, which wasn't unusual, exactly, but normally--or, well, before the accident--he always liked sharing his stuff, getting feedback, even when Ryan was bitchy about it. Ryan watched Spencer's face cloud over a little and could tell he was thinking the same thing. Jon said, "Sure?"
Brendon said, "Yeah. It seems to go easiest when I'm in enough pain to saw my leg off and call it even."
"Nice visual," Jon told him.
"Ryan's not the only one of us who can paint a picture with words."
There was no sign for "could"--tense didn't work the same way in ASL as it did in spoken language, but evidently Ryan was getting really good at saying what he needed to with his face, because Spencer smacked his arm. Ryan just shrugged. Spencer sighed. Brendon asked, "Something I said?"
"No," Spencer said, and kept on glaring at Ryan. Ryan pretended to ignore him. They both knew better.
*
After Jon dropped Spencer and Brendon off, Ryan moved into the front seat with him. He fiddled with the radio controls until he found something he knew Jon would like, then sat back and closed his eyes. He wouldn't fall asleep. Ryan's car had excellent shocks, but he was just too sore after physical therapy, even now that he was healing up, to fall asleep while the surface he was sitting on moved beneath him. Jon said, "You take some Tylenol, Ry?"
Ryan nodded. He had taken some before and after therapy. He signed, "Good day?" without opening his eyes.
"It was?" Jon asked.
Ryan shook his head. He opened his eyes and turned his gaze on Jon, pointing toward him. Jon said, "Oh, was my day good?"
Ryan confirmed and let his eyes droop again. Jon said, "Dunno. It was okay. I got the shit I needed to get done done. I missed being around you guys."
"Really?" Ryan's hands flew before he even knew what they were going to ask. His mouth had done that a few times, back when he could speak, but he hadn't known that he knew the signs inimically enough to be Freudian in that way. Evidently so. It would have been heartening if it hadn't been completely fucking mortifying. "I meant--" and of course now that he needed signs to fix the problem, he couldn't seem to remember any. He went slowly. "You spend a lot of time with us. Me."
Jon lived with Ryan, to be precise. And not on a bus, where there was Spencer and Brendon to temper things with their own types of insanity. Just Ryan with his damage, brain and otherwise. Ryan looked out the window, instinctively curling up on himself until he remembered how much doing that hurt and bit back a moan. Jon pulled the car over into a parking lot and said, "Whoa, hey."
Ryan stayed where he was. Jon said, "Ryan, play fair. Look at me."
Ryan turned around. Jon signed, "What does that mean?" He didn't even say it, just let his hands do all the talking. Ryan wondered if maybe Jon practiced when Ryan wasn't looking, if he spent even more time devoted to Ryan's care and well-being than Ryan had already noticed. That had to stop, it had to. He would get tired of it, any rational human being would. Even Spencer got tired sometimes he was just good about letting Ryan know gently, about taking time off without leaving Ryan for too long.
Ryan didn't even know he was hyperventilating until Jon said, "Okay, okay," and gently pushed Ryan's head down between his legs. Ryan cried involuntarily from the pain of it, but that got him to breathe a little more regularly, so he considered it something of a win. It was indicative, he was pretty sure, of how fucked up his life was that he could think that. When he had calmed down enough to satisfy Jon, Jon helped Ryan back up into a sitting position and said, "Sorry," taking his hands back to talk. "I didn't know what else to do." His fingers stumbled and skittered over the words in the last sentence, but Ryan got it.
Ryan said, "Thanks."
Jon returned to rubbing Ryan's back, his neck, and now that he could actually feel that, rather than the panic, the pain, it uncoiled something in Ryan. He leaned into the touch. Jon didn't take his hands away to say, "I like spending time with you, Ry."
"Time," Ryan signed and nodded. "But not all the time."
"We've toured together--"
Ryan shook his head. "Days off. Breaks. Different hotel rooms. Time."
Jon frowned. "You know I could go out for a day if I wanted to? Or shit, visit home for a bit. I'm not your prisoner, not last I checked."
The problem with that logic, Ryan knew, what that Jon Walker was far too conscientious for his own good. "You would worry."
"No, I'd drop you off at Spence's and expect him and his family to help you out until I got back. Which they would, and you would be fine, but it would suck because wherever the fuck I was, I'd want to be here, being your helper monkey."
"Monkey," Ryan said, mostly because he liked the sign--mimicking a monkey scratching itself--but also to process everything Jon had just told him.
"Which makes you the monkey king," Jon clarified.
"Obviously." Sometimes Ryan really did throw things out more out of habit than intention. He wondered how his fingers knew what to do, but they just did, and Ryan wondered if that was what it had felt like as a child, learning to speak, if all of a sudden there were just more and more words at his disposal until he had so many that he hadn't known what to do with them except give them to other people, reams and reams of them in song form.
"Ryan."
Ryan looked over Jon. Jon said, "Lemme take you the rest of the way home and show you what I did with my 'day off,' okay? Then you can decide whether to worry or not. Deal?"
Jon held out his hand, and even though Ryan knew he would probably worry regardless, he did Jon the kindness of shaking on it.
*
After Jon's declaration that Ryan would see what he had done while Ryan was Suffering the Torments of Hell--or, as Spencer called it, physical therapy--Ryan was almost a little disappointed to return home and not see anything particularly out of place. Jon grabbed his hand and led him through to the room that Ryan had begun thinking of as Jon's, rather than the guest room. Jon's computer was sitting on his bed, surrounded by about a million pamphlets with pictures and what Ryan knew were words, even if he couldn't read them. Jon pulled Ryan down on the bed beside him and booted up the computer. When it was fully on, he clicked on a couple of icons, opening what Ryan knew was Word, and something else.
Jon said, "Okay, sign something, anything."
Ryan thought for a second and said, "I'm worried about Brendon."
"I'm worried about Brendon," Jon said aloud and pointed to the screen. Ryan could see shapes filling the previously blank Word doc.
He blinked. "Voice--" He didn't know the words for "recognition" or "software."
"Voice recognition software, yeah," Jon said, more shapes appearing as he spoke. "And," Jon clicked another icon at the bottom of the screen. A different program popped up, one Ryan didn't recognize, and Jon clicked on words, one to another to another until a video of a man signing a word came up. "Okay," Jon said, "that's recognition." He signed it by himself four or five times, as did Ryan, trying to cement it in his memory. Jon said, "Gimme a second." A few more clicks, and they had "software" down, too.
Feeling the way he didn't know all the right words, the way his "speech" was a slow process of stop-and-start, Ryan struggled to convey, "This is awesome, but I can't speak. That software--"
Jon cut him off with two words, both signed. "I can." Then after a second, when Ryan still hadn't caught on, "I can speak. You just have to tell me what to say. You show me, with your hands, and I say it and then it's recorded. And we have lyrics."
Ryan froze. Jon said, "They're still inside your head, Ryan. We just had to find a way to get them out."
And Ryan, Ryan of all people knew that. But Ryan also knew his writing process. He knew that he hid the words away until the fifth or sixth or even seventh draft, when they were starting to have a sort of polish, when they weren't quite so jagged. He knew that he read them over and over and over to himself, figuring out where the worst offenders were, refitting and reworking and reimagining until he had something reasonable to bring to them.
In the silence, Jon withdrew a little, bodily. He said, "Or, I mean. I could put the software on Spencer's computer. He could--"
And to a certain extent, that would have been easier, to let Spencer hear this part of him, let Spencer read it back to him. Spencer already knew. They'd never talked about it, not really, but Ryan wasn't a fool. Spencer knew all of Ryan's hidden parts the same way--probably better--that Ryan knew all of Spencer's. It was the rule of being them. But Spencer hadn't gone out and gotten the software, hadn't stayed in Ryan's home when he could have gone, and Spencer wasn't sitting on Ryan's extra bed, looking like if Ryan nodded his head that would shatter him into a million pieces. Jon had never done one thing to deserve that from Ryan, not one, and Ryan could be horrendously, viciously selfish, but he tried his best to avoid cruelty. He shook his head. He said, "No, you."
If the snap of the no wasn't quite as decisive as Ryan usually made it, Jon didn't seem to notice. He said, "No, I didn't think--"
Ryan put a hand to Jon's mouth, and said with the free one, "You."
Jon was still for a second before nodding. Once he had received Jon's submission to his choice, Ryan released his hand. Just the touch of Jon's lips to his palm had him shifting so that Jon wouldn't notice that Ryan had become a desperate sexual freak sometime in the past months. Instead Ryan drew attention to his hands, saying, "It really is awesome. I never would have thought of it."
Jon laughed a little, but it wasn't exactly amused laughter. "Yeah, well, for all you depend on Spencer, you've got this thing about doing everything on your own."
Ryan started to apologize, and then stopped. Being independent had kept him sane for considerable periods of his life. Jon smiled and curled his hands over Ryan's, which had stopped mid-sign. "No, no apologizing. I'm just saying you don't. You can use us for things. Use me."
Ryan closed his eyes against the images that brought to mind, but the dark only encouraged them, so he opened his eyes up again, focused on Jon. Jon said, "What say we play for a bit? Just freestyle? You, me, a couple of guitars, no words?"
It was amazing to Ryan, how Jon always seemed to know the way to fix the world, even when it was broken beyond repair.
Part Three
Band(s): Panic at the Disco
Pairing(s): Jon/Ryan
Word Count: 32,021
Rating/Warnings: NC-17/none that I know of
Author Notes: Thank you to Luc, for alphaing and betaing the fic, particularly when it meant dealing with me being a child. Untappedbeauty, for her thorough, awesome grammar beta. Finally, Rossetti, for making sure the sign language in this was actually informed by reality, and really helping me to rework the story in more interesting ways around that.
There was very little research that went into this, Aphasia doesn't work precisely like this and the type of injuries Ryan occurs are probably unlikely to happen in concert.
Title comes from a Sam Rayburn quote: "No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut."
Summary: I called this the bus accident!fic while I was writing it. Largely because the premise is that Panic gets in a bus accident. I'm clever like that.
Part One
Jon told Spencer about the blip on the "make Ryan functional again" radar, and Spencer told Darcy at some time when Ryan wouldn't have to hear him. On the one hand, Ryan was kind of glad he didn't have to see or hear Darcy's reaction to the fact that Ryan was even stupider than he'd evidently been told. On the other, he didn't want Spencer thinking he couldn't handle hearing it. Ryan was nothing if not able to face up to the negative facts of reality.
In any case, Darcy didn't seem to think it was that big a deal. He said, "Yeah, my friend who does a lot of work with Aphasics told me that might be a problem." He shrugged. "Weird Aphasia or no, I'm not surprised."
That made sense. It didn't really make Ryan feel that much better about being completely illiterate, but it made sense. Darcy dove into teaching them all the major interrogatives, simple greetings, and directions. Ryan wasn't sure how talking this way was ever going to feel natural. He hadn't even been the kind of person who used his hands to illustrate his point before all this. It felt cumbersome, and Ryan wasn't all that positive there would ever be a day where he wouldn't have to think forever and ever to remember which sign he needed.
Brendon, unsurprisingly, was enthusiastic about the whole project. He kept asking Darcy to teach them entirely useless words like "bumblebee" or "anti-establishment." And, okay, maybe that last one wasn't so useless, but it was one of those things Ryan could wait to know until he could say, "I need to go to the bathroom again."
Admittedly, when Brendon said, "Oh no, you really can't leave without teaching him a couple of dirty words. He needs it, man," Ryan remembered why he'd been completely in love with Brendon for a year and a half before he grew out of it and into the friendship they had.
Darcy hesitated for a second, then he said, "Yeah, he totally does," and went to town, teaching Ryan more swear words than he'd probably known when he could verbally express them. Ryan signed the one thing he knew that Darcy hadn't taught him, which was, "I love you."
Darcy laughed. "Tell it to my mom. She was the one who was in the Navy."
If he ever met her, Ryan totally would. Jon laughed and got up to let Darcy out. Ryan was already going over "who," "what," "when," "where," "why" and "how" by the time he heard the door open and Jon's amiable goodbye. Jon came back and flopped down on the couch, laying his head carefully in Ryan's lap. He looked over at Spencer, his eyes focusing in on the cast. "You get that thing off in two weeks, right?"
"He's not the only one," Brendon said, with a real sense of anticipation. They'd both had to keep the casts on for a full two months, on top of the metal pins that had been put in initially to hold the bones in place.
"You start physical therapy immediately?" Jon asked.
"Couple of days after," Spencer nodded. Then he looked at Ryan. "You too."
Ryan knew. He wasn't looking forward to it. It would be awesome to have his own freedom of movement back, but he had a feeling the process was going to be excruciatingly painful, especially given that he'd weaned himself off the painkillers against the advice of his doctors.
"You're going to talk to them about how long it'll be before you can play again, right?"
Spencer hedged. "Jon. I told you. They didn't sound--"
"You'll talk to them, Spence, right?" Jon said it evenly, as though Spencer had completely ignored his first question, not denied its validity.
"We'll talk to them, Jon," Brendon said softly, sounding a little unsure of himself. Ryan understood. It was usually Jon and Spencer who held things together. But Ryan was pretty sure the time for proscribed roles had flown out the window, along with half their possessions, on a highway somewhere in the middle of America.
Jon nodded approvingly. "Good. Because it's time we got back to playing."
Ryan didn't know what it was time for at all anymore, but Ryan was willing to trust Jon's judgment. At the very least, assuming Spencer could still play, music was the one thing they all had left between them. If Spencer couldn't-- Ryan's mind pulled back in panic from the thought. Jon was right. He was. Spencer could still play. It would just take some time. Everything was going to take time.
*
Jon drove them to the hospital for the first day of physical therapy. Pete had made sure that there would be security crawling over the facility. Pete had controlled what information was released to the media as best he could, but the media was its own creature, as always. Getting to and from Ryan's place had become something of an ordeal as the press outlets figured out where they were holing up. Ryan, in particular, was an issue, given that walking was still a serious feat that had to be performed with the aid of another person, or not at all. For the most part, Ryan used the chair. He didn't want to hurt the others in an attempt to salvage his pride.
When they got to the hospital and were ushered safely inside, it was to the sight of Haley sitting in the waiting room, looking somewhat shaken up. Ryan blinked. He knew she'd called Spencer upon learning about the accident and that they'd been talking again, but Spencer was with him almost all the time. When they would have gotten to the stage where Haley was coming to meet him at first physical therapy appointments was a mystery to Ryan. Then again, she appeared nervous, like Spencer maybe hadn't given her permission to be there. She was clutching a stuffed dog that looked a lot like Boba. Spencer blinked and said, "Hey, um. Hi?"
"Um," she said, squeezing the dog to her chest, "there might be-- I didn't think-- They took my picture."
Spencer's eyes narrowed. "Did they hurt you?"
"No, no, I just. I didn't mean to start rumors. I just wanted to wish you good luck." She held the dog out steadily, a parcel of good intent. He took it with his stronger arm. He still kept the weaker one tucked to him most of the time. Haley canted her head to the side and smiled. "Um. Hi." Ryan had forgotten how pretty her smile was.
She said, "Um, so, I mean, I should probably just--"
Spencer said, "You're not gonna say hi to the guys?"
Haley looked over and it was like she was seeing them for the first time. Ryan understood. Spencer could be blinding like that, as could Jon and Brendon, given the right circumstances. Ryan spent a whole six months having to forcibly pay attention to other things in the room when Jon first saved their asses. He was better about it now, but the feeling had never completely faded. Haley said, "Hi guys," soft and sincere.
Jon said, "Good to see you."
Brendon said, "What, I don't get any puppies?"
Ryan touched his hand to his temple and brought it down and outward, the way Darcy had taught him. Haley cupped her hands so that her thumbs were touching, her knuckles facing Ryan. Then she brought them around in a circle so that her palms were upward. She brought her pointer finger and her middle finger to her lips and then brought them downward in and arc before pointing to Ryan. She said, "Um, I think that's right. I'm learning from a book, so I think I get things wrong sometimes. 'How are you,' right?"
Ryan grinned. He formed the letter "I" with his pinky, which he could evidently remember in its word form or free of the other letters, but not in concert with them. He curled his hand into a fist and brought it outward from touching his lips and then brought his open hand parallel to his chest. He was still a little weirded out by the lack of tense in sign language, but he was learning to work with it, beginning to find a rhythm that wasn't interrupted by the new syntax.
"He says he's fine," Spencer interpreted.
"I know," she said, "I got it."
Ryan wasn't fine, not really, he just didn't have a large number of adjectives or moods that he could sign yet. The fact that she had understood him, though, that he hadn't needed any of them to read his pidgin sign and explain him to the rest of the world, made him pretty happy. Not that he minded the guys being the only people on the planet who understood him, but he preferred that to be metaphorical, rather than literal.
Ryan tugged at Spencer's elbow. Spencer looked down and Ryan concentrated to find the sign for "ask" only to realize he didn't know the sign for "stay". He shook his head in frustration, but Spencer relaxed his arm and put his free hand to the back of Ryan's neck. "Um, Hay?"
She looked at him, clearly unsure of what to do next or what his next move would be. He said, "You wanna stay? Maybe have lunch with us after?"
She bounced a little on the heels of her feet before settling. "Yeah, I'd-- That would be awesome."
Ryan felt another hand, this one on his shoulder, and looked over to see Jon giving him a squeeze and looking like Ryan was awesome. Ryan had missed the part where he had been, but he was willing to take Jon's word for it.
*
By the time Jon and Ryan got home that night, it was pretty much all Ryan could do not to throw up--or something else melodramatic and unnecessary--from the pain. He wheeled himself into the kitchen, where they had taken to keeping a couple of glasses on the counter so that Ryan could reach them. He tried to pour himself some water, but the effort of leaning forward and straining upward was just too much, and he made a cut off sound of frustration in his throat. Jon took the glass from him. It was a smooth action, as though he had been watching, waiting; waiting for Ryan to fail. He poured the water and asked, "You want some ice?"
Ryan wanted to throw something. Instead he nodded, and when Jon handed him the glass, he downed four ibuprofen at once. When he had them down, he looked over to see Jon staring at him with an assessing look. Jon asked, "Want a bath?"
Ryan considered the process of getting into the bath with some trepidation, but in the end he nodded. Ryan followed Jon down the hall, pushing the chair more slowly than usual. Jon was good about not helping Ryan with things unless he really needed the help, or unless Jon had asked if he could. He started the water running for Ryan, but then he left him alone, closing the door behind him. He called, "Want me to set out some sweats?"
Ryan struggled for a moment with having Jon do anything more than he was already doing and the fact that he was in pain and exhausted. Jon peeked his head back in the door. Ryan hesitated for a second and then nodded. Jon said, "Hey. Um. Tell me with your hands?"
Jon looked like he felt so bad about asking that Ryan didn't have the heart to sneer at him. Jon was right; he was supposed to be saying as much in sign as he could. He tucked his hand into a fist and raised and lowered it at the wrist. Jon grinned at him and then used both his hands to fan at his neck. Ryan frowned and struck his index finger down his palm--he was getting good at the questions; the guys were always doing shit that made him go, "Huh?"
Jon laughed. "Yeah, I looked up 'cool' on the internet. I'm willing to bet it's different in slang, but it was the best I had."
Ryan imitated the fanning motion and raised an eyebrow. It was early, but he was already figuring out that a significant portion of speaking with his hands was also in his expression, that his face affected his "tone". It was just one more thing to think about, something he never had needed to concentrate on before, and at times even harder than remembering all the things his hands were supposed to do.
Jon must have gotten the implication, though, because he flipped Ryan off. "You try coming up with sign slang, jerk." Then he closed the door again, and left Ryan in peace with the hot water.
Getting himself out of his clothes was a long and agonizing process, but Ryan managed and all but pulled himself into the tub. He hit the button for the jets and sat carefully in between two of them, where the movement of the water would be soothing, but wouldn't hit him directly. Ryan rested his head against the back of the tub and closed his eyes.
He woke to Jon pounding on the door. He tried to say, "I'm here, I'm fine," out of pure instinct and instead opened his mouth to a jumbled bunch of syllables. Jon said, "I'm coming in," and opened the door. He said, "Sorry, sorry, but you've been in here for forty-five minutes and you weren't making any sound and--"
As though Jon telling him how long it had been jogged something in Ryan's sensory perceptions, he noticed how cold the water was and started to shiver. Jon said, "Fuck. Okay, I know usually I let you take care of things yourself, but I'm just going to--" He grabbed one of the towels that they'd taken to keeping right by the tub and opened it up, setting it down so that he could carefully pull Ryan to his feet. Then he wrapped Ryan in the towel, reached in and pulled Ryan out, into his arms. Ryan splashed water onto the floor, onto Jon, but he didn't seem to notice.
Some of the worst of the tension had seeped from the muscles in the soaking, so instead of the pain being sharp, it had receded to an ever-present throb. Jon was extremely careful not to jostle him any more than he had to. He laid Ryan on the bed and got him into his pajamas as quickly as he could without hurting Ryan any more than necessary. He towel-dried Ryan's hair before tucking him under the covers. As he was soothing over the covers, Ryan noticed how badly his hands were shaking.
Ryan made a "j" with his pinky--like "i" he could figure out what it meant if he thought of it as a word. Then he splayed his thumb, pointer finger and middle finger on each of his hands, tucking the other two in and moved his hands back and forth in counterpoint. They had agreed on the combined symbols for "J" and "walk" being Jon's name. Ryan hadn't quite learned how to infuse their names with intonation through his fingers, but he figured his confused face was enough. Jon put his face to Ryan's chest and breathed, in and out, for long moments. Ryan brought a hesitant hand up to the back of Jon's head, soothed it down to the back of his neck. He wasn't sure what Jon wanted, what he needed. It sucked, when Jon had been doing nothing but those things for Ryan for weeks and weeks now.
Jon turned his face so that he was still lying on Ryan's chest, but his mouth wasn't muffled by it. "Ry. You can't-- I know you can't call for me if there's a problem, and that fucks me up enough, but you can't just-- What if you'd fucking slipped under the water? I-- Fuck. Fuck."
All of Jon was shaking by that point, and Ryan tugged at him, made him crawl into the bed where Ryan could curl into him, let Jon know that he hadn't slipped under the water, he hadn't. If an SUV going the wrong way at eighty miles an hour hadn't killed Ryan, no stupid bathtub was going to. But he took the point. No more scaring the shit out of Jon. Clearly, the SUV had left Jon with marks that just weren't as apparent as everybody else's. Ryan suspected they all had them, but they were just too busy concentrating on other things. Jon had been able to access the damage more quickly. Ryan didn't envy him.
It hurt when Jon squeezed a little too hard, but that was okay. Ryan could take it.
*
Ryan fucking hated speech therapy. Physical therapy was beyond painful, and the sign lessons could be frustrating in how long it was taking Ryan to learn enough words that he could actually say what he wanted to say, but speech therapy was simply humiliating and entirely useless all at once.
Because Ryan's Aphasia didn't affect his ability to put together thoughts, many of the normal aspects of speech therapy--such as putting pictures together to convey thoughts--weren't really useful. Or, they were useful in the sense that they allowed Ryan to "speak" but not in the sense of actually getting him to talk. Instead they did a lot of facial exercises and sound exercises. But Ryan's face worked just fine; he hadn't had a stroke, and the sounds never came out the way they were supposed to.
All in all, Jon had gotten used to the fact that Ryan was generally a complete bitch when he finished speech therapy. Most of the time, Jon just plunked Ryan's guitar into his arms and said, "Get it out," and then left Ryan to his demons. They were beginning to have a code made up of keys and notes, and when Ryan felt like he could be human enough to be in Jon's company, he would play the series of notes that would let Jon know. Ryan wasn't even sure how it had developed, since they'd definitely never discussed it, but it was there. Jon could ask Ryan how he was feeling with a series of strums, and Ryan could give a variety of answers with his responding chord.
They didn't do it in front of the others. Ryan was pretty sure Brendon would catch on fairly quickly, which was nice, but it would mean leaving Spencer out, and no way was that going to happen. Ryan would sit Spencer down and teach him the guitar without aid of words before that happened. Still, when it was just the two of them, it was easier than Ryan having to remember exactly how to position his hands, Jon having to try and think about what he was saying with them.
Ryan would try sometimes, when he could focus enough, to teach himself to play new things. It was a slow process. He could still understand written music to some extent, the same way he could understand pictures, but it took him a lot longer to puzzle it out than it had before. Brendon, the fucker, could play just about anything by ear, and Ryan felt, honestly and truly, that if he was going to have developed this handicap that that ability should have sprung up in its wake. After all, he always heard about blind people hearing better or deaf people being more perceptive to physical cues.
Ryan evidently wasn't the kind of guy who developed super powers just because his brain had become a twisted knot of uselessness. He couldn't say that he was horribly surprised.
He managed, slowly, to teach himself things that he'd never thought to try before--a mariachi song, "The Flight of the Bumblebee," a gospel song that he found stuck in one of the music books. He thought it might have been Brendon's. He wasn't going to ask. Brendon could still be a little bit touchy about the parts of G-d he'd chosen to keep for himself, and Ryan, as a recovering Catholic, respected that.
Jon followed his paper trail, learning the stuff in turn, and before Ryan knew exactly what was happening, between their new forays into music, their code made of strings and sound and Ryan's general desire to bury himself in something that he still could do, they were writing songs. Well, Jon was writing them. Ryan would come at him with ideas, and between the two of them, they would fiddle around until they had something--a solid melody, a haunting harmony, whatever--and then Jon would record the notes. Ryan could see how neatly he kept them. Ryan knew that Jon hadn't done that before, but it was as though now that he was writing for both of them, he just couldn't take the chance that the notes would somehow be obscured or misunderstood.
They needed Spencer to write the drums and Brendon to write the central orchestrations, or at least to brainstorm on them, but they were the beginnings of songs. They didn't show the others. Spencer was still fighting his way to having some ease of movement with his arm. More often than not, he came away from physical therapy with tear tracks down his face. Ryan wasn't even sure Spencer knew they were there. They were at odds with the fierceness in Spencer's eyes. On the days when Haley showed--which was becoming more often than not--she never said anything to him.
Somehow it was more than just that Ryan didn't want to shove the fact that he could still play in Spencer's face, though. Ryan didn't know exactly how to explain it, but the unfinished music felt like part of Jon's and his code, like they were saying something and the sentence hadn't come to a stopping point yet. Until it reached the period, Ryan wasn't really ready to show it to anyone.
It was also just music. Ryan had never done that before--written the music entirely without the words. He had words--oh, he had plenty and plenty of words--just no way of getting them out, no way of putting them on paper for the others to see. Ryan had a feeling that was the period he was waiting for. He wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't be waiting forever.
*
Darcy said, "Look, it's none of my business, but can I make a suggestion?"
Ryan put his index finger to his mouth and then moved it straight outward and down. "Sure."
"Hobo, I've noticed that she's pretty well trained, like, when the others say 'sit' and stuff."
Ryan nodded with his head and his fist. It wasn't that one wouldn't have conveyed the sentiment, but he was trying to make himself talk with his hands as much as possible, get used to the feeling of it, make it muscle memory the same way playing the guitar evidently was for him.
"You should try and train her to respond to sign commands as well. And to come for sounds other than her name, like, a whistle, if you can, or clapping, that sort of thing."
"Can you whistle?" Brendon asked slowly, not so much because the question warranted it, but because Brendon was also trying to speak with his hands, even as he spoke aloud--in this case, he had to stop to look at Darcy for the word for "whistle." Ryan thought that Brendon's compulsion to learn quickly was more out of the desire to impress Darcy than anything else, but whatever. Brendon had always sang his words for him before. He would work quite well as a translator.
"I don't know," Ryan said--fairly fluidly--with his hands. Ryan actually sort of liked the way each motion could flow into the next, pointing to himself, striking his hands flatly over each other, bringing the fingers of his right hand to his temple. Ryan trusted his hands, as ungainly as they were.
Brendon said, "Try," forming the "a" shape with both fists and pushing them in a curving shape forward. Ryan had noticed that Brendon was ten times more emphatic when speaking with his hands, which, honestly, was a little scary. Spencer leaned forward on his knees, carefully crossing his arms atop them and settling his chin there. Bending his arm was getting much easier with the help of the therapy, and Ryan refused to say anything, but privately he thought it was giving them all hope.
Jon said, "Could you whistle before?" and like Brendon it was a slow process, because he had to remember each word with his hands as well. Jon, though, Ryan was pretty sure, was doing that all for him. The thought was a little overwhelming, so he tended to steer clear of it as much as possible.
Ryan wanted to say, "Badly," but ASL didn't have adverbs, so he settled for, "bad," and hoped they would follow the thought. They usually could, but signs were limiting and Ryan hadn't quite gotten to proficiency at using his expressions and body language. He was lucky the guys knew him as well as they did. He was lucky Spencer could all but read his mind.
He put his lips together and tried blowing. It took a couple of attempts, but it always had. Right when he was about to give up, a sound emerged, wispy and thin, but definitely a whistle. Brendon gave his own responding whistle of victory. It, of course, came out perfectly.
"Wow," Darcy said. "Those are some serious whistling skills you've got there, Urie." He used the sign they'd made up for Brendon to represent "Urie," putting his hand into the formation for a letter B to make the swishing sign for music, rather than leaving his thumb out to the side.
For the first time in a while, Spencer spoke up. "He's good with his mouth." Spencer's signing was slightly hampered by the soreness in his arm, but otherwise he managed to somehow make it as quick and sharp as his tone was.
Brendon flipped him off, but he was totally blushing. Ryan turned to Spencer and made the sign for "mean." He'd had to learn that one quickly. Spencer smiled unrepentantly. Darcy, who had figured out that the best way to deal with the four of them was mostly to ignore them, said, "I'd noticed."
Ryan, who was beginning to understand that Darcy often put more inflection in his fingers than in his voice, noticed the way Darcy's hands canted slightly toward Brendon, the way his own cheeks weren't entirely pale. He thought, "huh," but unlike Spencer, he wasn't willing to get involved, not even if just to help out. Brendon could handle things on his own. Or, well, Brendon could handle things as long as Spencer was there to make sure they got handled. Ryan had every faith that Jon was waiting in the wings as well. Brendon didn't need Ryan for that. Brendon needed him for his words, so really, Brendon didn't need him.
Brendon turned entirely to them and very clearly signed, "assholes," the strength of the sign symbolizing his emphasis. Spencer laughed. Jon said, "Hey, I didn't do anything," forgetting to sign entirely. Ryan chose solidarity with Spencer and smiled a little. Brendon pouted at both of them before turning back and saying, "I apologize for my asshole friends," with his hands and his--evidently coveted--mouth.
Darcy looked over his shoulder at the three of them. Ryan imagined they appeared a bit like naughty schoolboys, caught out on the schoolyard after recess had been declared over. Darcy grinned and said, "Don't."
*
The videophone by Ryan's bed woke him up, ringing and lighting up all at once. Ryan looked at the clock with hands that Brendon had gotten him, glowing on his nightstand. Brendon had been the one to figure out that even if Ryan couldn't read digital clocks, he could figure out the time from where the hands on traditional ones. It was definitely after two, creeping on to three. Spencer's picture was flashing on the screen with each ring. Ryan hit the green button. Green meant go.
"Spencer?" Ryan tucked both his hands into the "s" position and twirled them in circles a few inches from each other. Ryan had chosen that symbol for Spencer, a modification on the word for "brotherhood." Spencer had looked at Ryan a long time and then just pressed his forehead to Ryan's and whispered, "Okay," his hand forming the symbol between their bodies.
Spencer was shaking clearly enough that Ryan could see it. He was sweaty and his skin was pale. He said, "I tried," his fingers making the words--well, "I try," but Ryan was almost as good at reading Spencer's mind as Spencer was at reading his. "I-- I talked to Bryar." He tucked his thumb in to create a B and made a motion like he was hitting the bongos. Ryan thought that was as good a choice for Bob Bryar as any. "He said," Spencer paused, clearly thinking about which signs he needed, "it was like riding a bike." Spencer looked at him questioningly. Ryan shrugged. Why the fuck would he know the sign for "bike"? Spencer shook his head and continued. "I just had to get back on."
"Did you?" One thing Ryan had gotten excellent at was keeping his statements and questions to the bare minimum of what they needed to be.
"I--" Spencer stopped, nodded. Ryan just waited. Spencer said, "I don't know. I-- It hurts. But it hurts not to, too. And I think my rhythm is off."
Ryan was glad they'd made Darcy do an entire lesson on musical terms. Ryan said, "That will come back."
"I have to hit with different force, move my body at a different...angle," he finished, his hands dropping to his side at a loss on the last word.
Ryan showed him the word. Not that that was the point; it just gave Ryan some time to think. Finally he asked, "Is it wrong?"
Spencer was slow to shake his head, slow to answer, "No. Just different."
Ryan signed out, "I think," and then stopped, as though moving his fingers in the correct formation would change more than had already been changed. In the end he made himself finish. "I think everything is."
Spencer tilted his head. "You and Jon. You've been writing?"
"Music."
Spencer nodded, didn't ask about how they were going to get lyrics. "Maybe. Maybe we should start over. Whole new record."
It had been less than a year since they'd released their last. It was still on its third single. Ryan signed, "I think we have to."
"Brendon's been writing, too."
Ryan knew. "He always does when--" Ryan had no idea what the sign for "crushing" was. He tried not to let frustration overwhelm him, as that wouldn't help him say what he wanted to say, but sometimes he couldn't help it, it just overrode anything else, clogged his throat and his eyes and even his ears. Which was why it took him a while to hear Spencer saying, "Ryan. Ryan. Ryan Ross."
Ryan blinked a couple of times and made himself breathe. He signed, "Here. Sorry."
Spencer said, "When he has a crush," his hands at his side.
Ryan nodded. Spencer said, "He does when he's worried, too." He signed that. It was conjugated incorrectly, Ryan could see, but whatever, he could hear just fine. He could understand just fine. It was the one part of him that wasn't completely, heinously, unforgivably stupid.
"I know," Ryan said, his fingers wilted, as helpless as the rest of him. Usually Brendon let them hear. Usually Brendon wouldn't stop bugging them until they fucking listened. Ryan wondered if anyone was listening to him. They'd have to figure that out. One more thing to think about. At least it wasn't him. One thing that wasn't him.
"Ryan."
Ryan looked straight at Spencer. Spencer smiled a little. "I can play."
Ryan couldn't help grinning at that. He had known he was scared, but he hadn't realized just how much until he'd heard Spencer say that he could and had his heart pound so hard it was all he could do not to rub his chest. Spencer took a bit, but he grinned back. "Yeah. Yeah. We could do a fucking instrumental album if we wanted, okay? Whatever. Whatever. This is ours to do. To start over again."
It wasn't that easy at all, and new beginnings were only possible with the ending of something that had come before, something that had been all Ryan had ever wanted, really, well, except-- All Ryan had ever wanted. Ryan tried not to ask for too much. He said, "Start over again," keeping his fingers as straight and his actions as clean as he could.
*
Jon usually drove them to physical therapy and stayed, mostly, Ryan had surmised, so that he could know exactly what exercises Ryan was supposed to be doing and get on Ryan's ass about it as much as humanly possible. Ryan was a bit surprised, then, when Jon dropped them off at the door one Tuesday and said, "I'll see you guys in a couple of hours."
Ryan frowned. "Not coming?" He was getting fairly fluent at inflecting tone by way of facial expression, if not in the actual movement of his hands.
Jon took his hands off the wheel to say, "Sorry. I have some errands." His hands said "things to do."
They had their groceries delivered, and ordered pretty much everything they needed online, so Ryan couldn't really imagine what the hell Jon had to do, but he shrugged. Spencer said, "See ya," Brendon waved, and they went on their not-so-merry way. Ryan could actually walk short distances now without wanting to curl up into a ball and die. This sign of progress didn't keep him from glaring at his physical therapist, a lot. Alternatively, Ryan still couldn't so much as say the word "cat" coherently. He tried not to blame his speech therapist. Realistically, he knew it wasn't her fault.
Jon still wasn't there when they were done. Brendon tried his best to cajole Ryan to come get a snack in the cafeteria, but Ryan really didn't like being around a lot of people he didn't know at the moment. He stayed in the waiting area and looked at the pictures in the society magazines. Jon came running in about fifteen minutes late and said, "Sorry, sorry, I suck," flustered enough that he didn't use his hands at all.
Ryan said, "Yes," and then forgave him. He was weak when it came to Jon Walker, terribly, terribly weak.
Spencer and Brendon returned with coffee and bagels, and Ryan forgave them for abandoning him, too. It was possible that one of these days, Ryan was going to have to face the fact that he was easy for his entire band.
They filed into the car, Spencer sitting in the back with Ryan. Purely with his hands, he asked, "Okay if I go to Haley?" He stroked the "H" formation of fingers along the line of his jaw to form her name. It always made Ryan think of it as "haygirl" in his mind. But he knew what it meant, all the same.
Ryan assumed he meant Haley's place. He nodded his head. "Good, then?"
Spencer nodded a little. He signed, "Afraid to push my luck."
Ryan didn't think he was going to. Spencer, whether he ignored the ability at times or no, was good at reading people. He knew just when to stay and when to go. Shit, he knew it for Ryan, and really, once you conquered that human obstacle, there wasn't much left in a guy's way. Haley was easier. Ryan was glad for that; Spencer deserved easy occasionally. Ryan smiled at Spencer. "Invite her, some time."
"Yeah?"
Ryan nodded. It was hard giving Spencer to someone outside of them, even Haley, but if he was going to do it, then she was damn well going to remember how to play nice with them. Ryan wasn't worried. Haley had never had a problem sharing Spencer, understanding the need to share. Whatever else their issues had been, that hadn't been on the list.
"Okay." Spencer said it softly, along with the sign.
Brendon asked, "You fucktards having a secret conversation back there?"
"If we were, would we tell you?" Spencer asked reasonably. "Hey Jon, drop me off at Haley's? Please?" Ryan was amazed at how Spencer would keep signing even when it would have been much faster to just ask, just say, and the recipient of the question or statement couldn't even see his hands. Ryan had to admit, though, it did seem to be becoming more and more habitual for all of them. Ryan thought it was becoming most so for him, but then, he was forced to do it.
"Yeah, Spence, that's fine." Jon took a hand off the wheel to muss Brendon's hair. Brendon muttered something that Ryan didn't catch. Jon said, "You wanna come back with us?"
Brendon thought for a moment, but then shook his head. "Nah, I'm gonna try and do some writing."
Brendon had been doing a lot of writing on his own, which wasn't unusual, exactly, but normally--or, well, before the accident--he always liked sharing his stuff, getting feedback, even when Ryan was bitchy about it. Ryan watched Spencer's face cloud over a little and could tell he was thinking the same thing. Jon said, "Sure?"
Brendon said, "Yeah. It seems to go easiest when I'm in enough pain to saw my leg off and call it even."
"Nice visual," Jon told him.
"Ryan's not the only one of us who can paint a picture with words."
There was no sign for "could"--tense didn't work the same way in ASL as it did in spoken language, but evidently Ryan was getting really good at saying what he needed to with his face, because Spencer smacked his arm. Ryan just shrugged. Spencer sighed. Brendon asked, "Something I said?"
"No," Spencer said, and kept on glaring at Ryan. Ryan pretended to ignore him. They both knew better.
*
After Jon dropped Spencer and Brendon off, Ryan moved into the front seat with him. He fiddled with the radio controls until he found something he knew Jon would like, then sat back and closed his eyes. He wouldn't fall asleep. Ryan's car had excellent shocks, but he was just too sore after physical therapy, even now that he was healing up, to fall asleep while the surface he was sitting on moved beneath him. Jon said, "You take some Tylenol, Ry?"
Ryan nodded. He had taken some before and after therapy. He signed, "Good day?" without opening his eyes.
"It was?" Jon asked.
Ryan shook his head. He opened his eyes and turned his gaze on Jon, pointing toward him. Jon said, "Oh, was my day good?"
Ryan confirmed and let his eyes droop again. Jon said, "Dunno. It was okay. I got the shit I needed to get done done. I missed being around you guys."
"Really?" Ryan's hands flew before he even knew what they were going to ask. His mouth had done that a few times, back when he could speak, but he hadn't known that he knew the signs inimically enough to be Freudian in that way. Evidently so. It would have been heartening if it hadn't been completely fucking mortifying. "I meant--" and of course now that he needed signs to fix the problem, he couldn't seem to remember any. He went slowly. "You spend a lot of time with us. Me."
Jon lived with Ryan, to be precise. And not on a bus, where there was Spencer and Brendon to temper things with their own types of insanity. Just Ryan with his damage, brain and otherwise. Ryan looked out the window, instinctively curling up on himself until he remembered how much doing that hurt and bit back a moan. Jon pulled the car over into a parking lot and said, "Whoa, hey."
Ryan stayed where he was. Jon said, "Ryan, play fair. Look at me."
Ryan turned around. Jon signed, "What does that mean?" He didn't even say it, just let his hands do all the talking. Ryan wondered if maybe Jon practiced when Ryan wasn't looking, if he spent even more time devoted to Ryan's care and well-being than Ryan had already noticed. That had to stop, it had to. He would get tired of it, any rational human being would. Even Spencer got tired sometimes he was just good about letting Ryan know gently, about taking time off without leaving Ryan for too long.
Ryan didn't even know he was hyperventilating until Jon said, "Okay, okay," and gently pushed Ryan's head down between his legs. Ryan cried involuntarily from the pain of it, but that got him to breathe a little more regularly, so he considered it something of a win. It was indicative, he was pretty sure, of how fucked up his life was that he could think that. When he had calmed down enough to satisfy Jon, Jon helped Ryan back up into a sitting position and said, "Sorry," taking his hands back to talk. "I didn't know what else to do." His fingers stumbled and skittered over the words in the last sentence, but Ryan got it.
Ryan said, "Thanks."
Jon returned to rubbing Ryan's back, his neck, and now that he could actually feel that, rather than the panic, the pain, it uncoiled something in Ryan. He leaned into the touch. Jon didn't take his hands away to say, "I like spending time with you, Ry."
"Time," Ryan signed and nodded. "But not all the time."
"We've toured together--"
Ryan shook his head. "Days off. Breaks. Different hotel rooms. Time."
Jon frowned. "You know I could go out for a day if I wanted to? Or shit, visit home for a bit. I'm not your prisoner, not last I checked."
The problem with that logic, Ryan knew, what that Jon Walker was far too conscientious for his own good. "You would worry."
"No, I'd drop you off at Spence's and expect him and his family to help you out until I got back. Which they would, and you would be fine, but it would suck because wherever the fuck I was, I'd want to be here, being your helper monkey."
"Monkey," Ryan said, mostly because he liked the sign--mimicking a monkey scratching itself--but also to process everything Jon had just told him.
"Which makes you the monkey king," Jon clarified.
"Obviously." Sometimes Ryan really did throw things out more out of habit than intention. He wondered how his fingers knew what to do, but they just did, and Ryan wondered if that was what it had felt like as a child, learning to speak, if all of a sudden there were just more and more words at his disposal until he had so many that he hadn't known what to do with them except give them to other people, reams and reams of them in song form.
"Ryan."
Ryan looked over Jon. Jon said, "Lemme take you the rest of the way home and show you what I did with my 'day off,' okay? Then you can decide whether to worry or not. Deal?"
Jon held out his hand, and even though Ryan knew he would probably worry regardless, he did Jon the kindness of shaking on it.
*
After Jon's declaration that Ryan would see what he had done while Ryan was Suffering the Torments of Hell--or, as Spencer called it, physical therapy--Ryan was almost a little disappointed to return home and not see anything particularly out of place. Jon grabbed his hand and led him through to the room that Ryan had begun thinking of as Jon's, rather than the guest room. Jon's computer was sitting on his bed, surrounded by about a million pamphlets with pictures and what Ryan knew were words, even if he couldn't read them. Jon pulled Ryan down on the bed beside him and booted up the computer. When it was fully on, he clicked on a couple of icons, opening what Ryan knew was Word, and something else.
Jon said, "Okay, sign something, anything."
Ryan thought for a second and said, "I'm worried about Brendon."
"I'm worried about Brendon," Jon said aloud and pointed to the screen. Ryan could see shapes filling the previously blank Word doc.
He blinked. "Voice--" He didn't know the words for "recognition" or "software."
"Voice recognition software, yeah," Jon said, more shapes appearing as he spoke. "And," Jon clicked another icon at the bottom of the screen. A different program popped up, one Ryan didn't recognize, and Jon clicked on words, one to another to another until a video of a man signing a word came up. "Okay," Jon said, "that's recognition." He signed it by himself four or five times, as did Ryan, trying to cement it in his memory. Jon said, "Gimme a second." A few more clicks, and they had "software" down, too.
Feeling the way he didn't know all the right words, the way his "speech" was a slow process of stop-and-start, Ryan struggled to convey, "This is awesome, but I can't speak. That software--"
Jon cut him off with two words, both signed. "I can." Then after a second, when Ryan still hadn't caught on, "I can speak. You just have to tell me what to say. You show me, with your hands, and I say it and then it's recorded. And we have lyrics."
Ryan froze. Jon said, "They're still inside your head, Ryan. We just had to find a way to get them out."
And Ryan, Ryan of all people knew that. But Ryan also knew his writing process. He knew that he hid the words away until the fifth or sixth or even seventh draft, when they were starting to have a sort of polish, when they weren't quite so jagged. He knew that he read them over and over and over to himself, figuring out where the worst offenders were, refitting and reworking and reimagining until he had something reasonable to bring to them.
In the silence, Jon withdrew a little, bodily. He said, "Or, I mean. I could put the software on Spencer's computer. He could--"
And to a certain extent, that would have been easier, to let Spencer hear this part of him, let Spencer read it back to him. Spencer already knew. They'd never talked about it, not really, but Ryan wasn't a fool. Spencer knew all of Ryan's hidden parts the same way--probably better--that Ryan knew all of Spencer's. It was the rule of being them. But Spencer hadn't gone out and gotten the software, hadn't stayed in Ryan's home when he could have gone, and Spencer wasn't sitting on Ryan's extra bed, looking like if Ryan nodded his head that would shatter him into a million pieces. Jon had never done one thing to deserve that from Ryan, not one, and Ryan could be horrendously, viciously selfish, but he tried his best to avoid cruelty. He shook his head. He said, "No, you."
If the snap of the no wasn't quite as decisive as Ryan usually made it, Jon didn't seem to notice. He said, "No, I didn't think--"
Ryan put a hand to Jon's mouth, and said with the free one, "You."
Jon was still for a second before nodding. Once he had received Jon's submission to his choice, Ryan released his hand. Just the touch of Jon's lips to his palm had him shifting so that Jon wouldn't notice that Ryan had become a desperate sexual freak sometime in the past months. Instead Ryan drew attention to his hands, saying, "It really is awesome. I never would have thought of it."
Jon laughed a little, but it wasn't exactly amused laughter. "Yeah, well, for all you depend on Spencer, you've got this thing about doing everything on your own."
Ryan started to apologize, and then stopped. Being independent had kept him sane for considerable periods of his life. Jon smiled and curled his hands over Ryan's, which had stopped mid-sign. "No, no apologizing. I'm just saying you don't. You can use us for things. Use me."
Ryan closed his eyes against the images that brought to mind, but the dark only encouraged them, so he opened his eyes up again, focused on Jon. Jon said, "What say we play for a bit? Just freestyle? You, me, a couple of guitars, no words?"
It was amazing to Ryan, how Jon always seemed to know the way to fix the world, even when it was broken beyond repair.
Part Three