Fic: The Florist
Title: The Florist (3/3)
Rating: PG
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
For: ohemgeitsemuhle
Ryan, he’s in a black button-up shirt and pinstriped trousers. He’s standing in the doorway to the apartment and he’s awkward and tall and uncomfortable in his skin, in his clothes, and just, maybe he’s out of his depth.
“Hi,” Brendon says, “hi.” And he’s breathing in too quickly, his eyelids quiver and that space between his shoulder blades is releasing sweat by the pounds.
You could sell that shit, run cars on it.
Ryan waves a little, and it’s still awkward, and Brendon doesn’t want him to feel like he shouldn’t be here.
“So,” Brendon says, and he pulls Ryan through the entrance, slams the door behind him. “So, my sister totally made us casserole and if it sucks, I’ve got money for pizza.”
Ryan doesn’t hear, isn’t even looking at Brendon, he’s scouring the walls, fingering the corners of the picture frames.
“My sister, Mia, she has one of her pregnancy classes tonight, and usually, y’know, I go with her, coz the baby’s dad is like, the biggest dick ever, but I’m staying here with you tonight, well, coz I asked you and stuff.”
There’s a smile that tugs at the corner of Ryan’s lips, but he gestures to his ears again, I can’t hear you, and Brendon, he can understand that much.
“Right,” he says, and he grasps Ryan’s fingers in his own, tugs him into the kitchen. “Uh, casserole. Hope you’re not like, vegetarian, coz that would kinda suck.”
*
Dinner’s over too quickly, and it’s just, all it is is Brendon talkingtalkingtalking and Ryan, well, he’s not listening, but he pretends to, and Brendon appreciates the sentiment.
They sorta migrate into the living room, and Brendon, he went to the video store that morning, got out as many films with subtitles as he could. Most of them are foreign.
He forgets that most DVD’s have it for the hearing impaired now anyway.
But Ryan, maybe he appreciates the sentiment too. He pulls out that Jackie Chan flick, that New Police Story.
The movie, it builds up and builds up, and maybe Brendon is too used to watching movies with pregnant women, coz Mia has to piss every eight and a half minutes, so he doesn’t notice that Ryan’s gone until he gets back.
Gets back when they’re all on top of the building, when the abusive dad of the attractive kid is ready to get all agro. When the kid, that good looking Asian criminal, he basically commits suicide. Kinda.
Ryan though, he taps him on the shoulder, and he’s holding Brendon’s acoustic guitar, the one his parents bought him for his thirteenth birthday.
Lost in the backdrop, Jackie Chan is racing down the outside wall of a vertical building.
“Uh,” Brendon says, “yeah, I used to play. Don’t have time much anymore, y’know with work and stuff.” With all my free time spent up on you, only, he doesn’t say that.
Jackie Chan, he’s clutching the rope in adamantly strong fingers to save the other attractive guy, the young one in the jacket.
Ryan’s nodding, and his hair bounces as he does it. He’s smiling, just that tiny bit, and well, what the hell?
Brendon grasps the guitar in his hands, tunes it a little and, well, he tries to remember Good Riddance.
Ah.
Jackie Chan and the young, good looking guy, they’ve fallen onto the air mattress set up by the firemen. The villagers rejoice.
So, without further adieu, without announcement or applause, Brendon starts to strum out the chords, and Ryan, Ryan doesn’t take his eyes off of Brendon’s fingers.
He’s playing, and, well, he can’t take his eyes off Ryan, Ryan and his huge eyes and his parted lips and the way that even now, even now a million miles away from the florist, he still smells like marigolds and tiger lilies.
Ryan takes Brendon’s fingers away from the guitar string, tries to interlace them with his own, but just ends up playing with them, touching the roughened pads.
“I wish,” Ryan starts, and he’s slow, he over-pronounces syllables and letters. “I wish that I…” He points to himself with his other hand, but, he doesn’t look at Brendon, he can’t make eye contact. “…could hear you.”
To be fair, he takes seconds on each word; he’s thinking it out, and he’s trying as hard as he can to make the same mouth shapes that they do on television. To be fair, he mispronounces the word ‘could’. But, but this is Ryan, and this is the little deaf boy who sits behind the counter of the florist that Brendon has spent more money in this year than HMV, and that’s just plain fucked up.
“I wish you could hear me too,” Brendon says, but Ryan doesn’t hear it, doesn’t see it, he’s not making eye contact, he’s staring too hard at the floor.
“I think I could be in love with you,” Brendon says, and his voice shakes and quivers and maybe that would be embarrassing if Ryan had heard a word he’d said.
*
“So,” Brendon says, and it’s Friday morning. Friday means one day until the weekend, three days till his next paycheck. “So,” he says, and he’s decked out in his work gear, he has to be back at the smoothie hut in half an hour. “So I’m being ironic.”
He’s not really sure what else to say, so he opts to go with, “I stole them out of my neighbour’s yard.” And then he hands them over, hands over a bunch of daisies and buttercups and dandelion leaves, and, well, everyone can still see the roots on one of them where Brendon pulled too hard.
Ryan, he doesn’t hear, but he gets it, and he laughs.
*
“You know, when I get enough money to leave the apartment, I am totally going to buy a mansion for us to live in. And then,” Brendon says, and he’s pushing Ryan on the swing, Ryan’s too quiet, “and then, we can get married. I mean, I know I’ve only known you for like, two months, but I think we could last forever.”
Brendon, he breathes in too quickly, but the exhale, he draws it out, lets the air whistle through his teeth. “I want this to last forever.”
Ryan twists in the seat, and for a second, an instant, Brendon worries that he heard it.
“Reservation?” Ryan says, and his fingers twitch a little, his eyes widen, and he’s not smiling. Not right now.
“Right,” Brendon says, “don’t want to miss it, Pizza Hut is a sort-after establishment.”
“Brendon,” Ryan starts, and his forehead is crinkled, and his eyebrows are lopsided. Brendon, he notices these things too much. “Brendon,” Ryan says again, and he reaches out a hand to tug at the other boy’s, to hold on to it too tight.
“I can’t hear you,” he says, and the words, they slur together a bit, it’s what happens when he’s not careful enough to over-pronounce them.
“I know,” Brendon laughs. “I mean, well, I know.”
Ryan, he’s trying to lip-read, Brendon can always tell because Ryan’s eyes strain, he tries to mouth the letters in response, and he can never quite figure any of it out. He’s as good at deciphering mouths as Brendon is at Morse code.
Ryan gives up, and it’s obvious from the way he slouches, the way his shoulders hunch and his body resigns.
“I can’t hear you,” Ryan says, “I am scared that you take advantage of that.”
Brendon, he can’t think of anything to say, but Ryan is looking at him with expectant eyes and maybe, maybe he can’t help but kiss him.
Presses his lips against Ryan’s too hard and too tight and too forward. When Ryan doesn’t kiss back, Brendon figures it was maybe a bad idea.
“No,” Ryan says, and he shakes his head, fingers the chain of the swing.
“Yeah, the reservation,” Brendon says, after too many seconds go by without another move. “Pizza Hut waits for no one, y’know.”
*
Just for the record, two nights later Mia gives birth.
She cries and she screams, and so does Brendon, but in the end she has a little girl.
She calls her Marigold Lily Urie, and Brendon’s not sure if she’s taking the piss.
*
The florist is dark tomorrow evening, and maybe it’s closed to anyone who isn’t Brendon.
“Ryan can sign right?” he asks, and he’s trying out casual indifference today, toying with the stems of a dozen daffodils.
“Uh,” Spencer says, quirks a brow. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t he be able to sign?”
“Well, I figure that some deaf people can’t sign…”
“Brendon,” Spencer starts, and he’s trimming the leaves of a rather over-zealous looking rose bush. “How many deaf people do you know that can’t sign?”
And well, to be fair Ryan’s the first deaf person he’s met ever. “How many deaf people do you know in general?”
“Three,” Spencer says, and his smile is a mouthful of smug looking teeth. He glances over at Brendon. “They can all sign.”
“Smartarse.”
“Yeah,” Spencer replies, and even though he’s still grinning, even though he’s still pretty goddamn pleased with having the upper hand, his eyes, they’re worried. “Why?”
“Oh, uh, well, Ryan, he…” Brendon starts, and he scratches at the tuft of hair at the back of his neck, runs a handful of nails over the back of his scalp. He takes a deep breath, and his left foot starts to tap on the floor, “…he’s deaf, Spencer.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he says, rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
“Maybe I’m in this for the long run.”
Spencer doesn’t say anything, just keeps trimming at newborn leaves and baby branches.
“Well, y’know, I’d like to be. I dunno, it’s probably not realistic, but, it’s just-“
“He talks about you all the time,” Spencer says. “He can’t pronounce your name.”
“Right,” Brendon says, and he can feel his brain scrape across the edges of his skull, it’s bloated and maybe a little elated, maybe it’s all a little too real, that Ryan can’t say Brendon.
“But he talks about you.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s never talked about anyone like that.”
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and he’s starting to wonder where this is going, what the fuck’s gonna happen next.
“Susie Miller is a translator for the hearing-impaired. She gives lessons to a select few.”
Brendon doesn’t speak, nods a little, and his fingers, they brush the silk-soft petals of the daffodils in front of him.
“I’ll make a call,” Spencer finishes, and maybe, maybe a smile crawls its way across his face.
Brendon can’t tell, not with the way his heart pounds in his ears.
*
Brendon has discovered that he has an overactive sweat gland.
Well, maybe hasn’t discovered per se, he’s always assumed, what with the way he kinda sheds it by the bucket, but this is the third time that he’s ever honestly felt it.
Second time being when Ryan came over for their first date.
First time being when he was fourteen and lost his virginity to Roxanne Leper.
He’s not even kidding about the surname, y’know, just for the record.
They’re at some fancy French restaurant tonight, where the waiter gives them dirty looks over his notepad. A fancy restaurant that just makes them both uncomfortable.
They should’ve stuck with Pizza Hut.
Or maybe Subway.
“Do you want a drink or something?” Brendon asks, but that’s stupid, because Ryan has a wine-glass full of water in front of him already.
Ryan shrugs all the same, is leaning, melting into the table, into the menu that lays strewn.
“Ryan,” Brendon starts, because he only came to this place for one reason, one fucking thing tonight. “Ryan…”
He puts a hand on the other boy’s shoulder.
“Yeah?” Ryan asks, and he looks up too quickly, with those pools of swimming chocolate.
This is probably the climax, Brendon thinks, this is probably what everything else has been leading up to, this is probably the part with the drum roll and the fireworks and the never-ending fiery kiss.
Brendon’s fingers shake as he does it, coz really, he doesn’t want to fuck this up. “Ryan,” he says, “Ryan.”
Ryan, he’s staring with big, dark eyes, and Brendon can feel his heart in his throat again, can feel it twist itself around his trachea.
Brendon, he does it before he can think twice. He signs it out, with quick and nimble fingers. I Love You, coz yeah, each word deserves a goddamn capital.
And Ryan, suddenly he looks so serious, so scared. His fingers shake, and he grasps at the stem of the wine glass in front of him, sips and wavers, and a sound escapes from the depths of his voice box.
“Brendon,” he whispers, and he really can’t pronounce it, struggles over the syllables, the shape of the word.
He leans forward, pushes his chest across the surface of the table and, and suddenly they’re kissing.
And it’s nothing really; it’s chaste and it’s innocent, and neither of them are prepared to risk it, to part their lips and suddenly give this thing a whole new depth.
“I wouldn’t be here,” Ryan whispers, and he’s leant back again, not too far though, still a hair’s breadth away, each letter too long again, “if I didn’t love you too.”
“Good,” Brendon says, and his voice is deeper than he has ever remembered, and without further adieu, without cause or effect, he kisses him again.
Ryan, he still smells like marigolds and tiger lilies.
Rating: PG
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
For: ohemgeitsemuhle
Ryan, he’s in a black button-up shirt and pinstriped trousers. He’s standing in the doorway to the apartment and he’s awkward and tall and uncomfortable in his skin, in his clothes, and just, maybe he’s out of his depth.
“Hi,” Brendon says, “hi.” And he’s breathing in too quickly, his eyelids quiver and that space between his shoulder blades is releasing sweat by the pounds.
You could sell that shit, run cars on it.
Ryan waves a little, and it’s still awkward, and Brendon doesn’t want him to feel like he shouldn’t be here.
“So,” Brendon says, and he pulls Ryan through the entrance, slams the door behind him. “So, my sister totally made us casserole and if it sucks, I’ve got money for pizza.”
Ryan doesn’t hear, isn’t even looking at Brendon, he’s scouring the walls, fingering the corners of the picture frames.
“My sister, Mia, she has one of her pregnancy classes tonight, and usually, y’know, I go with her, coz the baby’s dad is like, the biggest dick ever, but I’m staying here with you tonight, well, coz I asked you and stuff.”
There’s a smile that tugs at the corner of Ryan’s lips, but he gestures to his ears again, I can’t hear you, and Brendon, he can understand that much.
“Right,” he says, and he grasps Ryan’s fingers in his own, tugs him into the kitchen. “Uh, casserole. Hope you’re not like, vegetarian, coz that would kinda suck.”
*
Dinner’s over too quickly, and it’s just, all it is is Brendon talkingtalkingtalking and Ryan, well, he’s not listening, but he pretends to, and Brendon appreciates the sentiment.
They sorta migrate into the living room, and Brendon, he went to the video store that morning, got out as many films with subtitles as he could. Most of them are foreign.
He forgets that most DVD’s have it for the hearing impaired now anyway.
But Ryan, maybe he appreciates the sentiment too. He pulls out that Jackie Chan flick, that New Police Story.
The movie, it builds up and builds up, and maybe Brendon is too used to watching movies with pregnant women, coz Mia has to piss every eight and a half minutes, so he doesn’t notice that Ryan’s gone until he gets back.
Gets back when they’re all on top of the building, when the abusive dad of the attractive kid is ready to get all agro. When the kid, that good looking Asian criminal, he basically commits suicide. Kinda.
Ryan though, he taps him on the shoulder, and he’s holding Brendon’s acoustic guitar, the one his parents bought him for his thirteenth birthday.
Lost in the backdrop, Jackie Chan is racing down the outside wall of a vertical building.
“Uh,” Brendon says, “yeah, I used to play. Don’t have time much anymore, y’know with work and stuff.” With all my free time spent up on you, only, he doesn’t say that.
Jackie Chan, he’s clutching the rope in adamantly strong fingers to save the other attractive guy, the young one in the jacket.
Ryan’s nodding, and his hair bounces as he does it. He’s smiling, just that tiny bit, and well, what the hell?
Brendon grasps the guitar in his hands, tunes it a little and, well, he tries to remember Good Riddance.
Ah.
Jackie Chan and the young, good looking guy, they’ve fallen onto the air mattress set up by the firemen. The villagers rejoice.
So, without further adieu, without announcement or applause, Brendon starts to strum out the chords, and Ryan, Ryan doesn’t take his eyes off of Brendon’s fingers.
He’s playing, and, well, he can’t take his eyes off Ryan, Ryan and his huge eyes and his parted lips and the way that even now, even now a million miles away from the florist, he still smells like marigolds and tiger lilies.
Ryan takes Brendon’s fingers away from the guitar string, tries to interlace them with his own, but just ends up playing with them, touching the roughened pads.
“I wish,” Ryan starts, and he’s slow, he over-pronounces syllables and letters. “I wish that I…” He points to himself with his other hand, but, he doesn’t look at Brendon, he can’t make eye contact. “…could hear you.”
To be fair, he takes seconds on each word; he’s thinking it out, and he’s trying as hard as he can to make the same mouth shapes that they do on television. To be fair, he mispronounces the word ‘could’. But, but this is Ryan, and this is the little deaf boy who sits behind the counter of the florist that Brendon has spent more money in this year than HMV, and that’s just plain fucked up.
“I wish you could hear me too,” Brendon says, but Ryan doesn’t hear it, doesn’t see it, he’s not making eye contact, he’s staring too hard at the floor.
“I think I could be in love with you,” Brendon says, and his voice shakes and quivers and maybe that would be embarrassing if Ryan had heard a word he’d said.
*
“So,” Brendon says, and it’s Friday morning. Friday means one day until the weekend, three days till his next paycheck. “So,” he says, and he’s decked out in his work gear, he has to be back at the smoothie hut in half an hour. “So I’m being ironic.”
He’s not really sure what else to say, so he opts to go with, “I stole them out of my neighbour’s yard.” And then he hands them over, hands over a bunch of daisies and buttercups and dandelion leaves, and, well, everyone can still see the roots on one of them where Brendon pulled too hard.
Ryan, he doesn’t hear, but he gets it, and he laughs.
*
“You know, when I get enough money to leave the apartment, I am totally going to buy a mansion for us to live in. And then,” Brendon says, and he’s pushing Ryan on the swing, Ryan’s too quiet, “and then, we can get married. I mean, I know I’ve only known you for like, two months, but I think we could last forever.”
Brendon, he breathes in too quickly, but the exhale, he draws it out, lets the air whistle through his teeth. “I want this to last forever.”
Ryan twists in the seat, and for a second, an instant, Brendon worries that he heard it.
“Reservation?” Ryan says, and his fingers twitch a little, his eyes widen, and he’s not smiling. Not right now.
“Right,” Brendon says, “don’t want to miss it, Pizza Hut is a sort-after establishment.”
“Brendon,” Ryan starts, and his forehead is crinkled, and his eyebrows are lopsided. Brendon, he notices these things too much. “Brendon,” Ryan says again, and he reaches out a hand to tug at the other boy’s, to hold on to it too tight.
“I can’t hear you,” he says, and the words, they slur together a bit, it’s what happens when he’s not careful enough to over-pronounce them.
“I know,” Brendon laughs. “I mean, well, I know.”
Ryan, he’s trying to lip-read, Brendon can always tell because Ryan’s eyes strain, he tries to mouth the letters in response, and he can never quite figure any of it out. He’s as good at deciphering mouths as Brendon is at Morse code.
Ryan gives up, and it’s obvious from the way he slouches, the way his shoulders hunch and his body resigns.
“I can’t hear you,” Ryan says, “I am scared that you take advantage of that.”
Brendon, he can’t think of anything to say, but Ryan is looking at him with expectant eyes and maybe, maybe he can’t help but kiss him.
Presses his lips against Ryan’s too hard and too tight and too forward. When Ryan doesn’t kiss back, Brendon figures it was maybe a bad idea.
“No,” Ryan says, and he shakes his head, fingers the chain of the swing.
“Yeah, the reservation,” Brendon says, after too many seconds go by without another move. “Pizza Hut waits for no one, y’know.”
*
Just for the record, two nights later Mia gives birth.
She cries and she screams, and so does Brendon, but in the end she has a little girl.
She calls her Marigold Lily Urie, and Brendon’s not sure if she’s taking the piss.
*
The florist is dark tomorrow evening, and maybe it’s closed to anyone who isn’t Brendon.
“Ryan can sign right?” he asks, and he’s trying out casual indifference today, toying with the stems of a dozen daffodils.
“Uh,” Spencer says, quirks a brow. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t he be able to sign?”
“Well, I figure that some deaf people can’t sign…”
“Brendon,” Spencer starts, and he’s trimming the leaves of a rather over-zealous looking rose bush. “How many deaf people do you know that can’t sign?”
And well, to be fair Ryan’s the first deaf person he’s met ever. “How many deaf people do you know in general?”
“Three,” Spencer says, and his smile is a mouthful of smug looking teeth. He glances over at Brendon. “They can all sign.”
“Smartarse.”
“Yeah,” Spencer replies, and even though he’s still grinning, even though he’s still pretty goddamn pleased with having the upper hand, his eyes, they’re worried. “Why?”
“Oh, uh, well, Ryan, he…” Brendon starts, and he scratches at the tuft of hair at the back of his neck, runs a handful of nails over the back of his scalp. He takes a deep breath, and his left foot starts to tap on the floor, “…he’s deaf, Spencer.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he says, rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
“Maybe I’m in this for the long run.”
Spencer doesn’t say anything, just keeps trimming at newborn leaves and baby branches.
“Well, y’know, I’d like to be. I dunno, it’s probably not realistic, but, it’s just-“
“He talks about you all the time,” Spencer says. “He can’t pronounce your name.”
“Right,” Brendon says, and he can feel his brain scrape across the edges of his skull, it’s bloated and maybe a little elated, maybe it’s all a little too real, that Ryan can’t say Brendon.
“But he talks about you.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s never talked about anyone like that.”
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and he’s starting to wonder where this is going, what the fuck’s gonna happen next.
“Susie Miller is a translator for the hearing-impaired. She gives lessons to a select few.”
Brendon doesn’t speak, nods a little, and his fingers, they brush the silk-soft petals of the daffodils in front of him.
“I’ll make a call,” Spencer finishes, and maybe, maybe a smile crawls its way across his face.
Brendon can’t tell, not with the way his heart pounds in his ears.
*
Brendon has discovered that he has an overactive sweat gland.
Well, maybe hasn’t discovered per se, he’s always assumed, what with the way he kinda sheds it by the bucket, but this is the third time that he’s ever honestly felt it.
Second time being when Ryan came over for their first date.
First time being when he was fourteen and lost his virginity to Roxanne Leper.
He’s not even kidding about the surname, y’know, just for the record.
They’re at some fancy French restaurant tonight, where the waiter gives them dirty looks over his notepad. A fancy restaurant that just makes them both uncomfortable.
They should’ve stuck with Pizza Hut.
Or maybe Subway.
“Do you want a drink or something?” Brendon asks, but that’s stupid, because Ryan has a wine-glass full of water in front of him already.
Ryan shrugs all the same, is leaning, melting into the table, into the menu that lays strewn.
“Ryan,” Brendon starts, because he only came to this place for one reason, one fucking thing tonight. “Ryan…”
He puts a hand on the other boy’s shoulder.
“Yeah?” Ryan asks, and he looks up too quickly, with those pools of swimming chocolate.
This is probably the climax, Brendon thinks, this is probably what everything else has been leading up to, this is probably the part with the drum roll and the fireworks and the never-ending fiery kiss.
Brendon’s fingers shake as he does it, coz really, he doesn’t want to fuck this up. “Ryan,” he says, “Ryan.”
Ryan, he’s staring with big, dark eyes, and Brendon can feel his heart in his throat again, can feel it twist itself around his trachea.
Brendon, he does it before he can think twice. He signs it out, with quick and nimble fingers. I Love You, coz yeah, each word deserves a goddamn capital.
And Ryan, suddenly he looks so serious, so scared. His fingers shake, and he grasps at the stem of the wine glass in front of him, sips and wavers, and a sound escapes from the depths of his voice box.
“Brendon,” he whispers, and he really can’t pronounce it, struggles over the syllables, the shape of the word.
He leans forward, pushes his chest across the surface of the table and, and suddenly they’re kissing.
And it’s nothing really; it’s chaste and it’s innocent, and neither of them are prepared to risk it, to part their lips and suddenly give this thing a whole new depth.
“I wouldn’t be here,” Ryan whispers, and he’s leant back again, not too far though, still a hair’s breadth away, each letter too long again, “if I didn’t love you too.”
“Good,” Brendon says, and his voice is deeper than he has ever remembered, and without further adieu, without cause or effect, he kisses him again.
Ryan, he still smells like marigolds and tiger lilies.