When We Forget Why We Left Here (Standalone)
Title: When We Forget Why We Left Here
Author: ivesia19
Rating: PG
Pairing: vague Brendon/Ryan
POV: 3rd limited (Ryan)
Summary: He doesn’t know what it means, Brendon’s name on the list.
Disclaimer: Fake. False. Fabrication. Fallacy. Other “f” words.
Beta: coffeshop-kites
Author Notes: This is to be blamed entirely on redorchids. Entirely (The title is from “If It’s the Beaches” by the Avett Brothers) ~2,000 words
---
Pack the old love letters up
We will read them when we forget why we left here
---
Ryan first looks at the list on the drive to Columbia.
They’ve been on tour for almost a month - a month of small venues and long drives through summer heat - but it’s the first day that he shuffles through the list of names with addresses that signed up for their ‘one-of-a-kind personalized’ postcards.
Ryan sort of regrets his idea now. When he had first thought it up, the idea of writing postcards was almost romantic, but now, Ryan looks down at the list of hundreds of strangers’ names, and he doesn’t know what to say to any of them.
Honesty through words is a lot easier when it isn’t one-on-one. It’s a lot easier when it’s blasting through speakers, almost hidden by misleading melodies.
He doesn’t know what to write to these people beyond a clichéd line or promise.
He needs to say something, though. It’s been a month.
The list in front of him, a list that is a little crinkled and with small stains from god knows what, is alphabetical by last name in neat, black font. It looks official. It looks intimidating.
It would make sense to start at the top of the list and work his way down, but Ryan’s never been the logical type. He thinks in twisting words and chords of a guitar, not in linear sequences.
Instead, Ryan scans the names, looking for anything that’s interesting.
Cocks is always a funny name. So is Stotzfulz, which Ryan is pretty sure is some sort of Amish derivation (the address is even in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but Ryan doesn’t know how an Amish kid could get his hands on their music).
There are ordinary names, too, like Miller and Smith, and then there’s a name on the list that makes Ryan’s chest tighten.
Urie, Brendon.
At first, he thinks it’s a joke. After all, it’s been a year, and fans still bring Brendon up when they see him. It wouldn’t be that farfetched for it all to just be the scheme of some fan angry over the split, but then Ryan’s long finger slides across the wrinkled paper to the address.
It matches.
He doesn’t know what it means, Brendon’s name on the list. He knows that it means that Brendon bought a special package when he could have just gotten the cd for free, but Ryan thinks that it has to mean more than that.
He’s never been good with the subtleties. That’s what Ryan had always loved about Brendon - the way that he was always so straightforward. Brendon was all loud declarations and fierce but joking promises.
Looking back, though, Ryan can’t help but wonder what he all missed about Brendon, never bothering to look deeper than face value.
“Ryan.” Andy’s voice sounds from the back lounge, where Ryan knows he’s waiting with the stack of postcards and a variety of pens along with the other guys. He’s probably wondering what’s taking so long.
He gathers the papers together, pushes his thoughts aside, and heads back to his band mates.
They write 200 personalized postcards that day, making it all the way to the Js, and Ryan tries not to think about Brendon’s name on the list.
It almost works, as the flat land of the heartland rolls into hills, but when they make it to Missouri, Ryan thinks of that time in St. Louis where all Brendon wanted to do was climb the Gateway Arch after he saw some show on the Discovery channel about the physics of the design.
Ryan hadn’t understood Brendon’s fascination, but he had stood out there with him for a half hour, stalking around the huge monument, looking for a hidden foot hold.
---
Jon makes a plan in Little Rock to get all of the postcards done.
“Everyone will be in charge of writing fifteen a day,” he says. “And when they’re done, leave them on the table, so we can all sign them.”
Ryan shrugs as Jon goes through the list, drawing lines around names and assigning them. There are a couple of names that are blacked out on the list. Names of people who have already been written to. Names of people who contacted the label about a change of address or a cancellation.
The names are blacked out with a black sharpie that blocks the information once there completely.
Under one of the thick black lines, Brendon’s name is hidden, but Ryan knows the address by heart.
He doesn’t know why he blacked Brendon’s name out, but he’s glad that when Jon reads through the names, he doesn’t think twice about the still-wet mark on the bottom of the fifth page.
---
When they make it to Shreveport, bright lights greet them. The town is famous for its casinos, and after the bus is parked, the band and one of the guys from Rooney head on out to play the slots.
Ryan stays behind, though.
The lights outside are so much like the lights of Vegas that when he looks up from his phone out the window, he almost feels as if he’s back. Almost feels as though the last five years haven’t happened and he’s still waiting to get out.
Before he realizes what he’s doing, Ryan finds himself hunched over at the small kitchen table, with his favorite black pen held tightly in his hand.
The lights here make me think of home he writes.
He doesn’t write they make me think of you even if they do.
He doesn’t write wish you were here even if the cliché strikes so true at that moment.
He just signs his name, in a rush, and the letters blend together, but when Ryan writes the address, he prints each letter of Brendon’s name neatly.
In the morning, Ryan slips the postcard in with the others to be sent out, and it feels like the heavy weight that he hadn’t even realized he had been carrying the past couple days has been lifted, because he did it. He sent Brendon a postcard.
It’s over.
---
Except it isn’t over.
In Orlando, Ryan sees a little boy with an Aladdin t-shirt on, and Jon laughs, humming “A Whole New World” to himself.
He watches as the little boy smiles at Jon with a wide grin.
This time, the postcard Ryan scribbles on isn’t one from the pre-packaged tour stack. It’s one that’s bought on a whim, along with more soda and chips at a gas stop.
On the front, the logo of Mickey Mouse smiles back at Ryan as he looks at it later in his bunk.
Florida is still all Buicks and churches he writes. Though, this time, old ladies like me better. It must be the lack of make up.
Ryan doesn’t really know why he’s writing this - why he wants to share this with Brendon, but he writes the address neatly again on the postcard and sends it out.
---
It happens again at a rest stop in the lower part of Georgia when Ryan’s munching on freshly boiled peanuts.
I can’t get that stupid Goober Peas song that you used to sing out of my head is what the postcard reads this time.
The postcard has a picture of a perfect Georgia peach on it, and Ryan thinks of Nine in the Afternoon, and smiles.
---
In Charlotte, Ryan writes about the guy they met outside some sub shop who played the banjo with a prosthetic arm.
In Greenville, Ryan sees a bumper sticker on the back of a blue Toyota that says “Hey Moon”, but he writes about the organic yogurt that he got with fruit and Captain Crunch as toppings.
In Delaware, it’s the way that commercials seem to be getting longer, and he leaves out how he remembers stealing away to the beach one weekend when they were tired and stressed from Maryland.
Lancaster’s postcard forgoes the jokes about the Amish and sexual innuendoes and tells the story of Nick accidently brushing his teeth with acne cream.
Ryan writes to Brendon in New York and Georgia. Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
He writes to him because every time he sees something that makes him think of Brendon, his fingers itch.
He writes in secret: in the dim light of his bunk or in a frantic rush when no one’s looking.
In his mind, Ryan can see the words before they find their way onto shitty roadside postcards. When he’s laughing with Nick, he’s thinking about what he’s going to write to Brendon. When he’s packing up his gear, he makes a note to tell Brendon about that joke that Jon told him earlier.
After so many years of having Brendon around and then a year of nothing, it’s refreshing to have this, whatever it is.
So Ryan writes the postcards, one after another until he loses track of how many times he’s scrawled out Brendon’s address.
It gets easier with each card. The words that Ryan never realized he had been keeping from Brendon come so easily after the first couple of cards, so he keeps writing.
Sometimes, he wonders if Brendon reads the postcards. He doesn’t wonder if Brendon keeps them. Doesn’t wonder if Brendon reads into the words that Ryan thinks over carefully before jotting down.
He doesn’t think anything about it himself. He just writes.
---
On the last day of tour in Poughkeepsie, Ryan buys a postcard in a store across from Vassar.
He sits next to an old tree near one of the college’s buildings with the slightly yellow postcard on his thigh.
Tonight’s their last show. Soon, they’ll be headed back to L.A. Soon, Ryan will be back in the same city as Brendon.
Ryan doesn’t know what he’ll say to Brendon then, but he knows what he wants to say now - everything that he never could bring himself to admit before, even to himself-, so he writes it all down - writing as small as he can to get it all on the postcard that he doesn’t send.
---
When Ryan gets into his house, it’s dark. It’s late. Or early - Ryan doesn’t remember which, but he’s exhausted by the time he gets into his house.
There isn’t anyone to welcome him home. No girlfriend. No barking dog.
He’s not expecting anything, but when he opens the door, his foot slides a little as he steps on a pile of mail.
He always did forget to put a hold on his mail when he went on tour. Spencer usually did it for him.
Ryan’s too tired to go through all the letters right now - especially since he suspects that a lot of them are bills - but then he turns the light in the foyer on, and sees a couple of glossy postcards peeking out between crisp white envelops.
Ryan would know the handwriting anywhere - rounded and too large for such a small area.
He grabs them, picking them out from the rest of mail, and flips through them - puts them in order.
The cards say nothing and everything. Nothing because they’re all either responses to what Ryan had written or the latest on Spencer’s scrapbooking experiment. The words themselves don’t really mean anything, but the fact that Ryan’s holding eight postcards - everything from the Hollywood letters to a Chocolate World card that Ryan doesn’t know how Brendon got - means something.
Only you would spend half your life texting and decide that postcards are the way to go one of the cards reads. And I can’t even send them back to you on the road, genius.
Ryan goes to sleep with a smile on his face, and in the morning, he texts Brendon, inviting him over. Just like with the first postcard, it makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.
The reply is immediate.
Ryan clears a space on his refrigerator for Brendon’s postcards, and he arranges them carefully, lining all the cards up perfectly.
When the doorbell sounds a half hour later, Ryan’s throat feels dry, but he walks out of the kitchen to answer the door, Brendon’s postcards gleaming with the light from the window and a fully covered never-sent postcard lying on the table behind him.
---
Other Stories
Author: ivesia19
Rating: PG
Pairing: vague Brendon/Ryan
POV: 3rd limited (Ryan)
Summary: He doesn’t know what it means, Brendon’s name on the list.
Disclaimer: Fake. False. Fabrication. Fallacy. Other “f” words.
Beta: coffeshop-kites
Author Notes: This is to be blamed entirely on redorchids. Entirely (The title is from “If It’s the Beaches” by the Avett Brothers) ~2,000 words
---
Pack the old love letters up
We will read them when we forget why we left here
---
Ryan first looks at the list on the drive to Columbia.
They’ve been on tour for almost a month - a month of small venues and long drives through summer heat - but it’s the first day that he shuffles through the list of names with addresses that signed up for their ‘one-of-a-kind personalized’ postcards.
Ryan sort of regrets his idea now. When he had first thought it up, the idea of writing postcards was almost romantic, but now, Ryan looks down at the list of hundreds of strangers’ names, and he doesn’t know what to say to any of them.
Honesty through words is a lot easier when it isn’t one-on-one. It’s a lot easier when it’s blasting through speakers, almost hidden by misleading melodies.
He doesn’t know what to write to these people beyond a clichéd line or promise.
He needs to say something, though. It’s been a month.
The list in front of him, a list that is a little crinkled and with small stains from god knows what, is alphabetical by last name in neat, black font. It looks official. It looks intimidating.
It would make sense to start at the top of the list and work his way down, but Ryan’s never been the logical type. He thinks in twisting words and chords of a guitar, not in linear sequences.
Instead, Ryan scans the names, looking for anything that’s interesting.
Cocks is always a funny name. So is Stotzfulz, which Ryan is pretty sure is some sort of Amish derivation (the address is even in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but Ryan doesn’t know how an Amish kid could get his hands on their music).
There are ordinary names, too, like Miller and Smith, and then there’s a name on the list that makes Ryan’s chest tighten.
Urie, Brendon.
At first, he thinks it’s a joke. After all, it’s been a year, and fans still bring Brendon up when they see him. It wouldn’t be that farfetched for it all to just be the scheme of some fan angry over the split, but then Ryan’s long finger slides across the wrinkled paper to the address.
It matches.
He doesn’t know what it means, Brendon’s name on the list. He knows that it means that Brendon bought a special package when he could have just gotten the cd for free, but Ryan thinks that it has to mean more than that.
He’s never been good with the subtleties. That’s what Ryan had always loved about Brendon - the way that he was always so straightforward. Brendon was all loud declarations and fierce but joking promises.
Looking back, though, Ryan can’t help but wonder what he all missed about Brendon, never bothering to look deeper than face value.
“Ryan.” Andy’s voice sounds from the back lounge, where Ryan knows he’s waiting with the stack of postcards and a variety of pens along with the other guys. He’s probably wondering what’s taking so long.
He gathers the papers together, pushes his thoughts aside, and heads back to his band mates.
They write 200 personalized postcards that day, making it all the way to the Js, and Ryan tries not to think about Brendon’s name on the list.
It almost works, as the flat land of the heartland rolls into hills, but when they make it to Missouri, Ryan thinks of that time in St. Louis where all Brendon wanted to do was climb the Gateway Arch after he saw some show on the Discovery channel about the physics of the design.
Ryan hadn’t understood Brendon’s fascination, but he had stood out there with him for a half hour, stalking around the huge monument, looking for a hidden foot hold.
---
Jon makes a plan in Little Rock to get all of the postcards done.
“Everyone will be in charge of writing fifteen a day,” he says. “And when they’re done, leave them on the table, so we can all sign them.”
Ryan shrugs as Jon goes through the list, drawing lines around names and assigning them. There are a couple of names that are blacked out on the list. Names of people who have already been written to. Names of people who contacted the label about a change of address or a cancellation.
The names are blacked out with a black sharpie that blocks the information once there completely.
Under one of the thick black lines, Brendon’s name is hidden, but Ryan knows the address by heart.
He doesn’t know why he blacked Brendon’s name out, but he’s glad that when Jon reads through the names, he doesn’t think twice about the still-wet mark on the bottom of the fifth page.
---
When they make it to Shreveport, bright lights greet them. The town is famous for its casinos, and after the bus is parked, the band and one of the guys from Rooney head on out to play the slots.
Ryan stays behind, though.
The lights outside are so much like the lights of Vegas that when he looks up from his phone out the window, he almost feels as if he’s back. Almost feels as though the last five years haven’t happened and he’s still waiting to get out.
Before he realizes what he’s doing, Ryan finds himself hunched over at the small kitchen table, with his favorite black pen held tightly in his hand.
The lights here make me think of home he writes.
He doesn’t write they make me think of you even if they do.
He doesn’t write wish you were here even if the cliché strikes so true at that moment.
He just signs his name, in a rush, and the letters blend together, but when Ryan writes the address, he prints each letter of Brendon’s name neatly.
In the morning, Ryan slips the postcard in with the others to be sent out, and it feels like the heavy weight that he hadn’t even realized he had been carrying the past couple days has been lifted, because he did it. He sent Brendon a postcard.
It’s over.
---
Except it isn’t over.
In Orlando, Ryan sees a little boy with an Aladdin t-shirt on, and Jon laughs, humming “A Whole New World” to himself.
He watches as the little boy smiles at Jon with a wide grin.
This time, the postcard Ryan scribbles on isn’t one from the pre-packaged tour stack. It’s one that’s bought on a whim, along with more soda and chips at a gas stop.
On the front, the logo of Mickey Mouse smiles back at Ryan as he looks at it later in his bunk.
Florida is still all Buicks and churches he writes. Though, this time, old ladies like me better. It must be the lack of make up.
Ryan doesn’t really know why he’s writing this - why he wants to share this with Brendon, but he writes the address neatly again on the postcard and sends it out.
---
It happens again at a rest stop in the lower part of Georgia when Ryan’s munching on freshly boiled peanuts.
I can’t get that stupid Goober Peas song that you used to sing out of my head is what the postcard reads this time.
The postcard has a picture of a perfect Georgia peach on it, and Ryan thinks of Nine in the Afternoon, and smiles.
---
In Charlotte, Ryan writes about the guy they met outside some sub shop who played the banjo with a prosthetic arm.
In Greenville, Ryan sees a bumper sticker on the back of a blue Toyota that says “Hey Moon”, but he writes about the organic yogurt that he got with fruit and Captain Crunch as toppings.
In Delaware, it’s the way that commercials seem to be getting longer, and he leaves out how he remembers stealing away to the beach one weekend when they were tired and stressed from Maryland.
Lancaster’s postcard forgoes the jokes about the Amish and sexual innuendoes and tells the story of Nick accidently brushing his teeth with acne cream.
Ryan writes to Brendon in New York and Georgia. Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
He writes to him because every time he sees something that makes him think of Brendon, his fingers itch.
He writes in secret: in the dim light of his bunk or in a frantic rush when no one’s looking.
In his mind, Ryan can see the words before they find their way onto shitty roadside postcards. When he’s laughing with Nick, he’s thinking about what he’s going to write to Brendon. When he’s packing up his gear, he makes a note to tell Brendon about that joke that Jon told him earlier.
After so many years of having Brendon around and then a year of nothing, it’s refreshing to have this, whatever it is.
So Ryan writes the postcards, one after another until he loses track of how many times he’s scrawled out Brendon’s address.
It gets easier with each card. The words that Ryan never realized he had been keeping from Brendon come so easily after the first couple of cards, so he keeps writing.
Sometimes, he wonders if Brendon reads the postcards. He doesn’t wonder if Brendon keeps them. Doesn’t wonder if Brendon reads into the words that Ryan thinks over carefully before jotting down.
He doesn’t think anything about it himself. He just writes.
---
On the last day of tour in Poughkeepsie, Ryan buys a postcard in a store across from Vassar.
He sits next to an old tree near one of the college’s buildings with the slightly yellow postcard on his thigh.
Tonight’s their last show. Soon, they’ll be headed back to L.A. Soon, Ryan will be back in the same city as Brendon.
Ryan doesn’t know what he’ll say to Brendon then, but he knows what he wants to say now - everything that he never could bring himself to admit before, even to himself-, so he writes it all down - writing as small as he can to get it all on the postcard that he doesn’t send.
---
When Ryan gets into his house, it’s dark. It’s late. Or early - Ryan doesn’t remember which, but he’s exhausted by the time he gets into his house.
There isn’t anyone to welcome him home. No girlfriend. No barking dog.
He’s not expecting anything, but when he opens the door, his foot slides a little as he steps on a pile of mail.
He always did forget to put a hold on his mail when he went on tour. Spencer usually did it for him.
Ryan’s too tired to go through all the letters right now - especially since he suspects that a lot of them are bills - but then he turns the light in the foyer on, and sees a couple of glossy postcards peeking out between crisp white envelops.
Ryan would know the handwriting anywhere - rounded and too large for such a small area.
He grabs them, picking them out from the rest of mail, and flips through them - puts them in order.
The cards say nothing and everything. Nothing because they’re all either responses to what Ryan had written or the latest on Spencer’s scrapbooking experiment. The words themselves don’t really mean anything, but the fact that Ryan’s holding eight postcards - everything from the Hollywood letters to a Chocolate World card that Ryan doesn’t know how Brendon got - means something.
Only you would spend half your life texting and decide that postcards are the way to go one of the cards reads. And I can’t even send them back to you on the road, genius.
Ryan goes to sleep with a smile on his face, and in the morning, he texts Brendon, inviting him over. Just like with the first postcard, it makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.
The reply is immediate.
Ryan clears a space on his refrigerator for Brendon’s postcards, and he arranges them carefully, lining all the cards up perfectly.
When the doorbell sounds a half hour later, Ryan’s throat feels dry, but he walks out of the kitchen to answer the door, Brendon’s postcards gleaming with the light from the window and a fully covered never-sent postcard lying on the table behind him.
---
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