One-Night Stand Forever - [Twenty-Two (1/2)]
The tightening and twisting of his abdominal muscles late on a Monday night woke Ryan and dragged him from his sleepy haze to the toilet. While kneeling on the cold tile, his ears caught the ruffling of sheets and pathetically yearned for footsteps padding across the berber, but they never came.
"Bren," a soft, quivering voice called. Another shock of pain sent Ryan's hand to his stomach. "Brendon!"
A sudden slide of cotton on cotton. "Ryan," Brendon whispered in a sharp tone, "get your ass back in bed. I don't even care if you're out of ketchup this time!"
Ryan whimpered with the limited strength left in his frail body and shifted so that he was lying down, half of his body supported by a towel remaining from someone's earlier shower. He didn't care about the sogginess. He didn't mind the lack of comfort. The only thing he could think about was the baby, the baby, the baby. "The baby," he gasped.
Brendon came running.
"What the fuck? What the fuck?" he cried, joining Ryan on the floor in a mess of limbs and tousled hair. A hand reached out to examine Ryan's midsection.
"There… There's something wrong." The tears arrived sooner than the words and Ryan's bottom lip convulsed. "Something's wrong with him."
Brendon gulped. Through sleep-sultry eyes and slow-moving lips, he said, "He's ready. Sh," he soothed Ryan. "He's just ready."
Ryan looked up from the source of pain, straight into Brendon. The other boy's smile was visible even behind the rich brown of his eyes. Their grins connected them in that moment, erasing their sense of time and existence, thinking solely of their son, considering none but each other. In that brief second of time, Ryan was thankful for Brendon. They weren't in the hospital and the baby wasn't in his arms, but Brendon had given him this gift. Usually he wasn't the best person to be around, but the fact remained: he was the baby's father. That fact alone caused a sort of incandescent glow to outline the boy's figure.
A sudden heaviness low in his belly pulled a strong whine out of Ryan's lungs.
Hyperventilating, Brendon stood, glancing around the bathroom as if some magical tool were expected to appear in thin air, something to assist him in whatever it was he needed to do.
Yes. Right. Ryan. Hospital. Go.
"Come on," Brendon urged with arms looped under Ryan's shoulders. "Um, just like, yeah. Just hang off my shoulder. Like that. Yeah."
Ryan could tell. It was his posture, the sweat on his upper lip, and the dancing of his eyelids: Brendon was scared shitless. Something in him told him to calm the obviously startled boy, but he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried. The combination of pain and his own fear devoured his entire being, and all he wanted to do was produce synchronized, easy-flowing breaths and simple steps, just to make it to the car.
Brendon helped Ryan into the car, even remembering to secure the seatbelt across his enormous bump. He climbed into the driver's side with nothing less than a precarious expression and trembling limbs, and during the entire trip, breathed unrecognizable strings of words under his breath, wincing each time Ryan emitted even the smallest of grunts.
"Oh, shit!" Brendon shouted. They had just passed the sign directing them to the emergency room and Ryan wanted to tell him, Yes, Brendon, we're having a baby if you haven't noticed already, but Brendon continued his revelation with a speedy, "I need to call everyone!"
"William!" Ryan smiled because Brendon actually had the courtesy to call his best friend first. "Yes, the baby's coming! Now get your ass up and call Gabe! Call everyone!"
Click. "Jon! Bring Spencer! Walker is coming!"
"Beckett," Ryan sighed.
Brendon cut through him with a fiery glare. With phone in hand, Brendon raised a fist from the steering wheel. "If you weren't having my kid right now, I'd fucking throw you out of that door."
Ryan smirked, the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead glistening under the orange of the streetlights. "If I wasn't having your kid right now, we wouldn't be fighting over names." He stared out the window at the approaching building. Large and white and unreasonably ominous.
"If you weren't having my kid," Brendon began, "we wouldn't even be friends."
Ryan narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, looking over at the boy next to him. "We're not even friends as it is!"
"Okay, Ross. Be a bitch about it. I meant we wouldn't even be talking."
Heavily puffing air, Ryan retorted with, "Don't call me a bitch!"
"Well then don't get your fucking panties in a bunch when I… refer to us as friends." Brendon pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. "Listen, I'm going to go get a wheelchair for you. Don't do anything insane."
"Yeah, whatever," Ryan huffed, and truthfully, a wheelchair sounded amazing, because he definitely was not in the mood for walking or waddling down the hospital corridors.
In reality, he wasn't in the mood for any of this. Fighting. Brendon. The baby. He had kind of hoped that he would go into labor during class, just so he could skip some school. And because that would mean Brendon wouldn't be there, which, as he thought about it, was quite cruel, but he had viable reasoning: Brendon was annoying and very stress-inducing. The doctors and a few of his friends would have whole-heartedly agreed that additional stress was entirely unnecessary.
Okay, so maybe Brendon wasn't that irritating. It only crept out when they were in an argument or when Brendon discovered Ryan's tape collection from when he was a kid and then twirled around Ryan's room with "Barbie and The Rockers" on full blast, then it liked to fully flaunt itself. God, Brendon got on Ryan's nerves, wrapping himself around them and forcing an image of himself to Ryan's brain every single second of every single day.
Ryan definitely should have faked labor pains at school.
Brendon emerged from the light of the clear, sliding hospital doors wheeling a ratty contraption to Ryan's door.
"Please don't be a drama queen. This is the only one they had left." Ryan feigned a sour look just to study Brendon's pleading reaction. "Yeah, I know it has holes. If you don't like it, you can walk."
He complied hesitantly, raising himself up from his seat slightly to slide into the next available. Eyes caught on Ryan's stomach, Brendon muttered, "Holy shit." As they moved down the halls, Brendon mapped their lives from that point forward, dreading the hourly wake-up calls and whining about the purchasing of millions of diapers. "We're going to see poop. Loads of poop. It'll probably be all green and mushy. Gross. Then there's gonna be the first day of school. Hopefully he'll at least like us enough to try to hang on when we drop him off." He led them into a room, explaining, "A doctor told us to wait in here."
As soon as the words came, a doctor appeared; a male with graying, balding hair and a smile.
"Good evening, Mr. Ross," he greeted in between the snapping of latex on his wrists and the assisting of Ryan onto the hospital bed. Ryan cowered at the needle attached to the IV being wheeled into the room by a younger nurse. His eyes didn't leave it, even as he shook the doctors gloved hand. "I'm Dr. Klein and I'll be delivering your baby." Wrinkled eyes turned to Brendon. "I assume you're the father."
Brendon leaped out of his seat with nothing short of a display of each tooth in his mouth. "That'd be me. Brendon Urie."
Ryan would have laughed, had he not been experiencing extreme cramps that caused him to curl his toes and grit his teeth.
The blonde nurse moved closer towards him, quirking her lips. "Okay, just relax your right arm out by your side."
Ryan did as told. Brendon sat back down and smiled lazily. The clouding of his eyes increased with each second he stared at Ryan and his shapely form.
A prick.
A dazed smirk.
Fuck.
Ryan struggled to stay afloat in the world of light, because holy shit, the doctor had called him by his real name and not William Beckett.
"Bren," a soft, quivering voice called. Another shock of pain sent Ryan's hand to his stomach. "Brendon!"
A sudden slide of cotton on cotton. "Ryan," Brendon whispered in a sharp tone, "get your ass back in bed. I don't even care if you're out of ketchup this time!"
Ryan whimpered with the limited strength left in his frail body and shifted so that he was lying down, half of his body supported by a towel remaining from someone's earlier shower. He didn't care about the sogginess. He didn't mind the lack of comfort. The only thing he could think about was the baby, the baby, the baby. "The baby," he gasped.
Brendon came running.
"What the fuck? What the fuck?" he cried, joining Ryan on the floor in a mess of limbs and tousled hair. A hand reached out to examine Ryan's midsection.
"There… There's something wrong." The tears arrived sooner than the words and Ryan's bottom lip convulsed. "Something's wrong with him."
Brendon gulped. Through sleep-sultry eyes and slow-moving lips, he said, "He's ready. Sh," he soothed Ryan. "He's just ready."
Ryan looked up from the source of pain, straight into Brendon. The other boy's smile was visible even behind the rich brown of his eyes. Their grins connected them in that moment, erasing their sense of time and existence, thinking solely of their son, considering none but each other. In that brief second of time, Ryan was thankful for Brendon. They weren't in the hospital and the baby wasn't in his arms, but Brendon had given him this gift. Usually he wasn't the best person to be around, but the fact remained: he was the baby's father. That fact alone caused a sort of incandescent glow to outline the boy's figure.
A sudden heaviness low in his belly pulled a strong whine out of Ryan's lungs.
Hyperventilating, Brendon stood, glancing around the bathroom as if some magical tool were expected to appear in thin air, something to assist him in whatever it was he needed to do.
Yes. Right. Ryan. Hospital. Go.
"Come on," Brendon urged with arms looped under Ryan's shoulders. "Um, just like, yeah. Just hang off my shoulder. Like that. Yeah."
Ryan could tell. It was his posture, the sweat on his upper lip, and the dancing of his eyelids: Brendon was scared shitless. Something in him told him to calm the obviously startled boy, but he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried. The combination of pain and his own fear devoured his entire being, and all he wanted to do was produce synchronized, easy-flowing breaths and simple steps, just to make it to the car.
Brendon helped Ryan into the car, even remembering to secure the seatbelt across his enormous bump. He climbed into the driver's side with nothing less than a precarious expression and trembling limbs, and during the entire trip, breathed unrecognizable strings of words under his breath, wincing each time Ryan emitted even the smallest of grunts.
"Oh, shit!" Brendon shouted. They had just passed the sign directing them to the emergency room and Ryan wanted to tell him, Yes, Brendon, we're having a baby if you haven't noticed already, but Brendon continued his revelation with a speedy, "I need to call everyone!"
"William!" Ryan smiled because Brendon actually had the courtesy to call his best friend first. "Yes, the baby's coming! Now get your ass up and call Gabe! Call everyone!"
Click. "Jon! Bring Spencer! Walker is coming!"
"Beckett," Ryan sighed.
Brendon cut through him with a fiery glare. With phone in hand, Brendon raised a fist from the steering wheel. "If you weren't having my kid right now, I'd fucking throw you out of that door."
Ryan smirked, the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead glistening under the orange of the streetlights. "If I wasn't having your kid right now, we wouldn't be fighting over names." He stared out the window at the approaching building. Large and white and unreasonably ominous.
"If you weren't having my kid," Brendon began, "we wouldn't even be friends."
Ryan narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, looking over at the boy next to him. "We're not even friends as it is!"
"Okay, Ross. Be a bitch about it. I meant we wouldn't even be talking."
Heavily puffing air, Ryan retorted with, "Don't call me a bitch!"
"Well then don't get your fucking panties in a bunch when I… refer to us as friends." Brendon pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. "Listen, I'm going to go get a wheelchair for you. Don't do anything insane."
"Yeah, whatever," Ryan huffed, and truthfully, a wheelchair sounded amazing, because he definitely was not in the mood for walking or waddling down the hospital corridors.
In reality, he wasn't in the mood for any of this. Fighting. Brendon. The baby. He had kind of hoped that he would go into labor during class, just so he could skip some school. And because that would mean Brendon wouldn't be there, which, as he thought about it, was quite cruel, but he had viable reasoning: Brendon was annoying and very stress-inducing. The doctors and a few of his friends would have whole-heartedly agreed that additional stress was entirely unnecessary.
Okay, so maybe Brendon wasn't that irritating. It only crept out when they were in an argument or when Brendon discovered Ryan's tape collection from when he was a kid and then twirled around Ryan's room with "Barbie and The Rockers" on full blast, then it liked to fully flaunt itself. God, Brendon got on Ryan's nerves, wrapping himself around them and forcing an image of himself to Ryan's brain every single second of every single day.
Ryan definitely should have faked labor pains at school.
Brendon emerged from the light of the clear, sliding hospital doors wheeling a ratty contraption to Ryan's door.
"Please don't be a drama queen. This is the only one they had left." Ryan feigned a sour look just to study Brendon's pleading reaction. "Yeah, I know it has holes. If you don't like it, you can walk."
He complied hesitantly, raising himself up from his seat slightly to slide into the next available. Eyes caught on Ryan's stomach, Brendon muttered, "Holy shit." As they moved down the halls, Brendon mapped their lives from that point forward, dreading the hourly wake-up calls and whining about the purchasing of millions of diapers. "We're going to see poop. Loads of poop. It'll probably be all green and mushy. Gross. Then there's gonna be the first day of school. Hopefully he'll at least like us enough to try to hang on when we drop him off." He led them into a room, explaining, "A doctor told us to wait in here."
As soon as the words came, a doctor appeared; a male with graying, balding hair and a smile.
"Good evening, Mr. Ross," he greeted in between the snapping of latex on his wrists and the assisting of Ryan onto the hospital bed. Ryan cowered at the needle attached to the IV being wheeled into the room by a younger nurse. His eyes didn't leave it, even as he shook the doctors gloved hand. "I'm Dr. Klein and I'll be delivering your baby." Wrinkled eyes turned to Brendon. "I assume you're the father."
Brendon leaped out of his seat with nothing short of a display of each tooth in his mouth. "That'd be me. Brendon Urie."
Ryan would have laughed, had he not been experiencing extreme cramps that caused him to curl his toes and grit his teeth.
The blonde nurse moved closer towards him, quirking her lips. "Okay, just relax your right arm out by your side."
Ryan did as told. Brendon sat back down and smiled lazily. The clouding of his eyes increased with each second he stared at Ryan and his shapely form.
A prick.
A dazed smirk.
Fuck.
Ryan struggled to stay afloat in the world of light, because holy shit, the doctor had called him by his real name and not William Beckett.