Swallow Your Sleep

“Spencer will be so happy to see you.”

Ryan really doubted that. He’d hurt Spencer. He’d hurt everyone. He kept his mouth shut, though, following Jon’s both familiar and unfamiliar form up the staircase of his apartment complex. He felt nervous – hands fiddling with his guitar strap and blood flowing quickly to his cheeks only to shy away again as it met the cold air.

Jon reached the door and glanced to Ryan as a way of confirmation, then moved the key in the lock and pushed the warm wooden door open.

“Jon fucking Walker, I swear to god you take the longest time to-”

Spencer froze mid sentence, hands poised in an exasperated position, as he spotted Ryan standing uncomfortably in the hallway, back hunched and eyes flitting across his scuffed shoes. The same shoes he always used to wear on tour. He shouldn’t be here, god damn it, he should have taken his life when he had the chance. They certainly gave him enough of one.

Silence.

“Ryan?” the name escaped Spencer’s lips like a whisper, wreathed in disbelief and those dancing shards of memory.

“Hey, Spencer.” Ryan awkwardly waved at the blue eyed man, quickly wrenching his eyes back away from Spencer’s expression. He was waiting for the words, the yelling, the fucking hate-

A force hit him and almost sent him falling, and he was about to push back when he realised he was being hugged. By Spencer. Ryan couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged him. Unless, he reasons, his landowner dragging him out to the living room counted as a hug; it’s human contact, at least, and Ryan’s not sure how he forgot it. His arms slowly found their way around Spencer’s waist as Spencer muttered half coherent things into shoulder.

“Ryan fucking Ross.” Spencer pushed him away by the shoulders, looking down at Ryan’s form like Ginger used to every time Ryan came staggering in at 3am in the morning, face bloody and clothes torn. Spencer really did look like his mum. Jon smiles softy at Ryan from behind Spencer, the negative emotions from their earlier encounter fading slightly.

“You haven’t been... God, Ryan, I...” Ryan shifts unsteadily in his grip and lets a small smile settle on his face. Spencer looks, well, happy. Happy to see Ryan, maybe. It’s an impossible thought and Ryan’s head aches slightly with the comprehension, that maybe, Spencer –

“Guys; close the fucking door it’s freezing!”

Brendon walks in, all black jeans and ridiculous Christmas jumper that looks suspiciously like one of Jons’. He looks good. They all do. Ridiculously good and Ryan realises they are doing fine without him, better than fine, and it was all him that was really not okay. Just him. Not them.

“I was just – I have to-” A hand is wrapped around his wrist before Ryan can even shift backwards. He looks up to blue eyes that bore into his and feels ashamed, like he’s done something wrong. Spencer’s fingers lap over each other around his wrist and Ryan can feel the slight squeeze of assurance as he looks back up to Brendon, bones crushing together in an unfamiliar way.

The man is frozen just past the doorway to Jon’s living room, looking stunned beyond words. His adam apple dives and Ryan feels like hell for doing this to them, especially on this day. He should have never got on that fucking plane. Should have let himself rot away in that apartment, ignoring texts and staring intently at the knife that seemed to move every time he turned away.

“Ryan?” Is that...” Brendon shakes his head, looking down at the floor then back again, eyes wide “Ryan?”

Spencer slips away from him and Ryan can feel the warmth leave with him. Suddenly it’s December again and he is so, so tired of the cold and the snow and the feeling of nostalgia that plagues his mind worse than a parasite ever could. Ryan feels like he has the world on his shoulders when really it’s only his; his pathetic little globe of thought that can’t seem to function without someone to leech off.

He wants to leave, go back to his moonlight chained apartment and smoke a hundred more cigarettes and think about how he deserves to die. I’ll get there, he always used to think, it’s been thirteen months; I’ll get there. Spencer winds his hand around Jon’s and you watch, perplexed and stricken with your own self pity, as they take their leave past Brendon. Spencer doesn’t give him a look, and Jon just sighs as he passes Brendon, finger tips of his free hand running carefully over the side of his leg.

There’s a stagnant silence, more painful than Spencer’s.

Brendon takes a breath, and looks down at his feet. His eyebrows are knitted and his hands are in fists; Ryan is reminded of the younger him. Ryan, my parents they... they. They don’t want the band to –to happen and they s-said, they told me to.... Ryan couldn’t help him. Spencer could. Spencer with his loving family took him in and made Brendon smile again and Ryan just said ‘No, it’s fine Spencer, he hasn’t been home in a while’ while inside he added tear after tear to the dam he was too break later. ’It’s all fine, I got this bruise from falling over, believe it or not; I don’t even need the old man around anymore to have an accident!’ he would say, pulling sleeves over his wrists and biting back the sickening jealousy of seeing them both so happy. SpencerandBrendon; it always worked so much better than SpencerandRyan; Ryan’s a leech, a parasite, a creature so disgusting it can’t stop craving the mines of human emotion.

“You left.” Brendon doesn’t look up, and Ryan doesn’t blame him.

“Yeah, I did.”

He pretends not to feel the tears the tears that start to leak from his eyes, and he pretends his breath isn't hitching. He pretends Brendon can’t make him cry and that this doesn’t mean anything. Just people. Holding him up and letting him down (he knocked them down) but they’re still standing, together, and Ryan. He. He’s incomplete.

“You’re crying.” Oh, now he’s looking. Big brown eyes and fluffy brown hair and those lips, god those lips, down-turned and sad and Ryan feels his eyes scrunch while he looks downwards again; tears are dropping on Jon’s carpet and he hopes it doesn’t leave a stain.

“Yeah, I-I am.” He comes out choked and a half laugh forces its way with it. Look where little old Ryan got himself, a scarecrow patched from other people and a house without foundations; he’ll never scare away the crows and he’ll never be built; finished. Incomplete and maybe that why the words come so easily, sometimes, maybe he’s falling apart and writing the evidence, the remains. He writes away his soul and his heart and he writes away the people he wished he could look after. A walking mess of personality after personality and he'll never see the sun again, at this rate, with his arms so scarred and his hunger so sharp; he knew that when things started to move and the shadows started to creep, and when he woke up alone in hospital.

Brendon brings him in close.