Fic: Stuck in the Meantime
Title: Stuck in the Meantime
Rating: PG, what else?
Pairing: Jon/Ryan
Word Count: 2,800
Summary: The pictures just keep showing up after that, at least once a day. Sometimes they’re on his pillow, or tucked inside the pages of his journal, or in his guitar case. Ryan doesn’t ask Jon about it, and Jon doesn’t offer anything.
Author's Notes: This is written for saramir, who gave me about a million prompts when I told her I really wanted to write Jon/Ryan. Title (and that lovely cut tag) stolen from the song 'Photography' by The Starting Line.

Thanks to secrethitmen for helping me get moving, shihadchick for enabling and reassuring, and tailoredshirt for talking through it with me and beta reading despite the fact that she basically has no idea who these people are.



Spencer’s always said Ryan was a bit of a romantic, under everything. Ryan’s never really thought so, but he still finds himself draping his jacket over Jon, arranging it carefully. Jon has this amazing ability to fall asleep anywhere, and in any position. He says it’s just a skill borne of touring, but Ryan’s been touring for a while now himself, and he can’t scrunch up just anywhere and let sleep overtake him. He can doze, sleep in snatches and fits, but he imagines that he never looks restful. Jon, though; Jon always looks peaceful when he sleeps, even like this, curled up on the couch in too many layers, people milling around. The jacket doesn’t really work, looks out of place with Jon’s worn coat and comfortable sweater.

Ryan snaps a picture and debates deleting it almost immediately, but instead he just flicks the camera off without looking, grabs his jacket, and walks away.

***
It’s maybe four days later when a picture appears on Ryan’s pillow. It’s of Ryan’s favourite coffee mug, one that he’s had seemingly forever. He thinks maybe it was his mother’s before his, but he can’t be sure; just one of those things that hangs around the house. He’d picked it as his own simply because it became a habit to reach for it around the age of thirteen when he first started drinking coffee. It’s kind of a random mug, actually; a close-up of a painting by Vermeer, one that Ryan looked up the name of a while ago and never remembered. There’s no real reason it’s his favourite other than familiarity, and he’s had it with him since Maryland.

The mug is in focus, left of frame, and in the background Ryan’s writing journal lies open, blurred. It’s how he left the table that morning after breakfast – breakfast that was just three cups of coffee – and he realizes that Jon must have taken the picture almost immediately after he left. There are droplets of coffee still clinging to the rim of the mug. It feels strange to look at, a snapshot of his morning that he himself didn’t take.

Ryan briefly wonders if Jon read the journal, even glanced at the pages to catch a glimpse, but something – maybe the blurred scribbles in the photo – tells him that Jon didn’t.

***
The pictures just keep showing up after that, at least once a day. Sometimes they’re on his pillow, or tucked inside the pages of his journal, or in his guitar case. Ryan doesn’t ask Jon about it, and Jon doesn’t offer anything. There are more pictures of everyday objects, snippets of their daily lives, but Jon has an eye for things like that, making them seem more than just mundane. Ryan’s not even sure how he does it without controlling the light, without shifting things in tiny increments to place them perfectly, because he can take a perfect photo spontaneously. Brendon’s hand curled around the fret of his guitar, sun hitting in such a way that it looks like the light is streaming from his fingers. Or at a venue – just another venue in the middle of nowhere – somehow managing to make dank hallways and fluorescent lighting seem magical and surreal.

Ryan keeps them tucked in the back of his journal and sifts through them every time he’s feeling a little blocked. He’s not sure how many songs one person can actually write about quiet moments and soft light, but he’s up to about ten after two weeks of photos from Jon.

Brendon looks up from flipping through his journal one day – and technically he’s not allowed to do that, not really, but Brendon’s always understood Ryan’s way of looking at music better than anyone else – and says, “Our next album is going to be pretty mellow, huh?”

Ryan resists the urge to grab the book from Brendon’s hands. “They’re just thoughts. They’re not really...formed, or anything.”

“They seem pretty formed to me,” Brendon replies, and as he lifts the book to flick another page a few pictures slide out. Brendon gets to them before Ryan does. He studies them for a few seconds, careful to hold the photos from the edges, just the way Ryan taught him. Brendon makes a quiet humming noise to himself, and then glances up at Ryan again, a soft smile on his face. “So this is where it’s coming from.”

“Yes,” Ryan replies, even though it wasn’t really a question.

“I didn’t realize you had such an extensive collection of Jon’s photography,” Brendon says, grabbing the rest of the photos from the back of the journal. “I haven’t seen these before, I don’t think.”

“No, you haven’t,” Ryan responds, and there must be something in his tone, because Brendon glances up at him sharply.

“Oh,” he says, and then glances back down at the picture in his hands, one of Ryan’s guitar sitting in the grass. “I get it.” And he gives Ryan one more quick smile before piling the photos on the table and standing. “We can talk more about those lyrics later.”

Ryan wants to ask Brendon what, exactly, he gets, and if Brendon could maybe explain it to him.

***
Jon knows how to read Ryan’s moods. On the days where he’s restless, when he fidgets almost as much as Brendon after too many Red Bulls, the picture that shows up is something soft and subtle, a quiet moment that slows him down, makes him pause. When he’s homesick only for a home that isn’t moving, for scenery that is unchanging, it’s something from one of the tiny truck stops or weird little towns they pass through, a funny sign or a crazy looking hitchhiker. Sometimes, when he’s exhausted and weary, when all he wants to do is sleep, it’s a picture of Brendon or Spencer, or both of them – his favourite to date is one of the two of them growling at each other in the middle of a Guitar Hero match over the tiny guitars – that always makes him grin. When he’s feeling creative but unable to write, unable to focus his thoughts, the picture is always the right sort of spark, sending him in the right direction.

Ryan’s written some of his best lyrics based off Jon’s photographs, but most of the time even he’s not sure what he’s getting at.

***
Spencer doesn’t even bother pausing the game they’re playing when he asks about the pictures, doesn’t even bother to give Ryan a sideways glance. Ryan is suddenly irrationally frustrated with everyone: with Spencer for feeling the need to come talk to him, with Brendon for feeling like there was anything to talk about in the first place, and with Jon, because he has no idea what Jon is doing, and he definitely has no idea why Jon is doing it. He knows it doesn’t make much sense, because they’re just pictures and it doesn’t have to mean anything.

Ryan’s grip on the controller tightens even as his focus slips. “They’re just photographs.” He sounds defensive even to his own ears, and he wishes he didn’t.

“Okay,” Spencer replies, and this time he does pause the game, turning to Ryan to gaze at him. Ryan hates that stare. It’s too calm, like Spencer could wait forever to hear the right answer come out of Ryan’s mouth. But Ryan has no idea how to answer, even if he wanted to discuss the subject in the first place.

“Taking pictures of people sleeping could be misconstrued as creepy, you know,” Brendon says from behind Ryan. Ryan looks down at his hands and thinks of the last picture Jon had given him, one of rumpled sheets and a pile of odds and ends; all the things Ryan had dumped out of his pockets and onto his sheets the day before. It had looked messy and jumbled, which is sort of how Ryan feels. He knows that Spencer is glaring at Brendon over his head, and he knows that Brendon is furrowing his brow in response.

Spencer was winding up to giving Ryan a lecture, probably, but Brendon’s being too blunt. Spencer’s not as subtle as he thinks he is, though, and sometimes Brendon’s tactlessness works better than any careful plan. Ryan starts the game again, and Spencer stops glaring at Brendon long enough to scramble for his controller.

****

Just as it’s starting to slip into winter, the chill in the air biting and stinging, the pictures become more focused. They’re no longer random objects from Ryan’s day, or strange people from small towns, but pictures of Ryan himself. Never in full; there is never a shot of Ryan’s full body, or even the entirety of his face. Instead, it’s just bits and pieces. His fingers along a fret board, an extreme close-up, or just the fabric pulled tight at his knee as he sits cross-legged onstage, or his hand carefully curled around his mug, the flowers on his mic stand, or his other arm, making the shirt bunch and pull across his shoulder, or a glimpse of his collarbone where his paisley shirt has fallen open a little too wide. It is the sharpest study Ryan could possibly imagine, more intense than any critique he could possibly give himself, and more positive.

Ryan can remember a time when he was constantly aware of Jon’s presence, of Jon’s space inside his own, of Jon’s camera, the lens like an extra eye. He wonders what it means that now he doesn’t even realize when Jon takes a picture of him.

***
Spencer tries to talk to him about it again, but Ryan tells him there’s nothing to talk about, sharp enough that they both know there is.

Brendon carefully avoids it altogether, doesn’t even touch Ryan’s journal anymore. Ryan is a little bemused by the fact that it took Jon’s pictures to make Ryan’s words sacred.

“I demand that we write something, Ross,” Brendon proclaims, and Ryan lets his hand brush against the strings. It’s a discordant sound, his fingers in the wrong place, but he thinks Brendon gets the message. His journal is open in front of him, one page of lyrics that he doesn’t totally hate, that he thinks he can turn into something worthwhile. (Maybe he can even turn them into something that isn’t just about Jon, or at least not obviously so.) “Is this the one about lazy mornings?” Brendon peers at the page, squinting as he tries to read Ryan almost illegible scrawl upside down.

Ryan makes a small noise of assent and tries to think of a better title for it than that. Brendon will just keep calling it The Lazy Morning Song until Ryan comes up with something better. He thinks about a poem he wrote once for English back in high school, something really short and not very good – warm mugs clutched like life preservers/even though we are already saved - and says “We are already saved,” to Brendon, who nods thoughtfully.

“Yeah, okay,” he replies, like he gets it, and Ryan likes to think that maybe he does. Maybe he even showed Brendon the poem once, and Brendon somehow managed to remember. His memory is incredible. “I’m thinking this shouldn’t be too slow or too melancholy, but I’d lean more to that than overly perky. It’s not like you’re really a morning person, anyway.” He glances up at Ryan, and Ryan nods in response, strums the first minor chord he can think of.

“Quirky melancholy?” Ryan says, and Brendon grins at him.

“Sounds about right,” Brendon replies, and then picks out a couple notes, probably thinking of a piano part. They work for about forty-five minutes, coming up with the barest structure for a song, and when Brendon sings along, slowing down on a line about easy smiles, he stops playing for a second.

“Are we going to have to call the next album ‘An Ode to Jon Walker’?” Ryan can feel the moment that Brendon realizes what he’s said, when he catches his breath and holds perfectly still, waiting for Ryan’s reaction.

Ryan ducks his head and lets his hair fall into his eyes, mumbles “Maybe,” and listens for Brendon’s breath of relief. “We can maybe disguise it a bit better than that, though.”

“French?” Brendon asks, and when Ryan looks up, he laughs. “It’s stealthy, don’t worry.”

“He’ll never know,” Ryan agrees, and then plays the tune that’s been in his mind for the past few days, just a short chord progression, and lets Brendon slip back into his focused mode.

***
The pictures shift in focus once again, so they’re not bits and pieces of Ryan anymore, but bits and pieces of Jon instead. His toes barely visible under the cuffs of his jeans, tangled up in an old Cubs sweater so his face isn’t visible (clearly staged, since he would have had to put the timer on, but genuine nonetheless), his arm curled up under his pillow, creased from the lines in his sheets – there are lots of them, enough that Ryan thinks he could maybe put together an odd, disjointed collage of Jon Walker with all the pieces he has.

On the night of their third-last show, at the beginning of their last week of the tour, a photo shows up on Ryan’s pillow. They shouldn’t surprise him anymore, but they still sort of do. This one especially is a bit of a shock, since he can see all of Jon in it. Jon is huddled on the front steps of...somewhere, a random doorway, maybe. It snowed lightly a few nights back, and that’s when Jon must have taken it, because the photo is dotted with white specks. Jon isn’t looking at the camera, but to the side instead, like something just caught his attention suddenly. Ryan can see a snowflake resting on his eyelashes, he’s pretty sure.

Jon’s huddled up, arms wrapped around himself, and it’s only when Ryan notices Jon’s arms pressed together that that he realizes what Jon’s wearing. It’s Ryan’s jacket, the one from that very first photo, and it doesn’t really fit him. It’s pulled tight at the shoulders, like the seams might pop out at any minute, and it’s too long on Jon’s arms, so only the tips of his fingers peek out from the sleeves. He couldn’t get the buttons done up either, and the jacket’s splayed open across his chest. For all that it doesn’t fit, it sort of does.

Ryan tugs his journal out from where it’s wedged between the wall and the mattress - a strange version of privacy - and shakes it so the pictures fall out and spread along his mattress. Jon’s been giving him these pictures since early fall, just as it was starting to get cold at night even when the days were still warm. He has a pretty impressive collection by now, and he loves how he can see the seasons shifting through them. Ryan sifts through them and places them in chronological order, moving carefully as he lines them up over his blankets. There’s a progression to them in more than just the seasons, and Ryan can see it now, especially with the last photo. He stares at them for a long time before piling them up again and slipping them back into the journal. They have four days left of the tour, and only two shows.

It’s enough time.

****
On the last night of the tour, Ryan carefully places a picture inside Jon’s guitar case after sound check. When they get ready to play that night, he knows the moment that Jon finds it, because he can feel Jon’s eyes on him, the way they settle and hold. Ryan doesn’t look up.

They play a good show that night, and they’re all tired by the time they trudge back to the bus. Ryan’s eager to get to sleep, mind racing but body utterly exhausted. He ends up lying in his bunk and staring straight up, aware of every inch of his skin. It takes an eternity for Jon to come and find him.

Jon holds up the picture, the picture that Ryan spent an hour getting just right. His hand is in focus at the front of the frame, and he himself is blurred in the background, sun glaringly bright over his shoulder. Most importantly, there’s a key in his hand, one that’s instantly recognizable as his house key – it has three key chains on it, one each from Jon, Spencer, and Brendon. Jon’s was a metal guitar, Brendon’s a small plastic dog, and Spencer’s a tacky, bright Las Vegas sign.

“Really?” Jon breathes, and he’s quiet, like maybe he doesn’t want to disturb Brendon and Spencer. Or maybe like he can’t quite believe it.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, and then nods, smiling. “Yes, definitely.”

And Jon breaks out into a grin, one of the few things he didn’t let Ryan see in his photos, and leans down to finally share it with Ryan.