Work Text:
TITLE: Dreaming in Color (Farmer’s Market ‘Verse)
AUTHOR: 
ohnoscarlett and tuesdaysgone
RATING: PG-13, for some language.
PAIRING, IF ANY: mention of Jon/Spencer, Ryan/her
SUMMARY: Ryan was an artist. (3478 words) Contemporary with “Patrick’s Garden Center” and associated fic.
“Patrick Has a Truck”
“Bittersweet Bakery”, Chapter 1, Chapter 2
DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Obviously.
NOTES: Beta by tuesdaysgone on the parts that I wrote, and vice versa. Boy, did we have fun with this one. Plus, this whole deal was conceived by kueble, when she drove over to my house and saw the actual Patrick's Garden Center down the road and essentially freaked out over it. Hee. This is not the same Patrick, nor Patrick's Garden Center. Please see the disclaimer.
Ryan was an artist. A serious artist. He was one semester away from a BFA—yes, he knew that meant he would graduate in December, not in May. So it took him a little longer. So what. He was an artist. With a portfolio and everything.
What the hell was he doing painting faces at a farmer’s market every Saturday? He could be—he could be…
He could be obsessing over his latest piece.
Actually, he was obsessing over his latest piece. He needed to finish it, and really, screwing around at the farmer’s market was the last place he needed to be. But it was good for him, actually.
According to his therapist, anyway.
Ryan really needed to reconsider the therapist thing. All the great ones were tortured souls. He couldn’t have a stupid therapist taking all of his emo away. Van Gogh didn’t have a therapist! Gauguin didn’t have a therapist!
Well, maybe he would keep the therapist.
So. Ryan painted faces at the farmer’s market every Saturday. He interacted with people. It got him out of his shell. Sort of.
Ryan didn’t really start painting faces because his therapist told him to. He did it because it gave him the opportunity to hang out with Spencer. He continued doing it because it gave him the opportunity to hang out with Brendon. And Jon. And yeah, everybody else who worked there.
Ryan and Spencer grew up together. They lived in the same neighborhood. Ryan spent more time at Spencer’s house than he had at his own. He liked how Spencer’s house was warm. Spence’s mom and his sisters loved him, and Ryan liked to be cuddled and petted. And Grandma Smith didn’t scare him. Not any more than his father had, so that was a plus. She was all bark anyway.
Spence had been working his grandmother’s flower stand at the farmer’s market for forever. It made Ryan crazy when he was out of school for the summer—not “home”, because where was that? He didn’t have the structure of classes to keep him occupied, just work. Weekends stretched on and on without Spence to keep him company.
So he set up his stand at the market. Right next to Spence. And it made him happy. Well, as happy as his tortured artist emo soul would let him be. Or, as happy as he would let his tortured artist emo soul let him. Whatever.
***
Ryan went through cases of wet wipes and hand sanitizer. Why were little kids all so nasty? He would patiently wipe smudges of candy and ice cream from little cheeks before attending to his art. And the hands if he could get away with it. They were always clutching at him and getting just the most noxious things all over him. Really, it was gross.
Ryan steadfastly refused to deal with the snotty ones.
He had been sneezed on exactly once.
Once was enough.
His days at the market were usually pretty steady. His work was impressive enough that simply sending the little heathens back out into the crowd would garner him more business. Ryan worked in color.
Ryan worked in color. He used it as an emotional force. Jon laughed at him and said that he could tell Ryan’s mood by the colors and the creatures he saw emblazoned on tiny faces. Butterflies and feathers? Good day. Bats and snakes? Not so much.
Ryan gave his therapist a little credit there. She may have a point.
Ryan had one regular. Every Saturday, Katie would come by and wait patiently for a lull in the press of grade schoolers. She’s never said, but Ryan thinks she’s a stripper. She always has him paint her a fabulous necklace, sometimes reaching up one side of her neck or the other, but always dripping down into her discreetly bared cleavage. Some days Ryan will throw in something extra around her eyes. Katie often brings stick-on rhinestones, and Ryan always finds places for them, if a little embarrassedly. He can keep his professional distance more easily when separated by the length of a paintbrush. It becomes a little more difficult when he has to press his fingers to flesh.
The worst thing about the face-painting gig, however, was Brendon. Brendon was sort of the best thing about it, too, though, and Ryan wasn’t sure how he could be both. If anyone could, it would be Brendon. Brendon was just…too loud, too happy, too frenetic…too everything.
After Ryan met Jon, when Jon opened up the chocolate stand, Ryan wondered all the time how Jon put up with Brendon in the stall. Jon was every bit as much of an artist as Ryan, and to have Brendon four feet away all day, spilling melted chocolate all over everything…well, Ryan didn’t understand. But Jon Walker seemed to have a core of quiet calm. Ryan’s core wasn’t particularly quiet, or calm.
He made it harder on himself, too. No, that wasn’t true. Brendon made it harder, by wheedling Ryan to paint his face. You just didn’t ignore a wheedling Brendon Urie. He wouldn’t allow it. The only two options were giving in, or bitching and moaning and threatening, and then giving in. Ryan usually went for Option B just out of principle. He still ended up in the same place, though. Sitting a foot away from Brendon, who vibrated with nervous energy like a power line. Whose breath smelled like coffee and chocolate, and whose great dark eyes stared into Ryan’s eyes the entire time, with this intense expression of concentration, like he could see the inner workings of Ryan’s mind through his golden-brown eyes.
Shit like that was why Ryan preferred painting landscapes. Landscapes didn’t stare back.
***
The thing about the farmer’s market was that faces became familiar. And Ryan got better at recognizing them. He should have been pretty good at that anyway, as an artist, but he never focused on people as objets d’art. Ryan was a landscape artist. His heart was in the big picture. Rolling hills. Tumbling dunes. Sunbaked cities. People were… background music.
That’s what made him crazy about school. He had to be well rounded. Sculpture. Drafting. Watercolor. Ryan loathed watercolor. Really. Watercolor sucked. And he had to work with different subjects. Still life. Gah. Not so bad, ultimately, but Ryan couldn’t generally get excited about painting a fucking cup or some shit. Portraits…
Portraits were entertaining in the sense that Ryan always got a little twisted kick of pleasure out of the discomfiture of the models. He loved it when the professors practically had to nail them to the floor to keep them from bolting. It was kind of boring when they were enthusiastic about it. Those ones were usually wiggly too.
Ryan was kind of sadistic about his portrait models.
Ryan didn’t know where they got the models for school. He had never seen one before they came in for a class, and he had never seen one after. It’s like they shipped them in or something. But then, maybe it was part of his maturation process, but Ryan was more observant of people now. Ryan noticed the lady who bought a skein of wool from Greta and Vicky nearly every week. He recognized the college girl whose shorts got shorter as the summer progressed... She was kind of hard to miss, actually. Blonde, with the legs. And she always stopped at Joe’s to torment him and not buy anything.
He recognized the dark little guy who was stalking Patrick. Not because he was stalking Patrick. Or not stalking, because Patrick seemed to be into it. That guy was a portrait model. Ryan snorted softly. He’d have to go introduce himself and see if it freaked the guy out. Heh. That one was sort of an exhibitionist. While it seemed to go against Ryan’s general laws of portrait model value, since this guy was into taking his clothes off for a bunch of random strangers, he still had a degree of unease that made Ryan press his lips together in a thin, cruel line whenever he came in. He was fairly desperate for attention, and it made for excellent face studies.
***
Ryan noticed when he had painted the third dark little creature in a row. Shit. He was not having a good day. Ryan finished a tiny black wing with a flourish and sent its bearer on his merry way with a half-hearted pat. He attempted to smile at this one’s mother, but it came out as more of a grimace.
Ryan was actually having a really good, steady day. He was going to make a little money. But it wasn’t enough. His stupid nine-to-five, I-only-do-this-to-make-the-rent job had let him go. Not “fired”, oh no; they “let him go”.
Ryan had had plans. Getting fired was really not amenable to the inception of those plans.
It wasn’t Ryan’s fault that his boss had been fucking the Big Boss’ secretary. Who had also been fucking the Big Boss, but… You know, semantics. It was like politics. A regime change. The one guy is out, so all his staff goes with him. Ryan didn’t know what to do with himself. He needed a job. A real job, not just screwing around at the farmer’s market once a week. While it was fun, it wouldn’t meet his needs. Ryan had to pay for school. He had rent. He wanted to move. Well, he couldn’t do that now…
Ryan had been the personal assistant for this big up-and-comer ad exec for four years. He was not his secretary, or administrative assistant, or whatever. No. He was this guy’s personal assistant. (Read: slave.) When his secretary had steadfastly refused to do his errands and menial tasks, Ryan had been hired. It wasn’t bad as far as college jobs went. Ryan ran for coffee. He picked up dry cleaning. He made some copies. Although why the damn secretary wouldn’t do that was beyond him... He went to the mailroom.
And the mailroom is where he met Brendon.
Brendon. Ryan’s fingers itched. He wanted to paint. He wanted to get the hell out of there and just cover some canvas. He really just wanted to get the hell out of there.
When Ryan painted he didn’t think.
Ryan really needed to not think for a while. He needed to not think about his job. He needed to not think about his apartment. He needed to not think about Brendon.
Ryan suddenly wanted to paint something yellow. Something luminous. Something light and free. Something…
“Hey, man.”
“Brendon.” Ryan’s insides twirled and clenched at the same time. It really was quite a dance. Brendon thrilled him and irritated him and confused him. Ryan took a deep breath and gestured for him to sit. He picked up his brush again and dipped it in a sunny yellow before thinking better of it and dipping it again in a bright cerulean blue. He had just gone to make the first swipe across Brendon’s smooth cheek when Brendon grasped his wrist and stilled his hand. The color smeared along the bone, marking Brendon as if he was being painted for war.
Maybe he was, with that look in his eye.
“I heard about your job. At the office,” Brendon dragged Ryan’s hand away, gripping his wrist and digging in so hard that Ryan was sure he would leave bruises. Bruises were something. Something he was used to, if not with Brendon. Ryan just shrugged. He tried to pull away, but Brendon wouldn’t release him. “What are you going to do?” he asked, low. He stared at the place where his fingers pressed into Ryan’s skin, suddenly relaxing the pressure and gently stroking with his thumb where he had surely left a mark. Ryan jerked free and jabbed his brush into a jar.
“I don’t know,” Ryan replied tersely. “I’ll think of something. Right now I just want to go home.” Brendon’s eyes flashed darkly at him. He knew that Ryan would be stuck where he was and what it was doing to him. Trapped. Unable to leave. Unable to fend for himself. Unable to start over. Again.
“You don’t have to go home, you know,” Brendon offered. He hopped up from his seat and hovered over Ryan for a second.
“Yes,” Ryan sighed. “I do.” He paused, considering. “She’s coming home tonight.”
Brendon disappeared without another word.
***
See, Ryan lived with his girlfriend. She was a couple years older, a dancer, and beautiful. Ryan adored her, and was still kind of in awe that they were together. They had started dating when he was a sophomore, and he had lived with her for about a year.
It was her apartment. She was never there, but it was her place. Ryan just kind of existed in her space.
That was the problem.
Ryan wasn’t getting his needs met. Maybe he had been spending too much time with his therapist, but it was true. She seemed perfect. She was beautiful. She was successful at her own art. She had legs that went on for-fucking-ever. God, she had beautiful legs… They had lots and lots of amazing sex. When she was home. She was never home. She was always out auditioning or working or practicing or whatever it is girls do with their time. When she was home she wanted to fuck.
Ideal, right?
Ryan was bored. Ryan felt used. Ryan felt like a pet, or maybe a glorified sex toy. Ryan was lonely.
Ryan was confused. Ryan wasn’t blaming himself. And he wasn’t blaming her. He placed the blame solely on Brendon.
***
Brendon’s job at the ad agency was just one of many that he held down. Ryan knew that he delivered things for Jon, as well as helping him out at the market every Saturday. He worked in the mailroom in the mornings and for the Italian restaurant in the afternoons. He also did random things here and there when he could, but Ryan could never keep track of it all and quickly stopped trying. Brendon bounced from job to job like he bounced about any space he occupied.
This was why Ryan was amazed he’d never actually seen Brendon before he showed up in the mailroom one morning. He wasn’t about to forget it, though. The office manager really should have known better than to give Brendon a mail cart. Ryan really should have been watching where he was walking, too, but at that moment he was blissfully unaware a menace to society had been unleashed in the building.
Brendon hadn’t actually run Ryan down, to be honest. He’d managed to stop the cart in time. But Ryan, his balance impeded by the stack of rolled drawings he carried, had gone down anyway. The next thing he knew, unfamiliar hands were picking him up off the ground, and horrified dark eyes were peering into his. From about a foot away. Brendon was never very generous with personal space.
“Wow, that’s probably the quickest I’ve ever had a guy roll over for me.”
“Excuse me?” Ryan had hissed, batting at Brendon’s questioning hands. To little avail, really. Brendon had seemed determined to feel him up in some semblance of an examination right there on the floor. “Do I know you? Do you even work here?”
“It’s only my second day,” Brendon had replied, big innocent eyes blinking earnestly. “And I’d remember if I had run into you before.”
“Obviously you haven’t finished your training.” Ryan had finally been able to push Brendon away from him and stand up. “The sexual harassment information is usually saved for the end, once they know you’re worth keeping,” he had sneered, and brushed carpet lint and dust from his pants.
“Oh well, I only need to stick it out for three weeks for this to be a job record for me.”
“Good luck with that,” Ryan had noted dryly.
“You’ll miss me if I’m gone. Besides, how will you keep your reflexes honed without me around?” Brendon had grinned and patted the mail cart.
Ryan had smiled in spite of himself. Brendon took a moment to seriously inquire after his well-being, and then Ryan escaped to the archives with his drawings. He had spent the rest of the day busy with the menial tasks set to him, but found himself feeling the ghosts of hands on his chest at odd moments. No, he had told himself. Just ignore it. He probably won’t last the week, anyway, and then it’ll all just go away.
***
That was two years ago, and the problem was, Brendon hadn’t gone away. In fact, Brendon Urie had proved to be a very difficult person to get rid of. If you would have told Ryan that he’d be spending nearly every day with the guy two years later, he probably would have laughed. After their initial – literal – contact, Brendon seemed to have learned his lesson and had kept his hands off. Mostly. Except when he didn’t. Ryan was sure Brendon didn’t mean anything by it, not now. No, this was Ryan’s problem.
Ryan’s therapist really was no help.
“You sound like you had a good week this week, Ryan. What did you do?”
“Not much. She’s away again, so I went to the movies with Spencer and Brendon. Brendon came over one night with chocolate cake from Jon’s bakery. I don’t know.”
“But you enjoyed yourself?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You don’t sound very convinced. Why is that?”
“It’s just…Brendon’s been coming around a lot lately, and….”
“And what? He seems like a good friend, Ryan. Do you feel like he’s a good friend for you?”
“Well. Yes, but. There’s just something about him being around so much, I feel…”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.” They were both silent for a moment. Then Ryan said, haltingly, “Being around him makes me feel like…it’s like my skin doesn’t fit right anymore, okay? I can’t explain it. But I like it when he’s around, so. I just don’t know.”
Ryan twisted his hands together in his lap, staring fixedly at the frayed cuff of his jeans. He heard the sound of a pen scratching on paper from the desk. He hated that sound. It always seemed to say, I know something you haven’t figured out yet.
The trouble was, he thought he was finally starting to understand.
***
She was home when he got there. Unusual. She usually got home later. Evenings, mostly. Probably not a good sign…
She was all happy, too.
Ryan was perplexed.
She got a job with a dance troupe back East. Not one of the principal dancers, but a good part, and steady.
She wanted to celebrate. Ryan really wasn’t in the mood. Because, essentially, that was the way it boiled down with her. She was all happy and horny and Ryan just didn’t want to deal with it.
Because it meant she was leaving, and she didn’t really get that. Leaving. Just her. Ryan still had to finish school. (He will. He’s going to finish. He’s not quitting now when he’s so close.)
She didn’t understand what his problem was.
“Why are you acting this way? Why do you always make everything all about you?”
“That’s the thing. I never make it about me. This time I am,” he spit back.
“Well, obviously you don’t want me. You can have this apartment. I’ll be out in two weeks. It’s all yours.” Ryan closed his eyes tiredly. A door slammed, and Ryan wasn’t sure if it was the bedroom or the front entrance.
Within five minutes Ryan lost his girlfriend and gained his own apartment. An apartment he couldn’t afford. He had no idea what to do with either of those developments.
Ryan called Spencer. Who else could he call, if not his best friend? It took a few rings, but Spence picked up, sounding distracted.
“Spence, I need you!”
“Ry, I’m kind of busy right now, man,” Spencer replied breathlessly. Ryan could hear someone in the background. Jon. Ryan fumbled wordlessly for an instant. Spencer was with his boyfriend. “Oh, oh, I’ll—uh, okay. I’ll talk to you later.” And hung up on him.
Ryan looked around the apartment. She was gone. But it wasn’t enough. He had to get out of there too. But where could he go? Spence was obviously otherwise occupied. Ryan didn’t really have anyone else to go to. He realized that wasn’t really true, though.
Ryan had Brendon. “You don’t have to go home, you know,” Brendon had offered earlier.
And that made him pause at the door with his keys in his hand. Brendon. Why should going to Brendon at a time like this be any different than going to Spencer? But it was.
Ryan went anyway.