Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ryan has been told that he has the look of a broken heart. He’s never had his heart broken by anyone though, mostly because he wasn’t very good at interacting with people. If given the choice he wouldn’t interact with anyone.

His friendship with Bill was the longest relationship he’s ever had, and that’s mostly because Bill was a stubborn bastard. When Ryan pushed him away he just came back.

Because that’s what Ryan did. Whenever things got big or scary he would push people away. The psychologists probably had a name for it, the one he had been seeing certainly had a few things to say about it.

She’d said that his abusive father had a part to play, even though Ryan had been too young to remember much. She said Ryan's absent mother probably set an example, when things get tough, the tough got going. She said that Ryan had put up so many walls to protect himself that one day he won’t be able to break through them.

In the end he decided the doctor wasn’t really making things better so he stopped going. She probably thought he was just pushing her away too.

Ryan didn’t see the point in analyzing the past. It made him who he was today but beyond that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Jon never really asked about Ryan's past. It’s one of the things Ryan loved about him. It’s not that he didn’t care; it just didn’t matter as much. He said the only thing that mattered about the past is that it brought them together. Ryan had rolled his eyes when he’d first said it because that sounds like it came straight out of a book.

But the more Ryan thought about it the more he loved Jon for it. He didn’t really know much about Jon's past either, besides the places he’d been and even those where patchy and incomplete. But if Jon had done anything differently, decided on a different country or city, or even a different ashram it would have all gone differently.

Jon was a romantic, Ryan was realistic. Jon said it was fate, but Ryan said it was coincidence. The chances were small but not impossible. It didn’t really matter in the end. Jon said he didn’t need to know about Ryan's past because he fell in love with this version of Ryan. Ryan had to agree. He didn’t need to know about Jon's past because the result was standing right in front of him.