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When Brendon woke up that morning, the bed next to him was already empty. Sarah was waiting in the kitchen, which was unusual because she always slept in, and the table was completely blank, which was also unusual because on a normal day, she surely would have prepared breakfast if she was up early. Brendon, however, didn't pay attention to any of those observations right then. With a sleepy smile, he greeted her. “Morning, babe.”
“Morning.” She was looking tense and didn't return his smile. “Have you heard about Ryan?”, she asked, biting her bottom lip.
As always, her mention of the name made him jump slightly. “Wha – the last time I saw him was at the Halloween party. He was wearing this gremlin costume. Other than that, no, I haven't heard anything.”
“Thought so”, she said, staring down at the smooth surface of the wooden table. “Halsey called me earlier today and told me he -”
“Since when has Halsey been in contact with... him?” After all these years, it was still difficult for him to say the name, and yet everybody who talked to Ryan more than he did himself caused jealousy in him.
“Does it matter?” Sarah looked up. Only then he saw that her eyes were suspiciously shiny and her voice was trembling. Why had he not noticed the warning signs before?
“Fuck, what... did something happen to him?” It was impossible, wasn't it? Only yesterday he had checked his instagram and seen a new picture, Ryan with his dog, looking happy and as cute as ever. Only yesterday his finger had hovered over the green phone symbol next to Ryan's number in his phone, as it did almost every day, and as always, he had decided that he would call him tomorrow. He wasn't ready yet.
Slowly, Sarah lowered her head. “Yes”, she meant to say, but it came out as a whisper.
“Fuck, did he... is he... he didn't die, did he?”
She shook her head.
Brendon breathed in deeply, relieved. So he still had time to tell Ryan everything that should have been said years ago, words he woke up choking on in the middle of the night, always close to picking up the phone and calling. Close, but never close enough. How could he have survived Ryan's death with all of it unsaid forever? This time, he would not make up excuses. He would tell him everything, finally.
“He's – he's unconscious”, Sarah continued. She hadn't met Ryan in person more than three or four times in passing, but she knew how much he meant to Brendon, even years after their unpleasant breakup. “He drove his car into a tree. They don't know if it was – if he did it on purpose. The ambulance immediately got there, but he hasn't woken up since.” Now actual tears were running down her cheeks.
“He will wake up, won't he?” He had to.
Sarah shrugged weakly, saying, “They don't know yet.”
When he started crying, shaking and trembling, Sarah hugged him. She comforted him, kept him from falling apart, as she always did.
+++
“I want to visit him.”
Sarah didn't sound surprised, nor did she have to ask who he meant. “Thought so.”
He almost smiled. She knew him so well, and she was truly a perfect wife, the love of his life. One of the loves of his life.
They had gone to bed late, but neither of them had been sleeping. He knew that just like him, Sarah had been lying awake and staring into the dark in silence, listening to each other's breathing.
All day long, they had been avoiding the subject, talking about usual everyday issues, both pretending not to notice the ghost of Ryan's accident while both knew that the other was thinking about it.
Brendon hat shut down his phone after seeing numerous fans expressing their sympathy and passive-aggressively asking him to respond to it. He didn't know how they had found out this time, but they always did. They were probably more investigative than the NSA and certainly more passionate. Sometimes it made him sick, the way they stripped away every layer of privacy to expose the bare bones of him and Ryan, Ryan and him. If only they had never found out. Even now, so long after the end of the band and their relationship, they were still alive, the shippers and fanfiction writers, feasting on every detail of his and Ryan's rare interactions like vultures. Usually, he could laugh about it, but today it made him sick.
“Do you know where he is?”, he asked Sarah.
“Yes, Halsey told me.”
He sat up swiftly. “Well then, let's go.”
“It's the middle of the night, they surely won't allow visitors”, she objected weakly.
“I don't care, I'm going. They have to let me in. They have to.” He paused, trying to force his voice to sound normal. “You can stay here, if you want to, but I'm going now.”
“D'you think I want to get a call tomorrow that you are lying in the hospital because you hit a tree? No, I'm not letting you go on your own, not when you're like this. Just give me... two minutes.” She yawned and sat up too. “Can I make myself a cup of coffee before we go?”
“Of course. I'm gonna make it while you get ready, right?” When he turned on the light on his way out, he saw her smiling at him.
+++
“I'm sorry, we can't let anyone in yet, visiting time is from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.”, the receptionist said, sounding more bored than sorry.
“But I want to see him! I'm his -” He broke off. Ex-boyfriend? Ex-band mate? Ex-secret affair? None of this would convince the women in front of him who was wearing an expression of ultimate indifference.
“I'm afraid you'll have to wait a few hours.”
“But -”, he began to protest again.
“Shh, calm down”, Sarah said, squeezing his hand. Turned towards the receptionist, she asked, “Can you tell us something about his state? Do the doctors know if he will recover yet?”
“I can look up his file”, the woman said. Towards Sarah, she seemed slightly warmer than towards him. She usually had that effect on people. “George Ross, you said? The third?” Both of them nodded. She clicked the mouse and read through something on the computer display in front of her, invisible to them. “Right now, the file just says that he is in the ICU and probably will stay there for a longer time.”
“Thanks”, Sarah said shakily.
“You can ask the responsible doctor for more information when you visit the station.”
“Thanks”, Brendon repeated.
“No problem. See you in six hours.” With this unmistakable dismissal, she went back to her work on the monitor.
“I'm going to wait here”, Brendon declared as soon as they had turned around.
“But... six hours? It would just take us an hour to get home. We could sleep.”
“I don't care, I'm not leaving.”
She sighed in defeat and sat down next to him. “I'll wait with you.”
Sudden gratitude for her presence overwhelmed him. “I love you. Do you know that I love you?”
“Yes, I do.” She smiled weakly. “We're married, would be weird if you didn't.”
He punched her in the arm softly. “But still.”
“Yeah, I know. I love you too.”
She rested her head against his shoulder as he stared ahead, eyes fixed on a plain metal clock hanging on the opposite wall. The seconds ticked by excruciatingly slowly. The room looked just like any hospital lobby he had ever been to, sterile, medical, unaesthetic. The floor was a sickly green. Even the smell of disinfectant was the same in every hospital.
He had always hated hospitals and their cold, clinical atmosphere. The walls were indifferent to anything happening inside them, just like the doctors and nurses. They always looked tired and indifferent. Maybe working here hardened a person, the sickness and death of patients and their families' and friends' suffering became nothing more than a part of everyday business. Maybe it was necessary to become cynical in order to survive in the hospital.
Brendon wasn't like that, but for a moment, he wished he could stop caring about it, because it was tearing him apart inside, the knowledge that Ryan Ross was lying in one of those rooms. That he might die.
As the time passed, more slowly than it ever had before, he thought back to all his memories of them together, the happier and the less happy parts. How they had started out as friends, but Brendon had always been in love with him, ever since they had met. How he had managed to hide it until that rainy night on the beach when Ryan had finally, finally confessed that he felt the same way. It had been the happiest night of his life.
He thought of the years after that, full of secret meetings and stolen kisses, always hidden in the dark except on stage when they openly sang songs to each other, written in metaphors that only they could decipher. They could have been happy together. They could have settled down, settled in Seattle, if Ryan hadn't kept pushing him away every time he suggested to make it official. He wasn't ready, he had said. He loved Brendon, but he wasn't ready to tell the world, so he left in Cape Town.
He left and broke Brendon's heart so badly that he ignored all of Ryan's attempts to contact him again for the next few years, and the messages hidden in his songs that no one except him could understand. Ryan stopped trying to get to him when he married Sarah. And Brendon never dared to call him, even though the urge got stronger every day. It was not that he wanted them to get back together, no. Most of all, he wanted to get rid of all the unresolved conflicts and just talk about all of it. What a relief that would be.
And now it might be too late.
At some point, Sarah got up to find something to eat and returned with two sandwiches. She offered him one, but he was unable to eat. Other visitors, looking tired and weary, passed through the lobby. Some sat down, but nobody stayed as long as them. As Sarah fell asleep, head against his shoulder, the memories ran through his head over and over again like a record stuck on repeat, and he made up a plan what he would say to Ryan.
+++
When the clock finally showed 10 a.m. - despite his restless mind, he had dozed off once or twice while waiting – he gently pushed Sarah's head off his shoulder and put his sweater on the chair for her as a pillow. She didn't wake up, which was good because this was something he had to do alone.
A sign next to the elevator told him that the ICU was on the third floor.
The elevator was empty. He looked at his reflection in the full-body mirror, fighting the desire to change something about his appearance because he had dark circles under his eyes, stubble on his cheeks and unwashed hair. It was too late for that, and it was not like it would matter anyway.
The third floor looked almost exactly like the lobby. Only the smell of disinfectant seemed to be a little stronger. Brendon walked up to the reception. The receptionist looked much younger and friendlier than the one in the lobby. Her clothes told him that she was a nurse.
“Um, hello, I'm here to visit Ry... George Ross?”, he said uncertainly. “Is that possible?”
She gave him a smile, though her eyes looked tired. “Yes, but you can only stay for ten to fifteen minutes, you have to wash your hands with the antibacterial foam in the container next to the door, and you have to sign this to guarantee that you don't have any infectious diseases at the moment”, she said mechanically, putting a piece of paper and a pen on the table.
“Okay, no problem”, he said, writing his signature on the paper without even reading it. “Can you tell me about his state? Or do you know who's responsible for him?”
“He has very severe head injuries and has been unconscious most of the time, but every now and then he wakes up for a few minutes, seemingly unable to speak. I don't think we know if he will recover yet. It is also possible that his brain has been damaged permanently. We haven't made a MRT scan yet, but you should know that. He might have lost his memory or ability to speak”, she said, sounding apologetic. “But as I said, I don't think we know anything yet. Don't give up your hope, and maybe talk to him. I can ask the doctor that's treating him, but you would have to wait a while because he's in an important patient care procedure right now.”
“No, it's fine, thank you.”
She led him along the floor. He followed, knees weak. What would it be like? Would he even be awake? Would he talk to him?
The nurse pointed at the hand wash next to the door, and when he had spread of it some on his palms to clean them, she opened the door. “I'm going to leave you alone, is that alright?” She smiled shyly. “Please press the red button if you need help.”
Brendon nodded, and she finally closed the door behind him. For a moment, he stood in the room, unable to move and staring at the figure lying between the white sheets.
Had he not known that it was Ryan, he might not have recognized him. The person in the hospital bed was covered in bandages, one leg in a cast, and there were tubes, many tubes, leading fluids of different sickening colors into the damaged body to keep it alive. Next to the bed, a machine was monitoring his heartbeat in slow but steady beeps.
For the first time, Brendon fully grasped the idea that Ryan was not immortal and he might lose him.
Tentatively, he began to move, crossing the small room with a few steps and sitting down in the chair next to it. He looked down on Ryan's face. Its color almost matched that of the surrounding sheets. His eyes were closed, cheeks hollow. He had grown a beard, Brendon had already seen that in pictures. One of the many, many things he had always wanted to tell Ryan was that it looked good on him, but that was not a matter of importance right now.
“Ryan”, he began and cleared his throat. It was strange to hear his own voice cut through the clinical silence of the hospital room.
No reaction. The beeping of the monitor didn't change in the slightest.
“I don't know if you can hear me. They said you regain consciousness sometimes. Maybe you can hear me anyway, wherever you are right now.” He paused and hesitatingly touched Ryan's arm. The skin was as soft as ever, but it felt cold.
Still no reaction.
“It's me, Brendon”, he continued. “I wanted to tell you... there's a lot I want to tell you, and I'm incredibly sorry I never did it when you were...” Alive? No, but he wasn't dead. And he wasn't going to die. “Anyway. I'm sorry. The one thing I want you to know, above all, is...”
He had swallowed down those words so often that they were hard to say now. “It's that... I never stopped loving you. Never. First I hated you for leaving me, but I hated you because I loved you, and then later, when I had calmed down, you were still there in the back of my mind. I love Sarah with all of my heart, I really do, but I will also never stop loving you. I'm not limited to loving one person at a time, and I love her as well as I still love you.” The words came out in a rush, not exactly as he had practiced them in his head, but the message was clear.
“Remember how we said we wanted to reinvent love?”
Brendon stopped talking when he noticed that the beeping had sped up a little. He held his breath. Ryan had heard him.
He watched, transfixed, as the man in the hospital bed opened his eyes and looked at him.
They were the familiar shade of warm light brown he hadn't seen in a long time, but they were bare of any emotion. The emptiness of Ryan's expression scared Brendon more than anger or hatred could ever have.
“Did... did you hear me?”
No reaction. He had been prepared for Ryan being angry at him, but not for this.
“Do you know who I am?”
He just kept staring at him with those blank eyes, expression unchanging. He wasn't even blinking.
The realization came like a sudden punch to the guts that forced all the air out of his lungs. Brendon began to shake. The nurse had told him it was possible that he had lost his memory, but he hadn't believed it simply because he could not imagine it. Ryan didn't recognize him.
Every word that he had been planning to say died in his throat.
Brendon stood up, tears rushing down his cheeks. The nurse gave him a questioning look when he walked, almost ran past the reception towards the elevator, but thankfully she didn't ask any questions. He wouldn't have been able to form the words.
Sarah was awake now, giving him a worried look. “Are you alr-”
“No”, he said. “I need to leave. Now. Please, get me out of here.”
She was immediately by his side, comforting him with her sheer presence and gently leading him as he followed her out of the hospital, almost blinded by tears.
In the car, none of them said a word while she steered the car out of the parking lot. Only after a few minutes, when they were already on the highway, Sarah cautiously asked, “What happened?”
“It wasn't Ryan”, Brendon said, voice choked. “He wasn't there.”
“What do you mean?” She took her eyes off the road for a moment to look at him, frowning.
“He didn't know who I was, he couldn't remember me, it was...” He broke off, not finding the words to describe how it had felt.
“Are you sure? Maybe he was just unable to speak and move.”
“I saw it in his eyes. He didn't recognize me. And I... I don't want to go back there”, he said, shivering.
“You don't have to. Everything is going to be alright”, Sarah said in a futile attempt to soothe him. No, it wasn't. Nothing was going to be alright, he wanted to scream at her, but she didn't deserve that, it wasn't her fault. It was his own fault that he had missed all his chances. He knew he had lost Ryan forever.
+++
A few days later, the phone rang. Brendon had been sitting at the piano, trying to think of a melody, but every time, he just ended up singing old songs over and over again. He was unable to escape his memories to create something new.
The caller identification showed an unfamiliar phone number. He accepted the call. “Urie?”
“Brendon, is this you? It's me, Dan. Dan Keyes, I mean.”
“Yes, it's me. What's up?” He actually didn't need to ask. Dan was one of Ryan's best friends. There could only be one reason he was calling.
“I don't know if you've heard about it, but Ryan was in an accident almost a week ago.”
“I know.” Apparently he didn't know about the visit, and Brendon couldn't bring himself to talk about it.
“His head injuries were pretty bad, and he... he...” Dan's voice began to shake for the first time. He took a deep, audible breath. “He died. A few hours ago. They couldn't save him.”
“Oh.” It was impossible for Brendon to act shocked or surprised. The shock had already happened on the day he had visited the hospital, and he had been expecting this.
“I just think you deserve to know, because, I mean, you used to be best friends, and he... Ryan always spoke highly of you.”
The last words stung even more than the fact that Ryan had never told his best friend about their secret affair. Another truth that would never be spoken now. “Thanks for letting me know”, Brendon said.
“And another thing... there will be a funeral, of course. Me and his mom have been pretty much the only people taking care of everything, including that, and you don't have to help with anything but we thought it might be nice if you'd sing there, and maybe say something. Only if you want to, obviously.”
“Of course.”
“So you'll do it?” Dan sounded relieved. “That's great. Thanks a lot. I'll call you if there's something you need to know.”
“Okay. No problem. Bye.”
“Bye. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”
The phone beeped, the call was ended. “Me too”, Brendon told the silent phone and sighed. He didn't need to think twice about which song he was going to sing.
+++
The sky on the day of the funeral was inappropriately blue, contrasting the black clothes of the small crowd beneath it. As Ryan had demanded in his will, the funeral had been kept secret from the public. There were no cameras and no fans, just a number of old and new friends. Every former band member was there. Brendon had seen Spencer earlier, holding on to his wife's hand and looking lost.
Ryan's latest ex-girlfriend was there too. Even though they had broken up a while ago and only dated for a few months, she had helped organize everything. She had also been the one to tell them about Ryan's testament – nobody had expected him to have one at his age, but it made all decisions a lot easier.
Not for the first time, Brendon wondered if it had been suicide, because it seemed that he had prepared his death very well, planning even his funeral in detail. But on the other hand, none of his friends said that he had seemed particularly down in the previous time. Maybe he was just being realistic when he wrote it. Anyway, it didn't really matter, did it? He was gone now, and there was nothing that could change this fact.
Nothing.
Once again, realization hit Brendon. He would never see Ryan's face again except in old pictures. He would never make up with him. They would never become friends again, let alone lovers. He had missed his chance. He had missed his chance and he would never, never get another one.
The funeral itself passed in a blur of black and blue. He couldn't concentrate on anything that was said as one friend after the other stepped to the front to give a short speech. Every now and then, his eyes returned to the closed coffin at the front. He couldn't see the body, but he knew the clothes it was wearing.
Ryan had requested that in his will, too. “I want to be buried in the clothes I was wearing on the evening of my twenty-first birthday”, he had written, “because they remind me of the time when I was happiest.” When Brendon had found out about it, he had cried for the first time after hearing the news of his death, because he knew, of course he knew. He remembered the night as if it had been yesterday. It had been raining in Seattle when Ryan left his own birthday party in New York to fly to where Brendon was.
In between the speeches, Fall Out Boy played some of Ryan's favorite songs. As the band that had both inspired him and made it possible for him to become a musician, they had immediately agreed to play and refused to get paid for it. According to Dan, Pete had bitterly said, “I thought the next occasion we were going to play for him would be his wedding.” Today, even Patrick's voice didn't sound as powerful as it usually did.
The piano at the front, however, wasn't used by the band. It had been brought here specifically for Brendon. Last of all, it was his turn. Taking a deep breath, he stood up and walked past the waiting crowd to sit down at the piano.
He adjusted the microphone and spoke into it. “I was asked to give a speech and I tried to find something to talk about”, he said. “I really did. But every word I wrote down felt wrong and hypocritical because I should've said it to Ryan himself when I still had the chance.” His voice failed. He shook his head. “God, I'm sorry. Just let me tell you something: please learn from my mistakes. If there's something you really need to tell someone, do it. Don't wait six years. Call them immediately, stop making excuses. You never know when it might be too late.” He angrily wiped a tear out of his eye. “I'm going to sing a song now. It's called Impossible Year, and I wrote it about Ryan.”
His hands began to play the first chords almost automatically. It had been so easy to pick the song. The lyrics were scarily fitting, as if he had known when he wrote it months ago. As if he had written it for this occasion.
“There's no sunshine, this impossible year”, he began. But there was sunshine, the sky was so blue, so impious. Couldn't the weather show a little more respect? Almost all of their memories together were drenched in rain, the night at the beach and the Seattle night. Just typhoons and monsoons this impossible year.
At the words “just a beachfront of bad blood”, his voice almost stopped working again. If he had ever claimed that there was no bad blood between him and Ryan, in one of the countless interviews he had been asked about it, it had been a lie. There had been bad blood, and now it was to late to clear the coast. They had inevitably carried their resentments to the grave.
“There's no you and me, this impossible year”, he sang. “Only heartache and heartbreak and gin made of tears.”
Oh, how naïve he had been when he wrote that song. He had thought it was impossible for them to get over their old conflicts and make up for no valid reason at all. Now he knew the true meaning of the word “impossible”, and it choked him up. It drowned all the air out of him. “There's never air to breathe, there's never in-betweens, these nightmares always hang on past the dream...”
Looking up, he spotted Halsey in the crowd. She was crying silently. Noticing his gaze, she gave him a helpless, watery-eyed smile.
“There's no sunshine, there's no you and me.” Never again. “There's no good times, this impossible year”, he finished, holding the last chord for a few seconds until it became unbearable. After waiting patiently for the applause to fade, he returned to his seat.
He watched as the coffin was lowered into the earth, and after a while the attendants started leaving one by one. Brendon stayed behind. When Sarah found him by the tombstone, she asked, “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
He nodded gratefully. “Please.”
She ran his hand over his back fleetingly and left. Finally, he was the only living person left on the graveyard. He knelt down in front of the grave, as if in prayer, but he wasn't religious. He had never been, and neither had Ryan. “We're all too small to talk to God”, he had once said. “We're all too smart to talk to God.” He had been so talented with words.
It was impossible for Brendon to measure how long he stayed there, mind racing at first and screaming out all the words he should have said to him, nails digging into his own palms almost without his notice. After a while, it wore out. His thoughts became calmer and he stopped shaking.
Suddenly, he felt a raindrop on his face, quickly followed by another one. He looked up at the dark gray clouds now covering the sky. Raindrops mingled with the tears that were already drying on his cheeks.
“Northern downpour sends its love”, he whispered, an incredulous smile forming on his face.
I will always love you. I will always love you.
He watched the raindrops running down the words that were engraved in the tombstone. Ryan had asked for them, exactly those words. He had planned everything thoroughly. Not “George Ryan Ross III”, just “Ryan Ross”.
Beneath the name and dates, the tombstone read, Once and for all, the moon has fallen down.