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A Life Alone
By Melanie
They corner Ryan in his room,
his sanctuary from the fans and the noise and being ‘Ryan Ross’.
Ryan thinks that when its
time for their ‘Behind The Music’
that Panic! At The Disco could be summed as such…
Four came, four sang, four
laughed, three made the decision to ‘take a break’.
It was a new tour, for a new
album. They have two buses and everyone has their own room and Ryan will only
realize after that when Spencer had spent time on the other bus it wasn’t to
give Ryan the solitude that he craved and that he and Jon were the only ones
taking advantage of having separate rooms.
They corner him in his room
and they all sit down and Spencer does all the talking, Brendon intercutting
here and there and Jon giving his two cents worth and what choice does Ryan
have but to agree with the decision that has, obviously, already been made
without him.
He didn’t understand, and he
didn’t want to agree. But he doesn’t think they even notice. They’re too busy
looking at each other and talking without talking and he and Spencer used to be
able to do that, and Brendon and him and Jon and him to a small degree.
He wonders at what point he’d
been cut off, he hadn’t thought that he was that oblivious to the happenings
around him.
He wonders why he’d been cut off.
“Just a little break,”
Spencer says again and he looks at Ryan and Ryan pastes a fake small smile on
his face and Spencer, who has known him forever and a day and can tell when
he’s going to utter a lie by the change in his breathing, he doesn’t notice.
So Ryan nods, mouth firmly
shut because if he opens it he’ll ask ‘why, why, why’? And maybe there is no
explanation they could give him that will make things make sense.
Make things less like he’d
been cut out of his own band and that his thoughts on the matter hadn’t
mattered in the least.
These are his best friends,
his brothers and they hadn’t even asked for his thoughts on the matter before
they’d made the decision for him.
He wonders what he’s supposed
to do with all the words in his head now that there isn’t a voice to sing them or
a band to play them.
******************************************************************************
They dissolve easily, he
doesn’t throw fits left and right like they’d most likely expected, he wishes
he could, because he still doesn’t understand and he wants to.
The album hadn’t done that badly, not as well as they’d hoped
but not as horribly as he’d feared, so he doesn’t understand why taking a break
right now is so important.
But he doesn’t say anything
and he doesn’t throw fits, he doesn’t really say anything at all because he’s
afraid of the ‘why, why, why’s’ that are just barely tied up behind his closed
mouth.
Towards the end, he thinks,
they maybe see something isn’t totally right. Because Spencer starts shooting
him looks of concern and Brendon stares at him like he thinks Ryan is something
fragile that he’s dropped and broken and hasn’t figured out where all the
pieces were so he could make Jon glue it back together.
He spends a lot of time in
his bunk, because once the decision was made and Ryan had been told, well
Spencer and Brendon and Jon obviously felt there was no need to hide in the
other bus where they’d made all their
decisions and they’d subsequently had it sent away.
So they could be one big
happy family again. That plan probably doesn’t go the way they want it to,
because Ryan still doesn’t understand and he doesn’t want to scream and yell
the not-understanding to the sky… so he hides.
“Why don’t you come play with
us?” Jon asks, hand pressed to his shoulder and there is always concern there
but Ryan doesn’t know if it is real concern or if Jon is maybe the best actor
of all them and besides…
“Writing,” Ryan says, waves
his journal and he walks away, closing himself in his bunk and writing words
that no one will see, that Brendon won’t sing and he puts his headphones on and
doesn’t listen to the low murmurs that are probably about him.
******************************************************************************
He finds the little cottage a
month before the end of the tour (before the end of them).
He can’t go back to Vegas, to
him Vegas means him and Spencer and Brendon (and Brent) and being young and
ambitious and ready to take on the world. (It also means pain and suffering and
never being good enough for his father but he’s buried those feelings in words
and music that he’ll never play live again.)
And not LA because of Pete
and the rest of Fall Out Boy and that’s where he’s expected to go and it hurts that Pete had to have known about this,
okayed this decision because Pete is their boss for the most part and taking a
‘break’ isn’t something that can be just decided on a whim.
At the next rest stop he
stays on the bus while the others get off to get junk food (and talk about him)
and he makes the call and an offer.
The cottage is tiny,
secluded, quaint.
It is perfect.
******************************************************************************
Keltie laughs at him when he
tells her his plans. She doesn’t think that Spencer and Brendon and Jon are
going to let him go that easily and Ryan doesn’t tell her that he gets talked at more then he gets talked to.
At their last stop, their very
last concert, Spencer sits down with him the night before and talks at him for
hours.
About their past and their
childhood and reminding him that it was just for a little while, to allow
everyone to regroup and Ryan wonders the whole time at what point they’ll call
and tell him it is over.
He thinks that this might be
how a lot of bands break up.
They took breaks and then
just never came back from them.
******************************************************************************
They say goodbye at the
airport, Brendon’s arm over Spencer’s shoulder and Ryan thinks it telling that
Spencer isn’t shrugging it off. Just raises an eyebrow and glares at him,
Brendon grins and doesn’t move.
He is hugged by all of them,
even Brendon lets go of Spencer long enough to wrap his arms around him and
Ryan can’t make out what is being murmured against his neck but he thinks that
he isn’t supposed to anyway.
“Come back when you’re done,”
Jon says, like Ryan is just going out of town to run errands or something.
Jon is the last hug (Spencer
used to be, but now Spencer and Brendon are wrapped up in one another) and Ryan
just nods, better to agree with whatever they said then run the risk of ‘why,
why, why’ spewing forth in greater numbers then he would like.
He figures that it is a moot
point anyways, by the time he would (hypothetically) be ready to come back to
They think he is going to
Vegas or
His heart hurts and his
throat burns and the words rush through his mind, he taps his fingers against
Jon’s back before pulling away.
He has his notebook in his
bag and he knows that the words in his mind are melancholy and sad and it is
probably a good thing that Brendon will never sing them because they would have
to offer boxes of Kleenex’s free of charge at the door.
He smiles one last time and
settles his bag on his shoulder, he takes a step away and watches the three of
them reform themselves into one unit, without him.
They won’t miss him, Ryan
decides, they already fit together like they know they aren’t missing any
pieces.
It still hurts.
******************************************************************************
“I’m not living here,” Keltie
says, raised eyebrow and crossed arms.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Ryan
says absently. He is watching the movers unload boxes into the living room and
he can’t wait for everyone to leave so he can start sorting through his life
and putting things where they belong.
“I know,” she says softly, he
looks over at her and she looks back at him with distant resignation and
sadness.
“I’m sorry,” he says. And he
is. Keltie is the closest thing to a best friend he has since Spencer decided
that he no longer wanted the position and vacated it without naming his
substitute.
******************************************************************************
Pete is maybe the only one
who figures out that Ryan isn’t where he’s supposed to be at the beginning.
Ryan realizes this when Pete
e-mails him within three days of his moving into the cottage and asks him where
he is.
Ryan responds by describing
the sunset he’s looking at.
They communicate that way and
only twice does Pete write: pick up your
damn kick
Ryan’s sidekick is buried in
a box in the top of the hall closet and he only reaches for it twice a day now
instead of the half a dozen times that he’d gone for it the first day, he
instead sends him a list of strange and unusual things he’d seen during a walk
into town.
It takes another two weeks
before he starts getting multiple e-mails a day. He thinks that might be about
the point when Pete went to the others and they all realized that nobody knew where he was.
Which was probably a feat
unto itself as he wasn’t exactly a nobody.
But he hasn’t put makeup on
in a month; and he doesn’t dress like ‘Ryan Ross, emo rock star’ anymore.
He dresses like a normal
twenty-something in blue jeans and t-shirts, he leaves his makeup bag under the
bathroom sink and he leaves off all the embellishments that he would normally
affix to himself, so he was, almost, entirely anonymous.
Pete threatens and cajoles,
though he never gives out his e-mail to any of the others. Ryan thinks that he
likes being the only one that has any sort of contact with Ryan.
ill hire a pd
where are you?
are you ok?
ill sic spencer on you
theyre worried about you
The last one causes Ryan to
avoid his e-mail for a week. Because of all the people he thinks would lie to
him Pete isn’t one of them.
He’s seen the pictures, he
picks up the check-out magazines when he gets groceries and he’s seen the pictures of Pete and Brendon at
a club opening, arms over one another’s shoulders, seen the pictures of Brendon
and Spencer and Jon with big grins, all wrapped up in another.
They don’t miss him; he knows
Spencer well enough that, even in pictures, he can read only happiness in
Spencer’s eyes.
When he turns his computer
back on there are twenty-seven e-mails of varying degrees of worry from Pete
waiting, he reads them, then deletes them all without responding to them and
then opens word and starts typing.
He has words in his head and
if he can’t make them into a song maybe he can make them into something else.
Besides if he waits long
enough Pete will get bored and move on and he won’t have to worry about e-mails
wondering where he is.
He likes that there is
exactly one person (besides the bank people and the real estate people and the
lawyers and the guys that had moved his belongings from Vegas to the little
cottage) that knows where he is.
If they haven’t figured out
to talk to Keltie yet that isn’t his fault.
Though, he reminds himself,
Keltie was sworn to secrecy and
Keltie took her promises seriously.
******************************************************************************
He might not be writing
lyrics anymore and he might not have the three of them and their instruments of
choice ringing in his ear but he doesn’t stop writing.
He can’t.
He still has all the words
and when Keltie calls him on Sunday to check in (she always calls on a Sunday
and he wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to but it is nice to hear a
voice that knows him so he doesn’t) he tells her, “I’m writing a book.”
And waits for her to tell him
that it is a stupid idea and that he is an idiot.
“What’s it about?” she asks
instead.
And he tells her about the
convoluted plot, about best friends since childhood that drift apart when they
both fall in love the same guy, about how the hero goes away to allow them to
be together without having to feel guilty. How he finds himself in a small
town, where the neighbors are friendly and always have a welcome smile and how
he comes to accept that being alone is not always that bad.
Keltie is silent on the other
end for a long enough time that Ryan thinks that she’s hung up on him instead
of telling him that his idea sucks.
“You deserve to be happy,”
she says.
Ryan hmms at her and they
talk for a few more minutes about the weather and a premiere that she’d gone to
before they hang up.
******************************************************************************
Despite his best efforts he
makes friends.
Colleen at the book store
sets aside paperbacks that she thinks would interest him after they have an hour
long discussion on modern day poets and the difficulties of getting published
in that genre.
Just because he’s not living
the
Mark at the coffee shop
remembers his caffeine of choice after his first visit and sometimes Ryan
threatens to change his order just to shake things up.
“You like things to be the
same,” Mark just says, taking his money and smiling at him.
One day he presses a flyer
into his hand along with Ryan’s change.
“I’m having my first gallery
opening thing,” Mark shrugs and Ryan glances down at it. “Be nice to see some
familiar faces there.” Ryan nods and walks away to get his coffee, he folds the
flyer up and shoves it into his pocket. He finds it when he’s sorting clothes
for laundry.
He goes because he thinks it
would be rude not to.
Besides he thinks that Mark
has been undercharging him for his coffee for the last two weeks and Ryan
doesn’t think it’s bribery but he likes to return his favors.
******************************************************************************
The gallery opening is well
underway by the time Ryan arrives. Wearing the one suit that he can piece
together, and there isn’t a rosette or a piece of lace to be found.
He almost went for the
eyeliner in the bathroom when he was getting ready and his hand had stopped
over it, hovering as he’d stared at himself in the mirror. He almost didn’t
recognize the young man staring back at him.
And that is who is there now,
a young man not the femme boy that he’d played like a role for so many years.
It had been a month and a
half since the last time he’d put anything on his face other then cleaners and
moisturizers.
He had put the liner back and
closed his makeup bag, stowed it under the sink and left, grabbing his keys on
the way out.
Mark is pleased to see him;
they exchange a manly hug and big smiles. He introduces him to his fiancé who
is a small vivacious red head with a wide, white smile. Her name is Maria and
she shakes his hand and kisses him on the cheek and thanks him profusely for
coming.
The gallery is packed and he
waves at
“I don’t know a single person
here with the exception of three,” Ryan admits, Colleen laughs and links arms
with him, dragging him from group to group for introductions and there is only
one instance that scares him.
The mayors’ sixteen year old
daughter opens her mouth and closes it when Colleen introduces him and Ryan
just pleads with his eyes for her to not say anything and she doesn’t.
Though she does find him
later when he’s going from painting to painting and demands an autograph in
exchange for her silence, she has several pictures to choose from and she’ll
even allow him to choose the one that he’ll sign and personalize.
Ryan agrees, because anything
that keeps the others from finding him any quicker is a good thing, he’s not
foolish enough to think he can hide forever. But he hopes that he can pull it
off for longer then a couple of months.
He buys two paintings at the
end of the night, one he’ll send to Pete because he thinks that the colors and
the mood are things that Pete will appreciate, the other is for himself.
Mark’s jaw drops when he
pulls his checkbook out.
“I just wanted a few people
that I knew here,” he blusters, Ryan just nods and makes out the check.
He’s buying the pieces
because they spoke to him, like the words in his mind do sometimes; and he’s
buying them because Mark didn’t invite him because he saw a prospective sale.
******************************************************************************
It’s almost midnight when he
gets back to the cottage, he stopped for coffee on the way and he’s hoping to
get a chapter written before he goes to sleep.
He left a light on in the
kitchen and he curses himself for not leaving the porch light on, he hadn’t
thought he’d be gone for so long.
He almost stumbles over a bag
when he goes up the steps and he hears the voice before he sees anyone.
“Ryan Ross.”
Ryan squints and takes a step
back.
Because that’s Pete sitting
on his swing, one leg drawn up to his chest and staring at him like he’s a
ghost or a mirage. Hemingway sitting next to him, giving him what Ryan is
pretty sure is a disapproving look from where his head is resting on his paws.
“Pete.”
******************************************************************************
It’s surreal moving around
his cottage with Pete there.
With anyone there.
Ryan hasn’t had anyone in his
home since Keltie had left and where before there had seemed to be so much
space, now Ryan feels caged in, trapped.
If Pete has found him, it is
only a matter of time before the others land on his doorstep.
His flight or fight reflex is
being triggered and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Pete watches him in the
kitchen, he’s leaning against one counter and Ryan is moving just to move. He
feels almost like Brendon right then, all hyperactive energy, but he thinks if
he stops moving then it’ll sink in that his peace and quiet are a thing of the
past.
“Are you going to ignore me
all night?” Pete asks, bemused tone and Ryan wants to say he isn’t ignoring
him.
He couldn’t ignore him, his body is almost hard wired to respond to
Pete’s presence and he’s not a seventeen year old fan boy anymore, but that boy
is still in there and mumbling ‘Pete Wentz is standing in my kitchen’, complete with dreamy sighs and heart shaped eyes.
Besides, he doesn’t think
that anyone could ignore Pete.
He’s just choosing,
attempting, to not respond to his presence, which means not looking at him.
“I’m not ignoring you,” Ryan
mumbles, Hemmy brushes up against his leg and Ryan glances down to see him
glaring up at him reproachfully. “I can’t believe you brought him with you.”
“Well it wasn’t like I was
going to leave him behind was it, besides I wasn’t sure how long it was going
to take to get your head screwed back on straight and I wasn’t willing to leave
him with Joe for that long.”
“There’s nothing wrong with
the way my head is screwed on,” Ryan mutters.
“No? You just go off and buy
cottages in the middle of the ass end of nowhere because things in Ryan-land
are all hunky dory.”
“Ryan-land?” Ryan scrubs at a
spot on his counter. “And this isn’t nowhere; we have a Wal-Mart you know.”
Pete snorts and Ryan knows
that if he turns he’ll see Pete rolling his eyes at him.
“And that’s your sure fire
sign of civilization, that the town has a Wal-Mart? And Ryan-land is that space
in your head that you seem to reside mostly in and make stupid decisions based
on, Brendon named it and we voted on it as a group.”
“Why are you here?” Ryan asks
softly, maybe they’ve sent Pete to
tell him that things are over.
He feels Pete’s arms go
around his chest, locking his arms at his side and he stiffens. He could break
free if he needed to, but Pete is strong and there would be a fight and most
likely bruises and injuries.
“I only found you because of
Keltie you know, she’s worried about you. She thought that you would have broke
by now and called Spencer or me or someone
to let us know where you were and that you were okay.”
“I told you that I was fine,”
Ryan mutters.
“No you’re not, trust me, if
anyone can tell if someone is not okay it’s me,” Pete rushes on when Ryan goes
to disagree. “If you were okay you would have gone to Vegas for a couple of
days, maybe did some gambling, possibly come out to L.A. and stayed with me
while you figured out how to confront Spencer and Brendon about the fact that
they’re super-gay for each other and neither one told you. And then you would
have gone to Chicago and done it, you would have fought and maybe not talked
for a few days and you would have wrote a song or two about your best friends
not being able to trust you with their hearts or something about unrequited
love. You would have all made up and gone back into the studio and started
working on the third album and things would be okay then.”
Ryan breathes, hangs his
head. Maybe Pete doesn’t know about the break, about the break-up that is sure to follow before to
long.
“You wouldn’t have run off to
the ass end of nowhere, because Wal-Mart or no, this is nowhere. I wouldn’t have Spencer and Brendon and Jon calling me
five times a day asking for updates on you because apparently I’m the only one
that knew that you had seven e-mails and then tried every single one of them
until I got a response.”
“They wanted to take a
break,” Ryan whispers. And it still hurts, the decision made without him. “They
wanted to take a break and they told
me we were doing it. They never asked my input or talked about it with me; they
decided that we were doing it so we did.”
“A break means a break, no concerts,
no singing. A break means taking a vacation and maybe going to an amusement
park or a couple of parties or something,” Pete squeezes him, rocks him
slightly back and forth, like he’s a child that needed to be soothed.
“It’s just a matter of time
before it becomes a break up,” Ryan says morosely, because he’d seen the
writing on the wall, he hadn’t needed anyone to spell things out for him.
Pete just sighs, like Ryan is
disappointing him somehow and he feels like he’s missing something crucial.
“Taking a break means taking
a break, it doesn’t have to mean anything more then that Ryan.”
******************************************************************************
Pete has brought two bags
with him besides Hemmy’s carrier. Ryan sees them and wonders how long he plans
on staying.
“I don’t have a guestroom,”
Ryan shakes his head.
He does, but there is no bed
in there. Just his desk and chair and computer and he doesn’t want Pete Wentz
anywhere near his computer.
At least not unsupervised.
Unsupervised he would find
the rough draft for the book that Ryan is writing and Ryan doesn’t feel that it
is in anyway ready to be read by anyone besides him.
It’s a work in progress and
he’d like an opportunity to read it and reread it and be his own worst critic
before he lets other eyes gaze upon it.
“We’ve shared a bed before,”
Pete rolls his eyes at him like he’s an idiot.
“I have a couch,” Ryan says
ignoring him. “I’ve napped on it once or twice, it seems comfortable.”
Because when they’d shared a
bed they’d been something more then the friends that they were now, before Pete
decided that playing it straight was the best thing for his career and his band
and ended that part of their relationship.
“Are you afraid I’m going to
sully your virtue?” Pete leers at him and Ryan wonders, suddenly, if he’s being
handled. If Pete is being light and friendly and leering and smirking to put
him at ease and keep him from being depressed and maudlin about his band breaking
up without him.
“I don’t have any virtue left
to be sullied, you made sure of that,” Ryan mutters. By the time Pete had ended
their relationship (and Ryan wonders why he’s
always being the one told that things are over, instead of having the opportunity
to be the one to end things) there were very few things that they hadn’t done
together in Pete’s bed.
Ryan misses that sometimes.
The closeness and togetherness and having someone who was just his. Keltie had
been that before she’d slipped into Spencer’s role of best friend.
He wonders if he should be
honored that he is one of the handful of people that Pete Wentz has actually,
completely, slept with. That he can’t be brushed under the rug and when (if)
Pete ever finally settles down with someone, his name (along with Mikey and
Jeanae and Ashlee) is going to be listed off to his wife-to-be as those that
have shared his bed and his life, if even for a short time.
******************************************************************************
He wakes and feels as if he
is clinging to his bed with his fingernails, half of his body is sweating, the
other half is freezing.
He feels a hand twitching
against his stomach and puffs of breath against his shoulder. He twists his
head and sees Hemmy’s head sharing his pillow and Pete taking up a good 7/8 of
the bed along with all the blankets.
He knows that he’s skinny,
but he doesn’t understand why, when he shares his bed with someone, that
translates to ‘I only need 4 inches to sleep on, feel free to sprawl to your
hearts content’.
The three times that he was
forced to share a bed with Brendon because of ‘Hotel issues’, Brendon had
managed to kick him off the bed while he was sleeping, the fourth time a Hotel
had screwed up he’d just slept in the tub.
Because as much as he wanted
to share a bed with Brendon, falling off the bed in the middle of the night -
was not a repercussion he was willing to deal with. He wonders, idly, if
Spencer has curbed Brendon’s ‘kicking people off the bed’ tendency or if Brendon
only kicks people out of his bed if he doesn’t really want them there in the
first place.
He doesn’t know why Pete is
in bed with him, when he closed himself in his bedroom Pete was still grumbling
about being forced to sleep on the couch and Ryan would have given up the bed
and slept on the couch himself; if only Pete hadn’t acted like getting Ryan’s
bed was something he was owed.
“Pete,” he hisses and Pete
twitches and kicks out with one leg. Ryan traps it with one of his and manages
to not fall off the bed. He silently congratulates himself and stares at Pete
until his eyes snap open.
He knows that Pete hates
that.
“Dude,” his eyes close almost
immediately, it’s still dark outside.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on
the couch?” Ryan says pointedly, he goes to pluck Pete’s hand off his stomach
and instead lays his on top of it. He thinks his fingers are stupid and wonders
when they got a mind of their own.
Pete’s hand flexes under his,
then he links their fingers together and a small smile appears on his face.
Ryan looks away because that expression has always meant that Pete has got
something he wanted and Ryan stopped being that thing that Pete wanted a year
and a half ago.
“Your couch is in no way
comfortable, Hemmy insisted that your bed would be plenty big enough,” Pete’s
voice sounds tired and Ryan almost doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know
what Pete’s been dealing with since he left.
“Pete,” he starts, when he
makes a motion like he’s going to get out of the bed and go sleep on the couch
himself, Pete squeezes his fingers and manages to haul Ryan closer without
actually using any force.
Hemmy opens one eye and
glares, then stands, shakes and moves to the bottom of the bed where he
pointedly faces away from them.
Pete laughs and manages to
get Ryan all cuddled up against him, arms and legs wrapped tightly around him
and Ryan would think it meant something, if he didn’t also think that Pete was
attempting to trap him.
“Go back to sleep Ryan,” Pete
says softly, he kisses his cheek and his forehead and then closes his eyes.
Ryan sighs and does just
that.
******************************************************************************
Pete is on the phone in his
backyard; Ryan thinks that he’s talking to the others. He’s sure that he heard
Spencer’s name at least once.
There’s a knock at the door
and he sees Pete glance inside and Ryan frowns at him before he goes to answer
it.
Mark stands there, two
wrapped paintings at his feet and a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Since when do you deliver?”
Ryan asks when Mark hands him the cup; he pops the lid off and takes a deep
breath, eyes closing.
He had to forego his coffee
that morning because he didn’t dare leave Pete alone in his house, he might
come back and find it had been sold out from under him.
“Only to friends that spend a
couple of grand buying paintings at a show I was pretty sure that I wasn’t
going to sell anything at,” Mark grins at him. “I was going to give them to you
this morning but you never showed up.”
“Had a friend appear in town
last night,” Ryan props the door open and lets Mark brush past him, paintings
in hand.
He’s already thinking about
the perfect place for his painting, he’ll force Pete to take his with him when
he leaves, when he notices Mark looking at the pictures on the wall.
His pictures, his life. He’s
in a lot of them because they’re shots of the guys.
He’s not hidden who he is,
not in his home, he’s just not had any visitors enter since he got everything
just right and he can see the way that Mark’s eyes are darting from him to the
pictures and back again, that the other man has put two and two together and
come up with four.
He opens and closes his mouth
like he wants to say something and instead shakes his head.
Mark’s eyes move past him and
Ryan knows that Pete has walked in. A quick glance back confirms that Pete is
standing there, phone still pressed to his ear, eyes narrowed at Mark.
“Coffee
tomorrow? Normal time?” Mark says, Ryan nods. He’s waiting for Mark to say
something and Mark doesn’t, just smiles brightly, friendly as always. He
inclines his head at Pete and leaves.
Ryan
stands there, clutching his coffee between two hands and wonders if he’s going
to get assaulted when he goes into town next and if he could call and beg Zack
to come be his bodyguard again.
******************************************************************************
“Jon’s getting married,” Pete
says at dinner. They’ve ordered in because Ryan doesn’t trust Pete in his
kitchen and Ryan hadn’t wanted to cook for two people.
“You’ll have to send me
pictures,” Ryan says.
“I’ve assured him and Cassie
that you’ll be in
Let alone a leering Pete who
had cuddled with him on the couch when he went to take an afternoon catnap in
the sunlight. It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask if Ashlee knows where he is
and then to remind Pete that he’s been the one cheated on in the past and will
not do that to anyone else.
But Pete hasn’t made any
moves towards him besides the kisses on cheeks and the cuddling, though for
Pete that’s pretty much a declaration of intent.
“I’m not going,” Ryan says
stubbornly. “If Jon and Cassie wanted me there they would have sent me an
invitation.”
Pete snorts. “They did, you left no forwarding address and
it got returned to sender. Let me tell you that was fun to deal with,
hysterical phone calls from Cassie wanting to know if you were alive and what
was she supposed to tell Jon if you weren’t and what the hell is going on and
then Spencer showing up on my doorstep with Brendon and Jon in tow demanding
that I bring you home right fucking now, screw giving you space to figure out
what was going on in your head.”
Ryan pushes his noodles
around his plate, suddenly his appetite is gone and he can vividly picture
Cassie on the phone worried, Spencer in a fury, demanding that Pete do
something now, because Ryan was only
communicating with him, not them and that wasn’t right or fair.
He can imagine the hurt and
pain that he’s caused. He doesn’t like it, this pit in his stomach that tells
him that did something wrong, when all he wanted was someplace that was his,
someplace that he could go to when they didn’t want him anymore.
“They don’t want me,” he says
softly. He watched them reform into a threesome and he’s seen the pictures.
They’re happy.
“Oh my god. You’re killing me
here Ross,” Pete sounds upset and Ryan looks up and can see that he is, and
maybe a little pissed off and Ryan doesn’t like thinking that he, maybe, caused
that.
“These are your best friends; you’ve called them your
brothers and your family. They love you and they miss you and they have been
steadily going crazy wondering what the hell is going on in your head and how
to combat it, especially since they haven’t the first clue what caused you to
freak out and run away in the first place.”
“Pete…”
“I’ll go with you, you won’t
be alone though. Not with them and if they ever let you leave their sight again
you can come back here for peace and quiet if you want, though I’m pretty sure
that you should probably put a bed in the spare bedroom, unless you want to be
sharing a bed with the three of them together.”
Ryan swallows around the lump
in his throat and nods.
******************************************************************************
He goes for coffee the next
morning alone, Pete is wandering his house with a phone glued to his ear and
he’d already been on it when Ryan got up that morning.
“You’re staying with me at a
hotel,” Pete tells him as he’s leaving and he nods, silent. “Bring me back
coffee.”
Mark is at the front counter
and they eye each other, no one has jumped him since he got into town. He’s
picked up groceries and Sandy had just handed him magazines from under the
counter and asked what paintings he’d bought and then reminded him that the
chips that he liked would only be on sale until Saturday so to make sure he
came back and stocked up.
Colleen had a book put aside
for him that he’d special ordered and they chatted for a few minutes about the
show and Mark’s pleasure at it having gone so well.
He doesn’t get jumped by teen
fans (or adult fans), no one treats him any different and he finds it hard to
believe that Mark hadn’t gone directly home and called everyone he knew to tell
them who Ryan was.
“I thought you looked
familiar,” Mark says, he’s writing on his cup and setting it off to the side
for the order to be filled. “But you never dressed the way that I saw in the
magazines and you never put on any makeup and you didn’t act like a diva or
anything, like you expected us all to bow down to you because you’d deigned to
buy property in our town. So I thought, you know, everyone has a twin somewhere
out there, maybe you were just one that had the same exact name or something.”
“I didn’t want people to know
who I was; I just wanted to be left alone.”
Mark smiles, “I didn’t tell
anyone, it’s not really any of their business if they haven’t figured it out
for themselves, right?”
Ryan’s smile barely curves
his lips, it’s tentative he’s sure, but he thinks that maybe Mark is telling
him that he’s not going to be ratted out to the magazines or the internet.
That he’s still safe here.
“I’ll need two coffees,” he
says and Mark’s grin widens.
“For Pete right? That was Pete Wentz? Same as yours?”
“Yeah,” Ryan fidgets
slightly. “I’ll be leaving town for a few weeks, a friend of mine is getting
married and…”
Mark’s smile doesn’t dim.
“Stop in and see us when you get back, we’ll want to see pictures.”
Ryan nods. “I will.”
******************************************************************************
Pete has them booked in first
class for the direct flight and he gives Ryan the window, though Ryan thinks
that it’s to keep him trapped in his seat and not any act of generosity.
“We’ll check in at the hotel
and then you’ll call your guys and let them know you’re okay and not off
slitting your wrists somewhere…” Pete is saying, he’s got one hand laying on
top of Ryan’s on the arm rests.
Ryan looks out the window and
thinks that he can see his cottage far off in the distance and starts counting
down the days until he can come home.
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