Fic: Grace - Chapter 8
Title: Grace - Chapter Eight
Rating: M (for language)
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
A/N: For those of you still interested, I posted one of my original fics the other day called 'Between Us.' Enjoy!
It was the sweats that had started it all.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night, wide-eyed and feverish and feeling half out of my mind. My fingers, arms, legs, body would be shaking, quivering and damn near convulsing. Head would be poundpoundpound like a little kid getting happy with a jackhammer. Break down these walls of bone; trash this skull, this head and home.
Everything ached and there was an underlying anxiety that I’d never felt before, just a nervousness and a twitchiness that even William noticed when we went to the premiere of Eragon. An anxiety that was completely unjustified, completely without purpose or source or direction. It was just a feeling - encouraged by the sweats and the headaches - that had taken up residence beneath every ounce of my skin.
But this wasn’t the worst of it. This was nothing compared to the obsession. The RyanRyanRyan of everything and everywhere and every fucking situation. All I could see was big eyes and skinny limbs and tiny voice. All I could see and hear and smell was Ryan. All I could taste was sushi.
Ryan had been in isolation (away from me) for eight days, thirteen hours and forty-four minutes.
This, this is withdrawal and Ryan is fucking cocaine.
*
There is no Ross, R. in the LA domestic directory.
There’s no Ross, G. either.
There are, however, fourteen Smith, S’s. After eleven phone calls and a Chinese take-out lunch, I have found the accommodation of one Spencer Smith and one Ryan Ross.
To be honest, there’s no reply on that eleventh number, just an overly enthusiastic answering voice telling me who lived there and that I ‘knew what to do.’
Beep.
I hate answering machines.
So, my hand shakes as I hang up. This doesn’t matter though, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, it’s just the heat, just the time, just the Chinese food repeating on me. I haven’t been well all week.
Right. I don’t think even I believed me.
Ryan lived in apartment 4 of some nameless building on 74th street. By nameless, I mean the sign outside had been so intensely lathered in graffiti that it’s impossible to tell what the hell it says.
There’s no security, and no receptionist behind the desk, so I self-consciously let myself upstairs. Christ, I wish I’d brought my bodyguard…
Or a gun.
The door to the apartment has the bottom of the number four on it, the top having been mutilated, ripped off with…with something strong enough to tear through fake gold.
Knockknockknock and there’s no answer, no mumbles, no murmurs, no yells or replies, just the door isn’t locked and I’ve never really understood the concept of privacy outside my own.
The apartment is a city of high-rise stacks of paper, biro-pen-street-lights, glue-stick people. There’s an origami crane on the bare-fraction-of-table pond.
RyanRyanRyan, he’s buried somewhere in here, fallen between the cracks of this city, this state, this country, and I want to pull him out, I want to see him, even if maybe he doesn’t want to be seen.
It’s hard to tell in this apartment, where one room ends and another begins, it’s easy though (and it always will be) to see where Ryan ends and Spencer begins. Even if I haven’t met Spencer officially yet.
So maybe it’s just easy to see what Ryan is here.
Easier maybe, not easy.
There’s something shuffling in the corner, between paper-high-rise and stationary park. Ryan’s a ball of hair and porcelain-skin and cheap clothing. He’s curled in on himself, scribbling chicken scrawl across lines and lines of old, crinkled paper.
"Ryan?" And he doesn’t hear me and how fucking easy would it be to come in here, steal this entire concept, steal Ryan. He’s not big enough to defend himself. He shouldn’t ever, ever live alone. Or without a gun.
I wonder if he has a gun…
"Ryan?"
There’s a twitch, a shudder, and his head whips around so fast that I expect it to roll off, form a boulder like in Indiana Jones, crush the paper city.
"Brendon? What are…why…what?"
He’s on his feet, but only kinda, staggering up on shaky legs and when was the last time he stood up? When was his last human interaction if he’s this unstable, this unhinged?
"Uh, was in the neighbourhood and I…I figured I’d see how you were going." So it’s the biggest load of bullshit that even I’ve ever heard, but Ryan either believes it or just doesn’t care.
"Going good…I - I’m getting a lot done," he stutters out, running fingers through his unwashed hair.
"Thought you were done?" And he smiles at this, just a tiny upward twitch of the lips.
"Working on the Disney sequel."
His voice is really calm and straight, and I can’t help but think is this guy - "Serious?"
"No, nothing’s ever done in this industry, Bren. Always something you can improve on."
"Ah." And so yes, I am an idiot for believing him.
"Yeah." Ryan’s rocking on his heels, he succeeds in crushing the edge of a tiny mound of paper, a car park maybe, or a raised part of the road.
"Yeah," I say, "…nice place you have here."
He laughs aloud at this, and it’s music to my ears, it’s light and pretty and, well, melodic. I like this soft, gentle Ryan with the pretty face and the wit that is kinda a lot sharper than mine.
"It has character. Spencer and I moved in when we first came to LA. We can afford better now, but neither of us have the heart to move out."
He’s grabbed a hold of my hand now, pulling me out of this paper city and into a room of pots and pans and towering dirty dishes. This here is damn near third world, Mexico City maybe, or somewhere in Africa.
"My..." Ryan starts, not looking me in the eye as he grabs glasses and orange juice from the surrounding doors, hand still over mine. "My favourite band is Third Eye Blind, My Chemical Romance and…and other stuff too…Blink 182 and…and Bright Eyes - Conor Oberst, he, as a writer, he just…" Ryan gestures at this, arms and hands and fingers flying wildly (he’s let go of my hand. Why is this all I can think about?) "…blows my mind, y’know?"
My brow furrows, and the corners of my lips pull sideways, stretch across my teeth. "What?"
"This is me." He says, "You wanted to know stuff about me…this is me. This is what I’m about."
Before I can reply, he’s successfully misinterpreted my expression, misinterpreted my need to catch up still.
"I told you I wasn’t interesting," he says, and he’s a little flushed, his sense of direction a never-ending downward, and his fingers clutch at the bottle of orange juice. Pourpourpour into the plastic cups.
"No, I - I mean, you are interesting, I just, this isn’t what I meant." And I’ve said it before my head can catch up still, "I mean, this is what I meant, I just…" I laugh, "I don’t know what I mean."
Ryan lets loose a tiny smile, something that chases away some of the wayward darkness in his big, hazel eyes. "I got that."
From across the table he shoves a cup at me, full of pulpy tangerine liquid.
Fuck, I hate orange juice.
"Thanks."
And he grins, "I’d offer you something less kindergarten, but the only other drinks we have are milk and water, and the water in this apartment is rarely drinkable."
I grin back as he somehow manages to knock back the whole glass of juice, and before I can stop myself, my own ugly, plastic cup is pressed to my lips.
Drinkdrinkdrink. Ew.
"Uh," Ryan’s saying, and he’s dropped his cup into the overflowing sink, the polluted waterhole that’s gonna kill a hundred World Vision kids. "Uh," He’s saying again, and before I know it he’s leapt from the third world state, back through to the clean-cut, solar-powered paper city.
He’s rummaging, knocking down buildings and parks and roads, filling the creeks, dams, lagoons, spreading enough paper bricks and rubbers and stationary to fill every pothole.
Somewhere along the lines the paper crane got crushed.
"Uh," he says again, but he’s found what he’s looking for, and is bounding back into the kitchen, endless legs miles above the wreckage of the city.
"Thank you for the book," Ryan states, cheeks flushed from the wanton destruction he left in his wake. He waves something at me, something that is undoubtedly my Mother’s/Catherine’s book, only it’s something I hardly recognise. These pages have been dog-tagged, bookmarked, littered with unruly post-it notes and scrappy pieces of paper. Phrases, sentences, words have been highlighted, underlined. There are endless arrows and Ryan’s chicken scrawl has forced itself into every gap, every nook and cranny and…and this isn’t the same book that I gave him.
"Uh…" I say, and suddenly Ryan’s way more flushed than he was a few seconds ago, now he’s positively crimson.
"Sorry," he mutters, fingering some of the florescent post-it’s with his spidery fingers. "I get carried away sometimes…"
"Right, okay, it’s fine, y’know." But if it was anyone else I would’ve gone insane right about now, off my fucking rocker at the bitch who messed with my stuff. Whether I cared or even wanted the thing to begin with was trivial. "I mean, I leant it to you, and stuff and, yea."
Ryan still isn’t as certain as he was before, but he shots me another soft look, another tiny, barely-there smile. "I read the whole thing the night you gave it to me, and I’ve read it so many times since, it’s like…it’s addictive."
And I wouldn’t know, my head is screaming, I wouldn’t know.
"It’s just, like, your mother, she was just, she’s an amazing character."
And wait, what? Where has this come from? How the hell does he know it was my mother’s?
"She was so unhappy." Ryan whispers, his breath hitching ever so slightly in his throat. His eyes are wide, and his eyebrows are slanted in the perfect imitation of sympathy.
"No she wasn’t. She was always smiling." I say, but it isn’t forceful. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, because I knew Ryan didn’t know what he was talking about.
Ryan just sighs though, and he plays with the bangs that hide his ears and forehead. The bangs that maybe are supposed to hide a helluva lot more than just the physical.
"Just because people smile and laugh…it doesn’t mean they aren’t broken." Ryan whispers, "Doesn’t mean they aren’t hurting."
And he’s staring at me now, staring at me with such intensity, such a shameless desire for me to see something that I’m just not seeing. "All it means is that they’re trying with everything they have to be invisible."
But I’m staring at him now, eyes squinting just enough so that I can only focus on Ryan. RyanRyanRyan. "That’s bullshit."
"Invisible," he’s whispering now, tiny, breathy voice nothing more than maybe a different shade to the wind. "Invisible to whatever’s hurting them."
The silence sets in as the breezy voice stops, and everything is suddenly heavy, air is thick and tired and the gravity is beating down on the space between my shoulder blades. Poundpoundpound. My head is aching and Ryan can’t even look at me. Won’t look.
This is all wrong, this isn’t what I came here for, and somewhere, some nagging little voice in the back of my head says, well, what did you come here for?
"You know shit all about my mother, Ross." Because it’s the first thing that pours out of my mouth, the first thing that actually makes sense in the entirety of this situation.
Ryan’s sighing again, all squinting, pathetic eyes, and lips that fall down his chin.
"You never read this, did you?"
And really, what can I say to that?
*
The entrance to my apartment is choking on the smoke erupting from my head, my ears, my fucking heart.
To be blunt, I’m angry.
To be honest, I have no idea why.
"I’m not doing it, I won’t fucking do it."
Loretta seems to have appeared out of nowhere, hair tousled and face painted with a look of part-shock, part-something-else-entirely.
"Won’t do what?" She says, forehead furrowed down, slanting her eyes into a look of perfect curiosity. "Won’t do what?" She repeats.
"Fucking Ryan Ross." I say, "Fucking Build God."
Loretta’s expression has fallen off her face, imprinting itself on my expensive rug (handmade in Vietnam), she hasn’t quite processed this yet, hasn’t quite gotten angry enough.
But wait, the red is creeping across her neck, up her jaw line and straight into her round cheeks.
She’s about to explode from the pressure that has managed to build itself up behind her cheeks and eyes and jaw in the last few seconds. About to spew and overflow like those volcanoes you see in grade nine science.
Only, she’s caught on, (I never give her intelligence enough credit really) but this doesn’t seem to have released the anger, it just gives it a cause, a purpose, a direction.
Before I can even pull away, flee from the room, her mouth is wide open and she’s probably three times as pissed as I was…am.
"You don’t get involved personally with the fucking script writer, Brendon!" Her cheeks are still big and red, and her eyes are bloodshot and a little puffy.
She’s a dragon, and I’m the fucking knight…you know, the one that comes before the hero. The one that gets burnt to a crisp in the first few seconds of battle.
"Do you know what a script writer does, Brendon?" And she may look and sound a little calmer, but she’s not - eye of the fucking storm.
"They write a fucking screenplay."
"Yes, and this is all they do!" She states, and she runs fingers that are much shorter than Ryan’s through her cropped hair, before proceeding to glare at me. Great. "They write a damn good screenplay, and they whore it off to the best producer they can get their paws on. It is then out of their hands. Unless the producer actually likes the writer, which is rare, they do not come on set, and they do not see the whole fucking film happen. Their job finishes at writing. If they want to be involved more, then they become a writer-director or a writer-producer."
Stop, deep breath, try again. "Ryan needs to finish the fucking thing, and then we will have nothing more to do with him until the fucking Oscars which that motherfucker will more likely than not win."
And this doesn’t change a thing, and maybe it kinda makes it worse, coz the thought of never seeing Ryan again makes me feel something and I can’t quite place what it is, only it’s uncomfortable and maybe hurts a little, and as much as it brings out this feeling, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t really want to see him. I don’t want to do Build God, I never did. I just want to go back to chick flicks or maybe do something with Brad Pitt…
Loretta can see right through me, she can always see right through me, even nowadays, a bajillion years after the dreaded now of these happenings she can see right through me.
She tosses her hands up in the air, in an elaborate gesture. "For fuck’s sake, Jon!" He’s sitting behind the sofa, I hadn’t noticed him before now. "Jon, you sort this out, you do this, I can’t deal with assholes anymore."
It’s a matter of seconds before the door is slammed shut behind her, but for some reason, it is drowned out by Jon’s agonising sigh.
He stares at me for a few minutes, facial expression strained, before he gets up and leaves the room.