Part 2 (BBB 2012)
←
“Feels fucking good to be home,” Tom says as he stretches and hops out of the van. They got back to town early enough that they can all go home and shower before they have to head to the venue to set up. Hometown shows are always the best. At this point, there are more friends than fans in the crowd, and Nick is already waiting for them when they pull up in front of the venue to unload their shit.
“My boys! How was the trip?”
“We weren’t at summer camp, Scimeca,” Tom says, but Nick ignores him because he’s already tugging Ryan in for a hug.
“You guys hungry? I know this place that just opened up. The owner likes me - that means free meals for my crew.”
“We kind of need to set up,” Max says from the back of the trailer.
“Then we’re going out afterward,” Nick says. “No excuses.”
“That just means you’re going to take us to AK because you’re cheap as fuck,” Ryan says. Nick pushes him away while Ryan laughs.
The show is fucking awesome. Sean feels so busy, so full of his normal life, that he doesn’t even think about the lack of spirits. He doesn't need them. He never asked for them, the same as he never asked for his gift, and without them, he can give Empires his undivided attention.
True to his word, after the show, Nick wrangles them up and takes them out. It isn’t to Angels and Kings, but a smaller little place that Sean’s been to a million times over.
“This is your treat, right?” Tom asks from his cramped position in the backseat of Nick’s car.
“Yeah, yeah, just don’t go ordering the expensive shit.”
The bar is an okay size and they’ve acquired enough of a regulars status that they’re recognized but don’t have to talk. Tom drinks shitty hipster beer. Max doesn't drink at all, but he likes hanging out and kicking Nick’s ass at darts. Ryan always drinks the hard shit, and this time, he drops in a seat next to Sean and hands him a drink.
“I ordered you some whiskey.”
“Thanks,” Sean says. He has to lean in to be able to talk to Ryan because someone is playing some loud shit on the jukebox. Ryan stinks like sweat, but that's usually what he smells like to Sean anyway. “It’s not my usual drink, though.”
“Yeah, but everyone else is pussing out on me,” Ryan says, holding up his own glass. It matches Sean’s.
“Hey!” Nick says as he slides between them and up to the long bar counter. “We're going to make some toasts.” Nick makes them toast to a bunch of stupid shit; they toast to 'Ryan Luciani’s handsome face!' and 'the nice weather in Chicago!' and 'Tom’s awful taste in beer!' - to which Tom flips them all off before ordering another.
“So,” Nick says once the toasting is all finished. He may be getting pretty wasted. Sean has no idea what he’s been drinking. A quick look around at all of them suggests they’re all getting there. Tom is probably the most sober of them all; when Sean looks at Ryan, he’s all red-cheeked and grinning. Sean feels like he must look like that, too. Ryan’s looking at him and laughing and Sean really likes Ryan's laugh, it might be his favorite laugh, which is weird to think about now, but he’s just happy to be hearing Ryan laugh at all. “What's next for Empires?” Nick asks. He holds his drink in Tom’s face like it’s a microphone.
Tom pushes him away. “Ask Sean.”
Nick wheels around on Sean. “Sean Van Vleet. Dashing lead singer. What’s next for your band?”
Sean thinks about it. They get to relax. He gets to pour over his lyric notebooks, pick out shit he likes, show them to the band. They already have some stuff, older demos saved on Max’s computer, but whenever they tour, Sean always winds up with a million ideas jotted down on paper, lines that belong to no real song, but that he likes enough to not want to abandon the idea. They’re going to dick around in the studio and drink and try to think of future album titles that aren’t just one-word verbs.
“Strictly confidential,” Sean says. He pushes at Nick’s arm, making his drink slosh around and dribble onto the counter.
By one in the morning, Sean is exhausted from touring and drinking. He asks Max to round everyone up so that they can go home. Ryan wants to go outside to smoke while they wait for Max to convince Nick to stop arguing with their fellow patrons over shit that doesn’t matter to anyone but Nick. Sean follows him outside into the cool breeze of the night.
Ryan is drunker than Sean, so he leans against the brick-faced wall of the bar, the rough stone scratching up the worn leather of Ryan’s jacket. He’s fumbling through his pockets for his lighter, a cigarette already dangling from his mouth.
“Are you going to go home with Nick?” Sean asks. He reaches out to grab a hold of Ryan’s arm because he’s got both hands in his pockets and is threatening to topple over.
“No, I don’t want to.”
Sean raises an eyebrow at Ryan. He usually stays with Nick while they’re home, sometimes alternating between Max, Sean, and Tom.
“I don’t want to go home with Nick. He’s a dick when he’s drunk.”
Sean laughs. “He’s a dick all the time.”
“Well, yeah, so let me come home with you. I like your couch better anyway.”
“Alright,” Sean says. Ryan finally finds his lighter, but by the time he’s lit his smoke, Max is coming out with Tom and Nick in tow.
“How are we doing this?” Max asks.
“Tom at his place, Nick at his place, Ryan at my place,” Sean says.
Max quirks an eyebrow at him, but Sean ignores it. “I should take Nick’s car home with me, make him come pick it up when he’s hung over.”
“Bro,” Nick says weakly, "don’t do that to me.”
They walk around the side of the bar to the sparse parking lot. The five of them pile into Nick’s car. Max is driving and Sean grabs the passenger seat, so Ryan is stuck between Nick and Tom. Nick is a pretty awful drunk. Tom is pretty solid if you don't piss him off. Ryan smiles a lot. Sean finds himself glancing back at Ryan in the rearview mirror, seeing Ryan smiling at him.
They drop Tom off first. He’s alright, so they don’t need to follow him inside the building to make sure he gets home safe. Sean and Ryan are next; Ryan has a bit of a harder time than Tom, but Sean isn’t that drunk, so he makes up for it. He hits the roof of Nick’s car and promises to text Max about band-related business tomorrow before he leads Ryan inside.
They get into the tiny elevator. Ryan is talking, but Sean isn’t exactly listening; he’s focusing really hard on the glowing dings of the floors they’re on.
“Sean, you still have Tom’s old bed?”
“That’s kinda weird. Why would I keep his bed?”
“Because you two are pretty weird.”
“I have a blow-up mattress in there.” Sean sleeps in Tom’s old room sometimes, usually on hot summer nights - it’s cooler than his room.
“Fuck yeah,” Ryan says. He closes his eyes during the ride.
"Don’t fall asleep or I swear I will leave you here.”
“You won’t. Someone would rob me. I’m very vulnerable right now.”
No one has been inside Sean’s apartment in two months - well, except for Sean himself, when he stopped by before the show to dump his old spoiled milk and take a shower. The front desk has his mail and he had opened a window before he left for that night’s show so that the weird non-lived-in smell is thankfully gone.
Ryan toes off his shoes at the door and almost collapses on the couch, but Sean grabs him at the last second.
“Air mattress?” he asks.
“Right, old habits,” Ryan says. Sean points him in the right direction and gives him a push. Ryan toddles off towards Tom’s old room, like some kind of busted wind-up toy.
Sean almost wants to sit on the couch and watch TV, but the weariness of tour combined with the alcohol in his system has caught up with him and, suddenly, he’s very tired. If he watched TV, he’d just fall asleep out here on the couch, wake up sore, and then feel bad that he didn’t just give his bed to Ryan.
He strips down to his boxers and then peeks in on Ryan. He’s lying face down on the blow-up mattress, head turned away from Sean. He’s still wearing his clothes, even his leather, and Sean almost wants to go and at least get him out of that, but something stops him. It feels too intimate.
He shrugs and leaves Ryan, goes to his own room, makes sure his cell phone is on, and then falls asleep.
Unfortunately, sleep doesn’t last long for Sean. He wakes up and it’s still dark in his room. It can’t have even been more than two hours since he went to sleep. At first, he isn’t sure what woke him up. He’s not a puker, though he is definitely still buzzed. Someone clears their throat and Sean’s mind says 'Ryan?' before he can comprehend what’s in front of him.
It’s not Ryan, not even close. A ghost is standing at the end of Sean’s bed. It’s a woman - young, probably around Sean’s age. She’s got one hand on her hip and the other hanging at her side. In the darkness of the room, she glimmers.
“What the hell,” Sean says. “No. I was sleeping.”
“You don’t even know what I’m here for.”
“No, I don’t care. What the hell, can’t you feel my bad mojo?”
She makes a face at him. “I definitely sensed a change in the energy here. When you first came home, you were much more inviting.”
Sean flops back in his bed. He hadn’t considered that. He got drunk and the buzzed-up state left him all giddy at the world, the afterlife included. He’s not as in control as he had thought. That’s somewhat disconcerting.
He grabs his phone up and the light is blindingly bright. It’s five in the morning; they got home around three. “Even if I was inviting you here, I'm too tired to write letters or let you take my body.”
“I’m not here for that. You’ve been pushing away your spiritual side lately,” the ghost says. “You’ve been fighting it when we need you the most.”
Sean props himself up on his elbows. “That’s just the thing! You guys always need me. I don't have time for that anymore. Your lives are over. I need to focus on my life now.”
It’s the harshest Sean has ever been to a ghost, but he feels like he owes it to the band to be honest with himself and the spirits, even if it gets him into deeper shit.
The ghost of the woman doesn’t seem moved by his words, not even insulted by them. She’s just looking at him with big, vacant eyes. “That isn’t how this works,” she says. “You have this power and you may think that you can turn it on and off, but you can’t. We weren’t coming to you out of respect - ”
“That fucking ghost tricked me and tried to steal my body! Why should I listen to anything you say? Show me respect, then I’ll give it back to you.”
“We don’t control the wicked spirits,” she says. “You have to use your own judgment, unfortunately. Now, as I was saying, we didn’t bother you out of respect and that fact that you’d be less willing to hear what we have to say - and trust me, this is important.”
“I don’t care what it is. I’m not interested.”
“Something is happening. A big, big change. We need your help.”
“No!” Sean shouts. “All I want to do is make music. I don’t want to know anything about the spirit world. I don’t want to help you anymore!”
Right before Sean’s eyes, more spirits blink into existence in his bedroom - men, women, little kids who look centuries old, all of them crowding around Sean’s bed, just looking at him, neither angry nor happy…just there. This is the most ghosts he’s ever had concentrated on him at one time.
“There is no one but you,” the woman spirit tells him. “Only you can help.”
Sean reaches blindly for something on the nightstand next to his bed. His hand wraps around something heavy and large - probably the vase that his mom or an ex gave him once upon a time - and, without thinking, he wings the vase at the leader of the spirits. Of course, it doesn’t hit her, doesn’t even affect her. But the ghosts do flicker out after that, each one blinking out like dying lights until only the original female ghost remains. She just looks at him, sighs, and then she’s gone, too.
Sean’s angry, and the loud crash from the vase meeting the molding around his door frame has him all rattled. In an instant, his carefree life was snatched from him, just like that. Even worse, the spirits exerted just how much control they have over him. It doesn’t matter what Sean wants. It probably never did.
Somehow, Sean is able to fall back to sleep, and the next time he wakes up, it’s well into the afternoon. This time, it’s human noises waking him up.
He can smell coffee, the instant kind that he keeps in the cupboard, so Ryan is probably up. He doesn't want to be awake just yet, so he lies there and listens to Ryan bustling around his apartment. He does sit up when he hears a faint, Ryan-like “Ow.”
Ryan is standing in the doorway, raising one foot off of the hardwood floor. “What the hell happened?” Ryan asks. If Sean really pays attention, he can see the tiny droplets of crimson dripping the small distance from the bottom of Ryan’s raised foot to the floor.
Sean scrubs a hand across his face. “Ghost shit. You don’t have to clean that up.”
Sean can see the flash of fear cross Ryan’s face, but it falls away quickly. “Well, I am bleeding all over your floor.”
“Yeah, go take care of that and I’ll get this.”
Ryan hobbles off to the bathroom to clean his foot and Sean crouches down to pick up pieces of the broken vase. Cleaning up reminds him of what happened, reminds him that it wasn’t a dream like Sean had been hoping when he first woke up.
“You said something about ghosts?” Ryan calls from the bathroom.
“Yeah,” Sean says. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It was if it was enough to make you break something.” Ryan’s voice draws closer; Sean can hear his footsteps. He’s still on his knees on the floor, picking up broken pieces of ceramic, when Ryan comes back, standing far enough away to not hurt himself again.
Sean looks up at him and feels weird. He’s still only in his boxers and he’s bent on his knees, feeling weirdly exposed because he lost his temper. Ryan looks at him expectantly.
“Sean, if something is going on - ”
“Nothing is going on, man. I guess I don’t like ghosts when I’m drunk. Can you bring me the dustpan?”
Ryan nods and walks away, his injured foot moving gingerly. Sean feels bad for lying and tries to recall exactly what the ghost said to him the night before. It’s hard. It feels too much like a dream with the added cocktail of post-tour weariness and too many whiskeys. His knees hurt on the hard floor of his room, but he isn’t hung over. He remembers enough to know that she said something big was going to happen, something they want Sean to be a part of.
Ryan returns with the dustpan before Sean can make a mental list of the pros and cons of telling him and, by extension, the band the truth. Sean ditches the broken vase in the pan and Ryan dumps it before he comes back with the broom, handing it off to Sean. Once the mess is cleaned up, Sean finds Ryan stationed on the couch, flicking absentmindedly through channels.
“Are you hungry?” Sean asks. “I can make something.”
“That’d be great,” Ryan says. He leans his head back on the couch and turns to look at Sean. The mid-afternoon sun that filters in through the glass balcony door is hitting Ryan in a funny way, a way that makes Sean wish Tom were here with a camera in hand. “Except you don’t have shit in your fridge.”
“Looks like a trip is in order.”
“I’ll come with,” Ryan says. He tries to get up from the couch, but he puts pressure on his cut foot, and even though he tries to hide it, Sean sees him wince.
“Just stay here, solider.” Sean goes to get dressed, but all his clothes are in his suitcase and none of it is clean. He winds up picking through it to find what smells the least and tugging it on. “Any requests?”
Ryan rubs at his stomach, inching the hem of his t-shirt up so that Sean catches just a tiny sliver of pale stomach. He’s not even sure why he’s looking in the first place.
“Waffles. My mom makes these awesome waffles.”
“I’m not your mom.”
Ryan snorts. “Yeah, and I bet you make shitty waffles.”
“Well, maybe you can go sleep on Tom’s couch and he’ll make you waffles.”
Ryan makes a face. “His are probably even worse than yours.”
“Cereal and orange juice it is, then!” Sean says. He slips on his shoes and grabs his wallet and phone. “If I’m not back in two hours, you’ll have to forage on your own.”
Ryan flips him off and keeps flicking through channels.
While Sean is shopping, Tom calls him. “Good afternoon, beautiful. Still sleeping? Nursing a hang over?”
“You were way drunker than I was last night,” Sean says instead of a greeting. “And no, I’m shopping.”
“Is Ryan with you?”
“He’s at my place, waiting for breakfast.”
Tom laughs on the other end. “Who knew you were the domesticated type?”
“Shut up. Are we going to get together today or should we wait a bit before jumping in to things?”
“Max is kind of chilling out. I’m doing a bit of having the hair of the dog that bit me. You and Ryan are - ”
“Eating a late breakfast,” Sean answers for him.
When Sean gets back to his apartment, Ryan is still watching TV. At first, Sean doesn’t pay attention to it, but then he catches snippets of things like “EMF,” “haunting,” and “investigators.”
“What the hell are you watching?” Sean asks. “And come put these groceries away.”
Ryan meets him in the kitchen and shrugs. “Ghost shows.”
“Why are you watching those?”
“Research.” Ryan leans against the counter. “Hey, Sean, how accurate are those shows? I swear, this one I’m watching can’t be real. This guy just challenged a ghost to prove its existence by fist-fighting him.”
Sean grabs some bowls and sets them on the counter. “I don’t know, Ryan. I don’t watch them. I don’t need to see other people dealing with ghosts when I have some of my own.”
They make cereal and sit side-by-side on the couch, which dips in the middle from all the times Ryan or others have slept over. The dip makes them fall together in the middle. Their thighs are touching. Ryan is wearing thin sleep pants, probably a pair he’d left over at Sean’s sometime before, and even though Sean is wearing jeans, he can still feel the warmth that’s radiating off of Ryan.
“Okay, you’re right. This guy is a complete fraud.” Though Sean never tested whether he could see ghosts through a TV, he’s sure that if they were specifically looking for ghosts and claiming to find them, he’d be able to see them at least partially. “He’s yelling at air.”
Ryan snorts into his cereal. “I knew it.” He grabs the remote and cues up another program, some other odd ghost hunting show. “Anything here?”
“Did you find every ghost show or something?”
“You could have a show. Think about it: a literal band of ghost hunters. It’d be ratings gold.”
Sean finishes his cereal first and sets the bowl on the table. “You’re being a lot more positive about this ghost thing.”
Ryan is still eating, so he swallows thickly before he speaks. “I don’t know. I was getting pretty frustrated on the road; the whole body swap shit freaked me out. Now that I’m home, I feel a little better. I was mostly joking anyway.”
“Whoa, hey, we have something here,” Sean says. He points at the TV where the host of the show - some kid younger than Sean - is trying to speak to a ghost. It’s obvious that he doesn’t have the sight like Sean does because he’s turned away from the spirit.
“You ever think about wanting to meet other people like you? Someone who actually has the same power? They have groups for everything these days.”
Sean scratches a hand through his hair. He’s never told anyone except the band about his power. It feels weird to him to trust that information to someone he doesn’t know, even if it’s a shared burden. Fuck, his parents don’t even know, people he dated never knew. His band is it and if Sean is being honest, he’d like to keep it that way.
“I don’t know. People would end up thinking I’m crazy or something.”
Ryan nudges Sean’s side. “I don’t think anyone would think that, Sean.”
Sean smiles. “Then you’ve been around me for too long.”
Ryan stays the night at Sean's place again. They both chill out, opening up the balcony door so that the cool breeze can infiltrate the apartment. Ryan doesn't even change his clothes. Even though they just got home, Sean can’t put the workaholic side of him away even for a night. He’s in his room, digging out all the journals he uses for writing lyrics, trying to decipher the mess of words he writes in his phone, gearing up for when they get to go to the studio and work some shit out.
Sean’s sitting on the floor in the living room with the journals open in front of him. Ryan’s lying stretched out on the couch. He’s flipping channels again. It’s almost irritating, but Tom was always ten times worse when it came to deciding what to watch, so Sean mostly tunes it out. He winds up on the local news, though, and something must catch his attention, because Sean doesn’t hear the channel change again.
“Hey, Sean,” Ryan says.
“Hm?”
“This news report says that there’s been an upswing in missing people lately.”
“In the city?” Sean asks.
“Nah, all over the state, I guess. There’s been three so far.”
“Huh. Are all our friends accounted for?”
Ryan yawns and changes the channel. “I think so.”
The ghosts don’t return that night - at least, not to Sean’s room. He can’t fall asleep, though, and he gets up a few times to check the living room, to peek into the spare room where Ryan’s sleeping. There’s nothing in the apartment, but on his way back to bed, he gets the idea to look out the small square of window in his bedroom. The window falls down on to the sidewalk. It’s dark, but Sean can see them clearly. There are at least four spirits standing down on the sidewalk, their heads tipped up, eyes seemingly locked on Sean’s.
He shivers. For the first time in a very long time, he’s feeling very unsettled, almost verging on fear. He grabs a jacket from his floor, tugs it on, and goes to the balcony, sliding open the glass door as quietly as he can so as to not wake Ryan. The balcony is facing out at the same sidewalk as his bedroom window. As soon as Sean steps outside, the ghosts’ heads snap to look at him. This is weird - the energy in the air feels stuffy, not what Sean is used to.
He waits to see if they’ll come to talk to him. He’s not going downstairs at three in the morning to have a fucking conversation with a ghost. None of them come to him. They just stand there on the ground and look up at him with dark eyes. Sean waits for too long - he doesn’t even know how much time passes before he goes back inside and tries to fall asleep. He doesn’t check if the ghosts are still outside; he doesn't look out his window. He just crawls into bed, still wearing his jacket, and eventually, he passes out.
***
The next day, Ryan decides to be more productive, so he offers to do their laundry, which is a nice gesture considering the fact that almost everything Sean owns is dirty. Sean even offers to go with - or he would, if it wasn’t ungodly early and he had gotten more sleep.
“I have some quarters,” Sean mumbles.
He hears Ryan laugh and Sean’s automatic response is to smile at the noise. “Save ‘em. I’m going to Nick’s.”
Sean mumbles something that might be a reply and starts dozing off again. He’s faintly aware of hearing the front door to his apartment close sometime later, but after that, he’s out again. For most of his life, Sean’s never dreamt. He doesn’t know if that part of him was scooped out, sacrificed for the ability he does have, but he doesn’t dream. He sleeps and it’s nothing but pure, black silence.
A body crawling into his bed breaks that silence. Sean is turned away from where the person who’s joined him is sitting. He should probably be more afraid than he is, but fuck, he just woke up and nothing is making sense right now. A cold hand touches the center of his back where his comforter had fallen away. Sean presses his face into his pillow.
“Ryan?” he asks, his voice muffled.
The person laughs. It’s not Ryan. Sean raises his head and smells the sweet tang of nicotine and metal. Tom. “Is Ryan crawling into your bed enough of a frequent occurrence that you thought I was him?” Tom asks, clearly delighted in the situation.
“Ugh, fuck off.” Sean collapses back into the pillow.
Tom tugs back the blanket and Sean tries to kick him without actually moving or waking himself up. He fails at both. Reluctantly, he rolls over on to his back. “Your shoes better be off,” he warns.
“Yeah, yeah, now wake up and keep me company.” Tom climbs out of Sean’s bed. “Do you have any beer?”
“No.” Sean pulls the pillow over his face in a vain attempt at going back to sleep.
“Good thing I brought some, then.”
Sean has coffee and Tom drinks a beer. They settle together on the couch.
“Where is Ryan, by the way?” Tom asks. He sets his beer on the coffee table and then picks up a camera from the floor. It’s one of his nicer ones, never one that’d he take on tour.
“Went to Nick’s.” Sean has one of his journals sitting on his knee. He’d tabbed some pages in it to show to Tom and Max the next time he saw them, but it doesn’t feel like Tom wants to jump right to working. He’s busy fiddling with his camera, viewing Sean’s living room through the camera’s lens, like it will show him an entirely new world. Maybe it will. Sean’s never been good at this picture stuff.
“I’m kind of surprised he even came here,” Tom says. He sets his camera down to make sure he didn’t offend Sean, “I mean, I thought he’d want a break from all your ghost buddies instead of living with them.”
Sean shrugs. “Yeah, I don’t know. He only slept here two nights - not exactly a commitment. You know Ryan.” In fact, he’s probably broaching Nick right this second about crashing at his place for an indefinite amount of time. Something about the thought makes Sean’s throat feel tight, but he ignores it. “Besides,” Sean says, “not a lot of supernatural activities here lately.” It’s not exactly a lie. Sean doesn’t feel like worrying anyone.
Tom’s got his camera up to his face again. He snaps a picture of the darkened archway that leads back to the bedrooms. He looks at the screen, makes a face, and then Sean hears the beep of the picture being deleted from existence. “I think,” Tom says, aiming the camera at Sean but not hitting the button, “that you’re lying about that.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because Ryan texted me the other night to ask if you’d ever talked in your sleep before and I told him it only happened when a ghost had come to see you.”
Sean makes a face. So Ryan had heard his conversation with the spirit of the woman the other night - but he’d been drunk, couldn’t physically see the ghosts, and thought Sean was sleep-talking. He wonders why Ryan didn’t bring it up.
“I was looking some stuff up,” Tom says. It’s clear he’s moved on to something else now. He flits around in conversation easily, avoiding what he doesn’t want to keep discussing and saying the bare minimum of what he feels he needs to. Sean kind of envies that about him. “Ryan seeing your ghosts got me thinking.”
“You want to see ghosts?” Sean asks.
“I want to photograph a ghost.” Tom shrugs. “That’d be fucking cool.”
“They look like people, only…just a little off. Not as exciting as you’d think.”
“Stop being a buzzkill. It says you can capture them with a standard digital. Isn’t that cool?” Tom hefts his camera up in his hand. “A piece of the ordinary capturing a ghost. I read a book once,” Tom continues. Sean looks up at him from where he was staring at the cover of his notebook. He’d really like to just talk about the band. His whole promise was how he’d focus on the music, but lately his band is doing anything but. “It had a folktale in it. I don’t remember where it was from, but it said that when you take a picture of someone, you capture a piece of their soul.” Tom says all of this through the lens of his camera, pointed squarely at Sean.
“I’ve heard that, too,” Sean says. He watches Tom’s finger hover over the shutter button.
He can see Tom’s mouth quirk up into the smallest of smiles. “That always stuck with me. The idea of capturing something, a piece of something no one else can see. Maybe that’s why I want to take pictures of a ghost. They’re nothing but soul.”
Sean rolls his neck so that he’s looking at Tom - well, at the camera, but it’s almost the same thing.
“You sound like a ghost hunter or something.” He doesn’t know what Tom’s getting at. Sometimes, he gets weird in a way that makes it harder for Sean to understand him.
Tom shrugs. “I don’t know, running around, collecting souls…it sounds pretty cool.”
Tom never moves the camera. Sean thinks back to all the pictures Tom’s ever taken of him, how it’s second nature at this point and he isn’t even gun shy about it anymore. “So, how about it, Sean?” Tom asks. “Can I take a piece of your soul?”
“You might have all of it at this point,” Sean says.
Tom smiles with all teeth, but he turns to face the window, the curtains are drawn back and the sun is edging to setting. Tom takes a picture of the orange creamsicle slice of sky that’s visible through the window instead of stealing a piece of Sean’s soul.
“Ryan made me think of it again,” Tom says. He’s still facing the window and Sean can hear the snap and shutter of the camera at least three more times. “Somehow I thought it’d be a good way to fight ghosts.”
Sean frowns even though Tom can’t see him. “Tom, I don’t - ”
Tom looks back at him now, waving a hand at Sean. “Yeah, I know you don’t fight them.” Tom is quiet for a moment. He stretches his legs out from the couch, scraping his heels against the wooden floor of the living room. “Still, though,” he says, bringing the camera up to his eye again. He turns to Sean. “I’d love to catch one on film.” Sean hears the shutter and doesn’t even blink at the flash as Tom takes a picture of him, not for the first time owning a little piece of him.
***
Tom leaves a half-hour before Ryan turns up with a garbage bag full of freshly laundered clothes. “Hey, man,” he says, setting the bag on the floor near the living room closet. “Did you cook?”
“Tom,” Sean says, waving a hand at the empty plates dirtying up the counter. About the time Ryan toes his boots off at Sean's door, he figures out that Ryan isn’t just dropping off the clean clothes and heading back to Nick’s. Ryan makes a face. "Not sorry to have missed that. What’s in store for tonight?”
Sean shrugs and sets the dirty plates into the sink. He’s still living on the reasoning of just coming off tour as an excuse for slacking off around the house. He’ll clean the apartment eventually, just like they'll record eventually and Sean will pick up some shifts at the coffee shop eventually. All in due time.
“Light drinking and bad TV? Tom was thinking we’d meet up at Max’s tomorrow. What about you? You and Nick going to do something?”
Ryan shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the back of one of Sean’s kitchen chairs. “Probably not. I’ll probably just hang here if it’s cool with you.”
Sean looks up from the sink at Ryan. “Yeah, man, fine by me. Tom did leave some beer behind.”
“Sweet.” Ryan slips into the kitchen, slides past Sean, and digs around in the fridge, setting two cans out on the counter. Ryan picks up his can and raises it in a toast at Sean. “Meet you on the couch,” Ryan says. He slips away and pads back out into the living room.
Sean looks at the dishes in the sink, the beer can that’s already sweating. It reminds him of when he and Tom and Ryan all lived together. Even back then, he wondered what it’d be like minus Tom. He doesn't mean it rudely; he’s lived with just himself and Tom (give and take a dog) and knows what it’s like as a two-person system. What he’s curious about is what home feels like when the word means himself and Ryan.
In his head, Sean can very clearly hear Tom laughing at him.
Sean joins Ryan on the couch. Thankfully, he’s not watching any ghost shit, just some movie that Sean can’t place the name of. The couch kind of sucks in the way that, even if you begin at opposite ends, pressed against the arm, you still end up sinking in the middle. Sean and Ryan both end up there, thighs touching again. That’s not weird. What’s weird is how perfectly content Sean’s been feeling all day; usually, he’s pushing for the next thing, for what they’re going to do, when they’ll hit the road. Today, he’s fine with nothing except shitty beer and Ryan’s thigh warm against his.
He falls asleep like that on the couch. The next time he’s woken up, it’s by the clatter of the remote slipping off the couch and hitting the floor. Sean’s eyes open. He’s so comfortable on the ratty, old couch that he doesn’t really want to investigate the noise or find out what time it is. The movie is over and the local news is on. Sean is tipped partially on his side, his head rising and falling in time with someone else’s breathing.
When he lifts his head, Ryan’s body shifts. Sean had been sleeping against him, his head tilted awkwardly against Ryan’s shoulder. Sean’s tired and the newscaster on the TV is talking too fast and too loud for his liking. Ryan is all slack and soft against the couch and shit, he isn’t awake. Sean is almost tempted to just stay there because everything is warm and comfortable, but a feeling tugging at the pit of his stomach stops him.
Instead, he sighs and shifts to push himself up and away. They don’t even sleep next to each other in the van or hotel rooms, so Sean shouldn’t be a fucking weirdo when he has a perfectly good bed in the other room. He keeps quiet so that Ryan won’t wake up, but when he turns off the TV, he hears a sleepy mumble.
“Sean?” Ryan’s voice is rough from sleep, the same way it’s rough when Ryan’s been talking too much or yelling or drinking. Sean likes it all those times, too. “You going to bed?”
“Yeah, it’s late.”
“Alright. I’m gonna sleep here.” Ryan yawns and stretches his tiny frame out on the sagging cushions of the couch.
Sean doesn’t question him. He hits the bathroom and then his bedroom, but before he can lie down, he remembers how drafty the living room gets. He feels too bad to let Ryan sleep out there without a blanket. He drags one of his extra comforters off his bed - it’s that strange time of year in Chicago where it’s fall but the chill hasn’t really set in quite yet; plus, he has the working heater, so he can spare it - out to the living room. Ryan looks like he’s already asleep again. Sean drapes the blanket over Ryan before he returns to his room, feeling decidedly less warm in his bed with a blanket and a working heater than he did on the shitty couch next to Ryan.
***
The next day is finally studio time. Sean’s had his handful of days of rest, but now the need to create is backing up inside of him, fighting for a way out that has Sean dying for a guitar or microphone. He and Ryan head to Max’s place, but Tom isn’t there.
“He went to check on Jon’s place,” Max says. Sean feels like it’s going to be a good day because Max looks as excited as Sean feels. “Let’s just start without him.”
“Did he want us to?” Ryan asks. He heads to his partially assembled kit in the room and starts setting it up the way he always does. Sean watches him for a moment, so in his element in a way that Ryan never seems to be in any other aspect of his life. They kind of all are like that, though.
Max pushes his hair out of his face. “If he wants to dick up our plans by hanging around his ex’s place, that’s his prerogative. He won’t miss much.”
Neither of them argues. Max is usually right about these kinds of things; he falls easily into their parental role during studio time despite being the youngest among them. Sean is excited to show Max a melody he’s had in his head for days. He’s been replaying it mentally to keep it around long enough to put it down to paper. He makes a beeline for a guitar and starts warming up on it. Ryan is already testing out his drums, like the short time he hasn’t played them has made him rusty. It’s a useless fear - he’s just as good as he always is. Sean takes a moment to watch him. He’s on this strange little beat that Sean likes, so he tries to memorize that, too, so that he can ask for it again if he needs to.
Sean and Max play off of each other. Usually, Tom would fit here, too, more comfortable telling them his opinion than he ever was with William and company. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice the evolution of the four of them. Their music is turning into something darker than before, grittier, tunes that make Sean think of gravel and brick and that shitty alley near his first apartment that the ghosts used to hang out in. Sean hadn’t really intended the change, but he never does. He thinks he had more of a hand in it than the others - not that it doesn’t sound natural, because it does, but mostly, he’s blaming the ghosts.
He’s got the literal ghosts that haunt him, as well as the metaphorical ones. The ghosts have stories and they’re eager to share them. They whisper them to Sean in the dead of the night, when he’s got the better part of a bottle of liquor in his belly and his handwriting is even shitter than usual. If they have a purpose beyond being a huge burden in Sean’s life, it’s their service of being a muse. Inspiration is tricky. Sometimes, it feels better to live out someone else’s life via song than to peek into the dark recess of your own.
When they get into the groove of working on music, it takes a lot to break the string of concentration. It takes even more to pull Sean from it. He wants everything to match to the sound in his head and, when he can’t achieve it, he’ll usually keep trying until either he does or Max fixes it. Max, Tom, or Ryan can usually fix it. They’re still just laying groundwork. Everything is kind of up in the air at this point, but Sean likes the chaos of it, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Max nudges his foot against Sean’s knee. “Tom’s on his way back,” he says when Sean looks up.
“About time,” Sean says. Tom’s been gone for almost two hours, which is weird because Jon isn’t home, isn’t even in the same country as them right now. A short time later, there are footsteps on the stairs and they can hear Tom talking to someone. The replying voice is either too foreign or too quiet for Sean to recognize.
Tom enters first, smiling all big and stupid. “I found a scraggler hanging around Jon’s place.”
“You did not bring an animal here,” Max says.
“I’m toilet-trained, I swear,” the person behind Tom says. He steps aside and, huh, Ryan Ross is standing there.
To say that Sean is surprised to see him is saying the least. He’s used to seeing Ryan only in the context of a visit from Jon where Ryan tagged along, but Jon has fled the country and, as far and with the limited knowledge Sean has of Ross, he prefers California to Chicago this time of year.
“Hey, man,” Sean says with a smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you around here.”
Ross shrugs and scratches at the back of his head. “Well, I don’t know, Jon always made a big deal about Illinois this time of year. I thought I’d see it for myself, and while I was here, I thought I’d generously drive by Jon’s place and make sure it was alright, maybe check his mail - ”
“More like squat there for the rest of the winter where they’d undoubtedly find your de-thawing body next spring,” Tom finishes for him. Ross laughs again. Out of all four of them, Tom has the most history with Ross and is clearly the most comfortable around him. Sean exchanges a look with their Ryan, who just shrugs and smiles.
Ryan Ross being in their studio - hell, being in Chicago itself - isn’t even the weirdest part of this whole situation. That honor belongs to the fact that Sean can clearly see the spirit that’s attached itself to Ross. It isn’t an uncommon thing, necessarily. This isn’t even the first time that Sean has seen this happen. The clearest memory he has of seeing an attached spirit was when he was younger, riding in the car with his parents on the way to his grandmother’s house.
They were driving slowly through this little section of town that was unfamiliar to Sean at the age of eight. He was bored and had his face pressed against the cool glass of the backseat window. He was watching the people lining the sidewalk and, while at a stop light at an intersection with a mom ‘n’ pop shop on the corner, Sean saw it. The spirit was attached to a woman who was probably around his mom’s age at the time.
She was sweeping away dead, dry leaves from the front of a store. She seemed fine, perfectly content with the glowing orb of bluish-white, like the color of the very center of a flame, embedded in the center of her chest. She didn’t mind the thin vines of the same color that wrapped around her middle, up her shoulders, down her arms and legs, locked around her form.
Sean didn’t even know how to classify it at the time and he didn’t question it that day. His parents’ car pulled away from the intersection and the woman became a snapshot of the road. She was completely emptied from Sean’s mind by the time he got to his grandparent’s house. Now, he at least recognizes it. He calls it something like a second skin that’s visible to no one but him and others like him, though Sean can’t know that for sure. Ross’ attached ghost is different, though. This spirit is more like the glowing orb inside of his chest, no reedy vines tangling around his skinny body. Instead, it’s more like a light, illuminating outwards like Ryan’s heart is a spotlight.
Even though he has a definition for it, Sean doesn’t really know what it means to have a ghost attachment. He’d suspect it’s something like his power, except as far as he knows, the person can’t see or speak to the soul that’s made itself a home inside of the host. He can’t say he’s very surprised, though. From the minimal research he’s done, it seems spirits are attracted to odd people, eccentric in nature - or maybe they are eccentric because of the ghosts that have attached themselves. Sean isn’t sure, but it makes sense for him. He can’t talk to the spirit because there’s nothing to talk to. It’s just Ryan Ross with an added glow effect.
“How long are you in Chicago for?” Max asks.
Ross shrugs. “As long as I want to be. I’m kind of free lately.”
“Cool if he sits in on our practice?” Tom asks. “Turns out he knows no one in Chicago except Jon and me.”
Ross rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling in this easy kind of way that lets them know he’s not taking it to heart. Sean strums a few lines on the guitar in his hands. “Fine by me.”
Tom points to one of the unoccupied chairs and Ross sinks into it. Tom picks up his own gear and goes to sit between Ross and Max. With him back, they can get more serious - and they do, working on building the skeletons of the songs into something of their own.
Their practice doesn’t end until well into the night, but by the end of it, they have a few for-sure beginnings of songs that seem like (at least right now) they’ll be used for the new record. Ross stretches as he stands up. He’d kept quiet while they were jamming. He didn’t interject his own opinion, unless he was asked something by Tom or Max, but he didn’t seem bored, either.
“Hey, how about I take you guys out for brunch tomorrow? My treat.”
Ross doesn’t even seem like the kind of guy who’s awake for brunch, but Tom’s already nodding. “They serve alcohol, right?” Ross nods and Tom looks back at Sean and Ryan and Max. “You guys in?”
“Sure,” Sean says. Max declines and Ryan does, too, but Ross doesn’t seem offended.
“Where are you staying while you’re here?” Sean asks.
“Oh, Tom recommended a good hotel earlier. Probably there.” They climb up the stairs. Ross is parked outside. “Anyone want a lift home?”
Tom nods and slips into the passenger side of Ross’ car to escape the chilly fall wind. “Ryan’s driving us home,” Sean says. Ross nods before he throws them a wave and joins Tom in the car. He’s all skin and bones. Sean’s pretty sure he won’t last until winter here.
***
It turns out that Ryan is skipping brunch because he wants to sleep in. Sean borrows his car to drive to the restaurant that Tom texted him the name of. He’s never been there before; he’s terrible at breaking out of his habits and haunts. Ross and Tom are already there and seated at a table. It’s kind of early, but both of them are drinking already.
“We already ordered,” Tom says once Sean is seated.
“Beer and chicken tacos,” Ryan says.
“We ordered you the same,” Tom tells him.
Sean shrugs. He probably would’ve gotten the same thing if he had been there. “Ryan, I can’t imagine Chicago is better than California this time of year.”
Ryan definitely looks the part of an out-of-towner. He’s got a thick sweater on, the kind that look reminiscent of the style Jon gets everyone for Christmas, and even though they’re inside, he still looks cold. He nods. “L.A. is definitely my natural habitat.”
“Why Chicago, then, if you don’t mind my asking? You did know Jon was traveling, right?”
Ryan looks at the table and nods. “Oh, yeah, he emails me occasionally. I didn’t tell him I was coming here, though.” He looks at Tom then, like he’s silently wondering if Tom is in regular contact with Jon (he is) and whether or not that means he’ll tell Jon that Ryan showed up out of nowhere. “I wanted a change in scenery. Tom tweeted me and I thought, well, I hadn’t seen him in a while. It sounded fun.”
“Wait,” Sean says, “you came to Chicago because of a tweet?”
Ryan laughs. “Kind of?”
“It’s cool,” Tom says. “People have traveled for lesser reasons than that.” He picks up his beer and tips it towards Ryan for a toast. They share a smile. Sean feels like he’s missed something.
Their food comes and, while they eat, Ryan regales Sean with old tour stories about Tom. It’s nothing surprising or at least nothing he hasn't heard a part of before, but he’s having fun all the same, and Tom has his own loaded memory of stories about Ryan from when he was younger.
“Brunch is alright with me,” Tom says, patting his stomach and draining the rest of his beer.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “It’s not as sophisticated as you’d imagine. It means chicken tacos and light alcohol before you have fish tacos and hard drinks for dinner.”
“Didn’t you and Jon always eat fish tacos?” Tom asks. “I remember him saying you had a knack for finding the best in each city.”
Ryan sucks down the rest of his drink. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “We did.”
Sean’s noticed that Tom and Ryan’s common factor is Jon, so their stories involve him quite a bit. He also notes that Tom is fine with talking about Jon (he’s been like that since Sean met him), but whenever he comes up, Ryan looks at the table, fiddles with his beer, smiles and laughs, but none of it reaches his eyes. The last time he saw Ryan Ross, he and Jon were in their own band and a relationship. That’s obviously changed now, though it isn’t Sean’s business, so he tries not to dwell on it.
Tom doesn’t seem to notice how Ryan is acting in regards to Jon, but it might be because he’s busy ordering himself a Bloody Mary. “Was that an invitation for fish tacos and hard liquor, by the way?” Tom asks once their waitress walks away. “Because I’d be up for that.”
“Yeah?” A genuine smile is back on Ryan’s face. “I know just the place.”
Sean apparently isn’t invited out for the fish tacos and hard liquor portion of the night, which is alright by him. As he drives back to his apartment, he wonders if their Ryan is up yet. He wonders if he ate and suddenly feels bad for not bringing anything back with him.
Ryan is up when Sean gets back, sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal in his hands. “How was brunch?” Ryan asks.
“Weird,” Sean says, “but not bad.”
“Where’s Tom? I thought he’d come back here with you.”
“He and Ross are going to get wasted and eat fish tacos.”
Ryan pops his spoon out of his mouth. “That’s weird.”
Sean sits down on the couch next to Ryan, slipping into the dip in the middle again. His knee knocks against Ryan’s thigh and makes him dribble milk on himself. “Did you bring me something?” Ryan asks.
“No, you’ll have to make due with eating all our cereal.”
“So it’s our cereal now? I feel honored.” Ryan waggles his eyebrows at Sean.
He doesn’t say anything because, well, it’s dumb to feel weird over cereal, right? So why does he feel weird? Why does admitting that his home is feeling more and more like Ryan’s home as well make him feel funny? There are probably answers, but Sean’s not going to go looking for them.
“Did you hear me?” Ryan asks a moment later. Sean arches an eyebrow.
“Uh?”
“I said I’d do our dishes, then, since I ate all the cereal.”
“Oh,” Sean says. “Cool.”
They settle in after that and watch TV. Even when Ryan’s bowl is empty, he doesn’t move.
→