[fic] horses 'n' carriages [ryan/alex, r?]
horses ‘n’ carriages
?: Ryan/Alex.
#: 8720 words.
rating: a+++ would buy from seller again
"": Ryan’s got a whole folder to keep track of every time they pretend to get married.
♥: Props to softlyforgotten for the fixing of things.
"What, no," Ryan says. "I did that already, I don't want to be repetitive. People are going to see a pattern."
"Yeah, but no one would believe you'd fake getting married twice."
"I do like patterns though." Ryan is wearing a floral shirt and his jacket has pinstripes he forgot about in the closet and only noticed when they got to the restaurant, but he guesses it's all right because Alex hasn't made fun of him for it yet.
"Pattern is movement."
"Yeah - hey, wait, that's. Oh, hey." Ryan claps, but only a little, like a spectator at a golf tournament who has just watched a good shot. "How far is it to Toys-R-Us?"
Alex looks down at his iPhone, and Ryan can tell by his thumbs that he is opening an app and typing, and extending that logic Ryan guesses that Alex is looking for Toys-R-Us. Alex looks back up. "Three miles."
"I can drive." Ryan has yet to finish his glass of wine. He was planning on driving anyway. It's not even seven yet, and he is very sober.
What Ryan likes is that Alex doesn't need to ask why Toys-R-Us. Or at least: Alex doesn't feel the need to ask, even if he doesn't know just what Ryan is thinking, but that seems unlikely because Ryan's thoughts are (as always) so transparent and Alex can always see them anyway even though they're see-through.
"Good," Alex says, and they settle the bill and get in the car and Ryan says, "Wait, no, look and see if there's - look for one in Vegas."
"Let's go to the one here and then drive to Vegas." Alex's suggestion is better, makes more sense in the long run, so that's what they do and in Las Vegas they go to a drive through even though the law won't acknowledge it technically, just so they can have pictures and post to Twitter.
They sit on a park bench in a suburb, not the one Ryan's from, and Alex gets out his iPhone and puts his hand, the one with the ring, on Ryan's knee and takes a picture so Ryan does the same but in reverse and laughs about it and they stay there until the sun comes up and then a while longer, until it's twelve hours from when they decided to leave in the first place. Then they go back and mostly it's a joke except Ryan keeps finding the little plastic shell his ring came in, all twenty five cents worth of it, finds it rolling around the floor of his car and finds it around his house, and he throws it away a few times - not the ring but the little plastic egg it came from - but the red-and-clear plastic keeps coming back, and it's strange, isn't it, and Ryan doesn't want to ascribe any meaning to events that are so clearly meaningless.
A few people, friends of both of them, make jokes about it, and there are too many replies on Twitter to bother with, even though Ryan and Alex look at a few of them and laugh until it gets old.
Then a month later: "Hey," Alex says while they're waiting for their food. He kicks Ryan in the shin. "We should get fake married again."
"Ow. Okay."
Two months after that, Ryan says, "You want to pretend to get married again?"
"Yeah, sounds good."
It’s an easy pattern to fall into and they don't always post to Twitter about it anymore or even tell anyone, just disappear for a while, stage a ceremony someplace where no one knows them and leave again.
For example: they go to some new bar in Brooklyn, and at one point Alex taps a spoon against his glass until everyone quiets down and he goes down on one knee and says, "Hey, Ross, you want to pretend to get hitched?" when everyone is quiet and still and looking at them.
Ryan says, "Of course, absolutely," and some drunken Brooklyn kids buy them a few rounds and congratulate them even though they’re strangers. Their joy is almost confusing, and Ryan wonders if maybe they just wanted a reason to be happy. He decides not to blame them.
Time goes by, as it often does, and at one point Ryan is drunk and goes down on Alex after a fake wedding and Alex pulls his hair and Ryan makes a sound and swallows.
Three days later they both have a few too many drinks, sitting out on Ryan’s porch looking up at the early evening sky and watching the birds and some early bats. The porch lacks furniture, so they sit on the wood floor, knees knocked together and shoulders pressed up close, and Ryan says, “Hey, hey,” to get Alex’s attention.
Half an hour later, they’re still trading sloppy kisses and Ryan keeps his hand curled around Alex’s neck and eventually they stop just because there’s still beer in the refrigerator. Alex breaks a bottle over the porch railing and says, “I christen this our marital porch. You may kiss the, the. Me. You can. If you want.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, and he does, and the next morning Alex helps clean up the broken glass.
A week later, Alex gets high and asks if he can jerk Ryan off, and Ryan says yes, and they get married again only this time they don't even leave the bedroom, Alex just says, "Okay, we're married again," and Ryan says, "I know, oh god, fuck" and a while later he falls asleep.
-
Jon asks, "Hey, what are you doing this weekend?"
Ryan says, "Getting married, probably."
"Mm. Well, there's this show my friend Jon is playing. Not me. Another Jon."
"Without an h?"
"Without an h," Jon agrees. "We're missing the same letter, which is probably why we get along, right?"
"You’re catching on, Jon Walker," Ryan says, a little disappointed because he wanted to suggest that, but he supposes Jon has known him long enough to predict and snatch his jokes from the egg before hatching. He puts his hands in his pockets and rolls the toys-r-us ring between his fingers, over its strangely greenish surface - it used to look silver. It kind of gives Ryan a rash now. "I'll see if we've got time. Maybe we can have the wedding at the show."
"What are you even talking about?"
"Oh," Ryan says. "I guess it's kind of an in joke."
-
Alex says, "How many marriage certificates do we have by now?"
"Mm." Ryan isn't sure. He pretends not to know where to look, even though he has a file with a record of every marriage they've ever had. The folder is thick and the edges are ragged and sheets of paper stick out at odd angles because there are too many to fit. It hasn't been all that long. Some of them are recorded on napkins or scraps of paper because Ryan always writes himself a note, and some of them are printouts and official documents from the various states. Ryan's thought about organizing them alphabetically by state but a few are too difficult to figure out, some of the handwritten ones.
"I know how many times we've gotten married," Alex says. "I just wanted to know how many had paper. Do you think the state'll track us down for bigamy?"
"Maybe," Ryan says. "I think a few times I put down my real first name, too."
Alex smiles, crooked. "I've been living a lie."
"Never. You're very honest, sometimes."
"Occasionally," Alex agrees.
-
"Do you think," Ryan says, and he is very careful and slow and it takes him a while to finish the sentence properly. "When you get married, will you ever renew your vows? Or will just being married be - like, would that be enough?"
"Maybe," Jon says. "I think it depends. I - how did you know?"
"Know what?"
Jon says, "Hey, come on, seriously. I’ve only been planning to propose to her for like a week now. I haven’t even told anyone except my parents.”
"Oh," Ryan says. "It was an educated guess."
"I don't know if we'll renew our vows or anything," Jon says eventually. "I guess we'll see. I’m - I should do this, right? It’s been long enough. Cassie deserves it after all this time."
"Yeah, yeah, absolutely," Ryan says, nodding, stunned. He feels guilty, all of a sudden, for what he was thinking of doing, so he waits, instead, and lets Jon have his moment of glory because if he said I think I'm going to get married then Jon would just laugh, because Ryan's got a pattern now, even if he were to add, quiet and shy, no, I mean it.
-
"Alex, will you be my plus one?" Ryan asks.
"Always," Alex tells him.
"No, I mean like." Ryan waves a hand. "For a particular instance, at Jon's thing. Jon and Cassie's thing. When they get married."
"Oh, yeah, sure," Alex says. "When is that? I'll have to make sure I'm in - where are they even doing that? Chicago, LA?"
"It says on the invitation," Ryan says, because he isn't sure. Jon asked him personally, but sent an invitation too, because Ryan asked for one, just to have and to keep for better and for worse.
Alex rubs a hand against Ryan's back and Ryan rolls his shoulders, not really a shrug. He's quiet. They're watching Diff’rent Strokes reruns. It's nearly two in the morning. Alex is living in Los Angeles, in a house of his own, and it seems like each of them spends more time at the other’s place than at home but neither of them is quite willing to give up home ownership so they just wander back and forth like vagrants, and at least now it’s not cross-country but cross-town and barely even that.
They haven't gotten married in a while.
-
Ryan helps Alex wash his hair, not because Alex needs any help, but because he wants to and he can and it seems like a good morning for it.
"I should probably dry it, huh," Alex says, thoughtfully, still dripping wet from the shower.
Ryan passes him a towel and sits on the edge of the tub while he dries himself off. "Uh, yeah. If you don't want to have old people glaring at you."
"Well, I am an uninvited guest."
"You’re not," Ryan says, insistent. "You’re invited. I get a plus one. That means you're invited. I even told Jon, and he said 'oh, okay.'" Ryan slips into a lazy impression of Jon Walker for a brief moment, then grins at Alex.
"Wow, awesome," Alex says. "I’m glad I got such stirring approval."
"You can't have everything." Ryan gets to his feet and attacks Alex with a towel, getting him in a one-armed headlock to rub at his hair with it.
"Oh my god," Alex laughs, not really trying to get away, just shoving at Ryan ineffectively. "What are you even -"
"I’m helping," Ryan tells him very seriously, letting go to leave the towel draped over Alex's head. He puts his hands on Alex's shoulders and looks him right in the eyes, very serious. "See? I’m so helpful."
"Sure, right," Alex agrees and leans to kiss him, and Ryan allows that quite willingly for a moment but pulls back when Alex's hands start to wander.
"We just got clean." Ryan shrugs, apologetic. "And we don't have time. Later. Maybe at the reception, and we can totally creep out Jon's great aunt or someone on accident."
Ryan has been to a few real weddings - a couple at city halls where they were just witnessing other people taking their vows, where they was just Alex-and-Ryan, and a few times when friends of his got married but he didn't always have the luxury of a plus-one. That kind of thing. It hasn't been anyone as close as Jon walker. He’s still weirded out by it, a little.
"I’m going to make you dance," Alex says. "Like a trained seal."
Ryan lets his hands drop from Alex's shoulders to his sides. "Do trained seals dance?"
"They do now."
This time it's Ryan who kisses Alex, just very quick, then he says, "No, really, though, we should get ready."
-
It’s a nice wedding, outdoors, with family from both sides present. The sun shines, as usual, but it's not too hot. There’s a breeze from the ocean. Ryan thinks of all his marriages, and can remember two by the seaside, both undertaken while incredibly stoned.
Ryan has to stand the whole time, which means he misses out on folding chairs that Alex later assures him are terrible. Ryan's the best man.
The vows take too long, and Ryan ends up watching some squirrels for a while because they're outdoors and animals can be distracting and, anyway, he still thinks it's weird this is even happening. He thinks about how he'd want a real wedding to go. He thinks about the law, and whether they'd be allowed to marry again, and what state they'd have to go to for it anyway, and if it would even be recognized.
He does his duties though, and mostly doesn't look at Alex sitting over on Jon's side of the aisle.
Before they drive to the reception, Ryan kisses Alex up against a tree because he looks fucking amazing today and because he wants to and he can, and Alex fists a hand in Ryan's hair and uses his teeth.
-
"Oh," Ryan says when they finally get to the reception and are being seated for dinner. He looks at the place cards. He’s at the head table, since he's best man, but. "Where does Alex sit?"
Jon shrugs, and looks to Cassie.
Cassie says, "He's over with the dates and spouses. There isn't room."
"Oh," Ryan says.
"I figured as much," Alex says, punching Ryan in the shoulder. "Man, look at me, I’ve been elevated to date status." He looks at Cassie very seriously. "I was told I was a plus one."
"Did I - sorry," Cassie says. "It’s okay, right? We weren't sure where to."
"It’s fine. It’s good." Ryan looks at Alex. Alex looks at Ryan.
Ryan shrugs, and Alex says, "Well, I better go chat up some old people, it looks like."
Ryan makes a speech, and when he is talking about love he mostly looks at Alex, and he had this whole thing written out in advance and has note cards in his pocket just in case - he thought about writing it on his hand but he's not from Alaska - and then at some point he forgets and says, "and really, trust me, you two, being married is great, I mean, sometimes it isn't, but mostly it really is," and Jon gives him a baffled look and Ryan gets back on the rails of his stupid little speech which is mostly far wittier than that.
He tries not to look at Alex so much after that.
-
Ryan and Alex are dancing, and from nearby Jon says, "I have so many cousins here," to Ryan like that means something.
“What?”
Jon answers, confused, “You’re not going to try to sleep with them?”
"Yes, absolutely," Ryan agrees. Alex is next to him, so Ryan's hand finds its way to the small of Alex's back. "You have a good family. Of course I want to fuck your whole family tree.”
"He’s a rake and a wastrel," Alex says solemnly.
Jon shrugs. "Well, it's what he usually does."
Cassie says, "Jon. Jon." She's dancing with her father, but she's close enough to scold him.
"What? Ow!"
Cassie’s shoes have pointy toes, so.
Then it's the dance just for couples, and Jon laughs when they're still on the floor, and Cassie and everyone else laughs too when they insist on staying out when it is weeded down to just married couples and they play it up a bit before scurrying off the floor with their arms around each others shoulders. They stand by and watch for a little while because it's finally Jon and Cassie's first dance as a married couple. Ryan tries to remember when he and Alex had a first dance and wonders if they were married at the time. There have been times when they've gotten married but not been married, is the thing.
Later Jon says, "Hey, your speech was good, thank you. You didn't even embarrass me too much."
"You're welcome."
Jon laughs and adds, "I'm pretty sure getting fake married to Z that one time - and Alex those other times I guess - doesn't count as being married, though."
"I know," Ryan says, and looks down. "I was just talking."
Jon laughs again, shaking his head a little.
Ryan says, "It would be bad if - never mind."
"If what?"
"Like, proposing to someone at your best friend's wedding reception is messed up, right?"
"What?"
"I won't mess this up for you, don't worry," Ryan tells Jon, very solemn, because he knows how good he is at messing things up.
"No, really, what? Oh, because - yeah, no, please don't pretend to get married at my wedding, dude," Jon says. "I know that's your thing, but definitely don't do that."
"I wouldn't," Ryan says.
"Anyway," Jon says, looking around. "I’ve got to go find my wife." He smiles, such a big stupid smile that Ryan can't help but smile back, and wanders off in the direction Cassie was last headed.
Ryan goes to find Alex and drags him to the bathroom to suck him off in a stall, down on his knees on the tile floor.
-
Things are mostly normal after that, except every now and then at practice Jon will suddenly remember he’s married and for a while it’s charming and then eventually it’s annoying but Ryan doesn’t let on because he really is happy for Jon.
The band works on recording another album, and Nick and Nick and Andy all go home at the end of the night, but Ryan says, “You can just crash here, man,” instead of leaving Jon to fend for himself. “I’m pretty sure the sheets in the guest room are clean.”
“Isn’t Alex staying here?” Jon laughs. “I don’t think anything he touches stays clean. I’m not sleeping in that bed until it’s been fucking, like, decontaminated.”
“What?” Ryan says. “Why would Alex be in the guest room?”
“You take that back, Jon Walker,” Alex says from a doorway, because he’s been lurking around most of the night.
“Never.”
Alex puts his arms out in front of him like a zombie and lurches towards Jon, and with the bags under his eyes and his hair hanging so limp today he almost manages to look frightening.
Ryan puts his chin on his hands and first smiles and then laughs as Alex chases Jon down, only to tap him on the shoulder and say, “There, now you’ll never be clean again. Enjoy.”
“Maybe if I just shower for the next five years,” Jon says.
“That might work,” Ryan agrees. “It’s too late for me, but you could be saved.”
Jon says, “So where is Alex even staying if he’s not in the guest room? I mean, the couch isn’t set up.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Alex wonders, laughing.
Jon looks between the two of them and is quiet for a while. “Are you - holy shit.”
Ryan’s eyebrows go up. He hasn’t been trying to keep secrets. “Wow.”
“I’m really impressed by your deductive reasoning,” Alex says. “Are you sure you’re not related to the Holmes family, Jon?”
“Fuck, no, I just never realized,” Jon begins. He stops. He says, “Fuck.”
“Yeah, well,” Ryan says. “Anyway, guest room is all yours.”
“It’s not like I’ve got a problem with it or anything,” Jon says. “Just, holy shit, I didn’t even know. So you're like - boyfriends, right?”
"I don't know if I'd use that word, but sure, it’s close," Alex says. "If it keeps things comprehensible for your simple mind."
“Yeah, and see,” Ryan says. He knows, since he’s talking to Jon, that he should be looking at him, but he watches Alex instead. “It’s been like a year, dude.”
“Holy shit.”
“Little over,” Alex says. “Technically. I mean, depending on what you’re counting from.”
“It’s just weird,” Jon says. “Okay. No. That’s - so you guys are sleeping together or whatever. That’s chill. I mean, is it - a year? Seriously?”
“A year or so.” Ryan nods. He doesn't mind repeating himself. Technically, a year and three months have passed since they first feigned marriage, and it’s been a year since they hooked up for the first time. Since then, they have pretended to get married seventy two times - there have been long periods where they haven’t pretended to get married at all, and it’s been a month and a half since their last wedding, but there are weeks where they got married eleven times just for the sake of it.
Jon says, "I mean, congrats? I don't know. Okay. Well, hey, as long as the sheets are actually clean. Yeah, okay."
"I promise we'll be super quiet," Ryan says. "So very quiet. Like mice."
"Oh, fuck, I didn't even - why did you say that? Man, Ryan, I love you, but I don't need to know about. Goddamn, dude."
Alex just laughs.
-
They are quiet. It’s a warm night, even with the air conditioning, and Alex licks the sweat from Ryan’s stomach and chest and neck, and lets his teeth scrape the place where Ryan’s jaw meets his ear. Alex’s hair falls, hangs like a curtain. Ryan is used to it now.
For a while, Ryan takes Alex in hand with lazy strokes of his thumb and still fingers but it’s late and he’s tired and they fall asleep without either of them getting off, which Ryan doesn’t even mind.
“Good night,” Ryan mumbles before falling asleep. “Sleep well, okay?”
Alex nods in somnambulant agreement. “I will.”
“Thank you.”
-
They spend a few weeks at Alex’s after that, not for any reason other than Alex wants to get something from his kitchen and then they just don’t leave. Or: they leave, for all kinds of reasons, but Ryan doesn’t go to the other house to sleep.
Summer is getting warmer and warmer, but Alex doesn’t want to turn on the air conditioning yet, so they wait until late evening and point fans in the closet before going to clean it out of old things. Alex hasn’t lived here very long but his closet is nearly full. A lot of things belong to someone else, or used to, once.
Ryan finds an old checked blanket, folded up neatly, and holds it out. “Is this yours, or should we throw it out?”
“It is now,” Alex says. “Mine, I mean. Let’s go on a picnic. That thing looks ready for a picnic.”
Ryan nods, cradling the blanket gently. “It probably hasn’t had one in a long time. We can do that for it.”
“Good,” Alex says. He looks around, and says, “Yeah, fuck it, let’s just go.”
“Right now?”
“Sure, why not?”
Ryan shrugs, and can’t think of a good answer so he helps go through the pantry and refrigerator to get grapes and crackers and slices of bread, and imitation cheese slices that Ryan has learned to tolerate. An argument over these lasted nearly a week once. Ryan now admits they taste less awful than some other fake cheeses.
Sometimes they have these little arguments, over who said what and who forgot to do the dishes and which way the toilet paper should roll and where the paper towel goes and whether that chord progression is worth developing, and sometimes Ryan is terrified that everything will crash down on him but it hasn’t yet so he acts unafraid and happy, because most of the time he is.
They eat out under the smog and reflected light of Los Angeles, only a few brave stars barely visible through the murk. Ryan lies down flat on his back and looks up at the sky.
“I like the sky better in the desert.”
“It’s so clear,” Alex says. “There, not here. It’s amazing. You were lucky.”
“Maybe,” Ryan says. “As lucky as you or I or anyone.”
Alex snorts and lies down beside him, just barely touching because the sticky heat makes close contact unbearable. There’s a breeze, but not enough to justify excess closeness. “Uh-huh.”
“Maybe I’m just lucky now,” Ryan says. “Or just sometimes. Not all the time.”
“Not all the time,” Alex agrees. “God, you’re not even - you’re so young sometimes.”
Ryan keeps quiet, not sure if he should apologize or argue or just agree. Probably the latter.
“It’s nothing,” Alex tells him even though Ryan didn’t ask. “Never mind.”
Ryan is terrified, for the future and the present and for all his memories of the past, but he doesn’t say so, just takes Alex’s hand and pulls it to his mouth so he can kiss each knuckle in turn.
-
Ryan gets home late from a show and raids the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice before going to see if Alex is home yet. He wanders a bit before finding Alex sitting in front of his laptop, face lit by the glow of the screen.
“Hey,” Ryan says, offering his cup. “You want some?”
“What is it?” Alex asks, not waiting for an answer before taking a drink. “Oh, thanks. It’s a bit late to start drinking, yeah?”
Ryan laughs a little. “Yeah, I got that out of the way already.”
“You have a good night?”
“I did, yeah.” Ryan leans on Alex’s shoulder. “What time’d you get home?”
“Like an hour ago, maybe.” Alex leans his head against Ryan’s arm. “So you wanna see what I’ve been up to?” He has Logic open, with about a billion separate tracks, half of which appear to be empty.
“Doing some producing?”
“Well, yeah,” Alex nods. “But, like, I was thinking about how fucking awesome the Internet was in 1998, you know? And I was kind of pissed Geocities got shut down because I would have rocked that shit, but this stuff’s actually pretty easy to do yourself.”
“As long as it’s not Myspace,” Ryan says. “No one even uses Myspace anymore. It’s sad.”
“A real tragedy of the modern era,” Alex agrees. “But yeah, hey, no, so I was fucking around on the computer and I made this shit, right?”
Alex pulls up another window, and for a second Ryan is just in awe of all the animated GIFs before actually reading the huge text splashed across the screen at a jaunty angle. Then he laughs.
“You gonna post that to Twitter? That fucking rules,” Ryan says.
“I mean, if you really want me to.” Alex shrugs a little, and Ryan feels the motion more than sees it. “I’ll wait until you’re ready to answer or whatever, though.”
“Ah, man,” Ryan says. “The challenge of coming up with a good tweet. I’m excited.”
Alex pauses. “So are you - I mean, yes? No? You’re gonna give your iPhone an answer before me?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Alex says, and moves to stand. “I’m gonna go get something to drink.”
“You should make me a drink, too, then,” Ryan decides. “And we can stay up and watch movies or something, since it’s not too late to drink anymore.”
“No, no, it’s still too late.” Alex leaves the room, and Ryan stands there for a minute because he shouldn’t follow, probably. He’s pretty sure following is a bad idea.
The main thing Ryan wonders about is how Alex could ever imagine he’d say no to another pretend wedding. Ryan agrees, every single time, and Alex does the same when Ryan asks. Unless.
Ryan looks up at the ceiling as if the plain white surface will offer him some assistance, but it remains flat and impassive as ever, and Ryan realizes probably the only reason Alex would ever think he might refuse.
He leans against the back of the chair for a minute before straightening and putting his hands in his pockets, and his fingers curl around his phone and he at once has and dismisses an idea in favor of a better one.
He goes to the kitchen, where Alex is at the counter drinking, and he says, “Yes, by the way.”
Alex laughs a little, the sound flat and dull. “Yes to what?”
“I’ll marry you,” Ryan says. “If you want, I mean, I would definitely marry you for not-pretend.”
“I think that’s what they call real,” Alex says. He perks up a little, and sounds so hopeful that Ryan just wants to hold onto him.
“Yes.” Ryan takes his hands out of his pockets and stands behind Alex and puts his hands around his waist, pressing his face into the hair at Alex’s neck and breathes in deep and slow. “Yeah, so we’ll just make it more than real. Reality won’t know what to do with itself with how married we’ll be.”
“Great,” Alex laughs, and can’t seem to stop. “Thank you. Fuck. Good.”
“You’re welcome.” Ryan brushes the hair away from Alex’s neck so he can kiss it. “You’re just lucky I like you.”
“I know.”
Ryan closes his eyes and rests his head on Alex’s shoulder and just stands there for a while, both of them unmoving except the rise-and-fall of breathing.
Alex says, “Fuck, we have to find somewhere we haven’t been married before.”
“There’s always Hawai’i.”
“Nah, fuck that,” Alex says. “The moon.”
“I don’t think we have the money for the moon, not even combined,” Ryan says, but he’s thinking about it, trying to tally up his personal finances. “Maybe we could get, like, South American fans to send us twenty million dollars. There’s still kids in Brazil spamming me on Twitter sometimes.” He pauses again. “Though most of them are still just mad about the coke.”
“We could always just do it here in LA.” Alex turns around so he’s facing Ryan, leaning back a little with his hands on the counter. “Or if you want, we could go to one of the states where it’s legal and then come back and have the party and shit here.”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do that, if we can’t get the money for the space shuttle.”
-
After practice the next day, Ryan drives to In N Out but doesn’t order anything, because he was thinking of bringing something home for Alex and the fast food joint, while delicious, is not the best bet for vegan food probably. Ryan maybe just needs somet time to sit and think. He hasn’t told his band, not yet, not even Jon, because he knows they won’t believe him.
Ryan sits in his car and looks up at the sky and tries to think of what to do, and finally he calls Z. “Hey, hey. Z. Z, right?”
“Yes, that’s me.” Z laughs, bright and clear. “You’ve got the right phone number.”
“Z.”
“It’s still me.”
“I know,” Ryan says. “Is it still me?”
“As long as you’re still Ryan, it is,” Z answers.
“Oh, thank god.” Ryan brushes at the front of his shirt, trying to get rid of some imaginary lint. “So hey, Z, guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m getting married.”
“Oh, again?” Z asks. “You need me to take a picture or something?”
“No, not again,” Ryan says. “I mean, yes again, but not again-again. We're probably going to want an actual photographer or something, maybe. We don't know yet, I don't think.”
Z pauses for a moment. “Okay, Ryan, look. Use your words like a big boy.”
Ryan takes an even longer moment so he can try to phrase himself just right. “We’re really doing it this time.”
“No, we’re not,” Z says, baffled. “You usually have to ask about that kind of thing.”
“He did,” Ryan says, and he can hear Z’s intake of breath over the phone.
“Are - really? You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan is glad he parked the car, because he has to hold the phone away from his ear because of Z’s delighted shriek. She calms down, though, and he starts listening again. “Oh my god. Wow. Well - wow, just - yeah, congratulations. I’m going to - can I call Alex? Look, I’m going to hang up on you, I have to tell that asshole to warn a girl about these things.”
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Bye, Z. You’re still the greatest.”
“Thanks, Ryan. I’ll - yeah, we’re talking again, as soon as I yell at fucking Alex. Wow, oh my god, congratulations.”
Ryan thinks that went pretty well.
He stays where he is in the parking lot, though, and eventually Z calls back and says, instead of hello, “Seriously, I’m just like, so happy for you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh,” Z says. “Maybe I’ll - no, no, I’m probably still going to get just as many three AM phone calls from him, but still. Seriously. You guys. Ryan.”
“I’m still me.”
“And you’re getting married!” She laughs. “For real! Do you guys have a date yet? Do you know where you’re gonna do it?”
“We’re thinking in space,” Ryan says. “But if that fails, I don’t know, somewhere around town, whatever.”
“Ryan Ross. You can’t just say whatever about where you get married. You’ve been married, like, a million places already, you’ve gotta find someplace special.”
“I guess so,” Ryan says. “I - wow, yeah, this is. Hey, it’s real this time.”
“It is!”
“Fuck,” Ryan says, adamantly, suddenly struck by the fact that he’s planning to spend the rest of his life with Alex.
Z’s voice goes cold. “Ryan.”
“No, I know, I know,” Ryan says. “You don’t have to defend Alex’s honor or anything. I just - wow, fuck. I mean, we’re going to get all old and shit and still be married. Probably. I hope.”
“Oh, Ryan,” Z says, gentler again. “It’s going to be so great. If you guys need help planning or anything, let me know.”
“Can The Like play the wedding?”
“As long as you don't get married while we're on tour," Z says sweetly. "Because I'd have to kill you, probably. Just a little bit."
"Just a little bit," Ryan agrees.
-
"Jon, hey," Ryan says. "Will you be my best man?"
"When?"
"Probably the middle of July. Like July 14th. Bastille Day."
"Oh, right, Bastille Day," Jon says. "That's my favorite holiday. I'm all booked."
"Oh," Ryan says, shoulders drooping. He looks at his shoes. They're very nice shoes, and comfortable. He likes them.
"So hey, about that song I was showing you the other day," Jon says. "Did you wanna keep working on that? I think I fixed the bridge."
"I don't know." Ryan shrugs. He doesn't remember the song that well anyway. "That song kind of sucked."
"What? I thought you liked that one verse. Fuck you, I was really happy with that."
"Yeah, that one verse," Ryan agrees. "But the rest of it, whatever."
"You haven't even heard the bridge," Jon says.
"Yeah, I'm just gonna." Ryan stands up. "You know, go be somewhere for a bit, since you're all booked up."
"What the fuck, Ryan?" Jon gets up too, grabbing Ryan by the arm to stop him. "Seriously, what the fuck, man? Stop being such a douchebag."
"It's just, I don't - would you say yes if it was a different day?"
"What? To what? What the fuck are you even talking about anymore?" Jon looks at Ryan, eyes and mouth narrow. "This isn't about that song."
"No." Ryan shakes his arm free of Jon’s hand.
"Okay."
Ryan says, "I just figured, like, you're probably my best friend. Or second-best, maybe, but pretty much tied for first place I guess. You're right up there, is what I'm saying, and I thought you would want to be there, but whatever, right? It's not like it's a big deal."
"Okay, Ryan, hey. I get that you're pissed at me, but I don't know why. I'm sorry I'm not willing to change my schedule around because you want to play at getting married again. I mean, it's funny and all, I guess? But seriously, I'm supposed to be helping Tom with a gallery opening that day. In Chicago. I’m not going to fly back for a practical joke."
"Oh, right," Ryan says. "Okay. That's. Okay. Fine. You don't have to - it's okay. I mean, you probably have plane tickets."
"Ryan."
"Jon."
"Why are you pissed at me? I'm sorry, dude, it's just sometimes people need to do shit with their lives for real."
"That's what I'm trying to do," Ryan says, so softly that he has to repeat himself twice.
“That’s what you’re …” Jon trails off, staring at Ryan. “What? You mean - Jesus, dude. You’re, okay, let me make sure I actually have this right. Unlike you, I can usually tell when I’m not talking to a fucking mind reader.”
Ryan laughs, a little, because he’s not good at being mad at Jon even when Jon seems to be trying his hardest to make Ryan feel like shit. Jon doesn’t usually do that, is the thing.
“So you’re getting married,” Jon says carefully. “To Alex. But it’s going to be an actual wedding and shit, right? Not a fake one to post to Twitter and confuse people?”
“Well, we might still tweet about it,” Ryan admits. “You’ve got to admit, it’d be pretty funny.”
“You’re not just getting married for ironic purposes, right?”
“It’s pretty sincere,” Ryan says.
“Okay. Okay. I mean, not that I can - it’s your life and all, even if it was ironic. I just hope the airline’s going to let me change my flight. It should still be far enough in advance, right?”
“It should be. Probably? I don’t know.” Ryan shrugs. He tries to make other people keep track of travel information for him most of the time. “We really want to get married in space. Or at least, I do, I think Alex is just humoring me on that.”
“Oh, right, in space,” Jon says. “I’ll pack my formal spacesuit.”
“I think it’s just gonna be here, though,” Ryan continues, ignoring Jon. “We just need to figure out an actual place. Besides Los Angeles. We can’t take over the whole city.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Isn’t it?”
-
“Wait, wait,” Jon says. “What’s wrong with the paisley?”
The saleswoman gives him a look. “Well, I just think you should be sure it goes with the colors your bridal party is wearing. I mean, the orange paisley and the yellow suits certainly would make a statement, but Ryan here is going to want to make sure it’s the right statement, isn’t he? Aren’t you?”
Ryan looks at Jon, startled, then back at the saleswoman. “There’s a bridal party? I want a party.”
“Well, you’ve got the groomsmen,” she says, gently. “Has your wife already picked out the bridesmaids’ dresses?”
“Yes,” Ryan says. “Of course.”
“No,” Jon says, laughing. “Well, I mean, I guess Z probably has some say in that? I guess she’s Alex’s, uh. Something.”
“She wants them to wear those dresses,” Ryan says, gesturing at his collar and then somewhere just above the knee. “The sixties ones. It would be super cute, apparently. That’s what she told me. Z looks good in them, but I don’t know about my mom. So I don’t know if there’s colors or anything.”
The woman says, “Well, do you have any colors picked out? The dishes, the flowers, anything?”
“Just the orange paisley,” Ryan tells her earnestly. “The food’s probably going to have colors too, though. Alex is vegan.”
Jon manages to stop laughing long enough to speak. “I had no idea they were this disorganized, ma’am, I’m sorry.”
She gives them both a withering look before perking back up, a smile plastered across her face. “How about you give your fiancee a call, Ryan, and see if she has any insight?”
“Oh, but I’m not getting married to a girl,” Ryan says. “Should I call Alex?”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Jon says. “We can bother him later. I mean, he might veto the paisley or something. You can’t let him do that. You have to stand up for your dreams.”
“You’re the one with experience,” Ryan admits, very earnest about it as he looks at Jon wide-eyed. He turns back to the saleswoman. “He married a girl. He knows his stuff. That’s why he’s here.”
“Right,” she says. “That’s great.”
“So,” Ryan says. “Orange paisley. I guess the suits don’t have to be yellow. Jon, how do you feel about black?”
“As long as there’s satin trim,” Jon says.
Ryan claps his hands together, delighted. “Man, see, I knew I brought you along for a reason.”
-
Ryan regrets the decision to stay apart from Alex for the night. They’re trying to be as traditional as possible for the wedding, and the reception is going to be balls-out insane, but the night before the wedding refuses to end, and the next morning seems overly-long as well. It doesn’t help that Ryan has to wake up early to get ready. Jon insists on taking him out to brunch, and then he has to change from his normal clothes and brush his hair at least a little bit, and he gets so jittery that not even Jon can stop him from going to find something to do.
The Like are setting up in the back of the church, and despite their best efforts to discourage him, Ryan helps them out. Mostly he crouches down and studies a board of effects pedals, and tries to arrange all the patch cables with suitable care and artful diligence. It looks really nice.
Someone stands in front of him, casting a shadow on his excessively careful work, and Ryan refuses to look up at first because he is trying to focus, and also he imagines this someone will discourage him from helping anymore. That’s all anyone’s been trying to do lately.
The pair of shoes in front of him shuffle a little awkwardly, and Ryan looks up to see that said shoes are in fact connected to some socks and pants and a belt and a shirt and jacket, and it’s totally that guest Ryan spotted from all the way across the church earlier. Ryan really wanted to compliment him on his fashion choices but never got the chance.
Except, that’s all the split second before Ryan looks at the dude’s face, and, “Whoa, whoa, hi there,” Ryan says. “You’re Alex. I thought you were a guest earlier, but you’re not.”
Alex’s hair is really, really short, or a lot shorter than it was two days ago, and cleaner too. Alex worries at the hair at the back of his neck, looking at Ryan from under his eyelashes, biting his lip. “Hey. You’re not even supposed to be here yet.”
“Your hair’s short,” Ryan tells him. Z is standing a short distance away. She winks at Ryan, and he grins at her before turning his focus back towards staring at Alex.
“Yeah, fuck, I know,” Alex says, looking aside. “Z made me do it. I was just supposed to be getting it, like, washed and styled or some shit, but then there were scissors and I couldn’t do anything about it, and please don’t call off the wedding.”
Ryan stares at him, more intent on wanting to jump his bones than trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. “What? Call it off?”
“Oh god,” Alex says, eyes going wide.
Ryan has to step around the effects board so he can stand close enough to Alex.
"Fuck," Ryan says. He puts his hands in his pockets, slouching a little, trying to look anything but overeager as he smiles. "Look at you."
Alex pulls a face, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I know, I know. It’s fucking weird.”
"Christ." Ryan laughs a little. "Are you sure we have to get married right now? Like." He looks around, but everyone is studiously ignoring them while they talk, except Z, but Z is Z and Ryan doesn't really care if she hears. "I’m not saying to call it off, since, I mean, we could elope later or something, but I - yeah, I mostly just want to have a lot of sex with you right now. You look amazing."
"Yeah, but we did that a few times already, kind of. This’ll be new," Alex says. "Also, my parents would kill me."
"But we could start the ceremony a little late or something," Ryan says, shuffling even closer so he's right up against Alex with their noses almost touching and his hand in Alex's hair. It's clean, and soft, and Alex smells amazing right now and Ryan says, "We could go, like - bathroom? A quickie or something?"
"Don't tempt me," Alex says. "I'd have to get Z to talk us out of it, and I don't think either of us wants that to happen."
"You really don't," Z says demurely.
"Anyway. There's always the honeymoon," Alex says. "And the reception. I'm sure I can manage to stay at least somewhat hygienic and hypoallergenic until the reception."
“Man, though,” Ryan says. “Look at you.”
“Are you gonna pretend to be surprised when it’s actually time for the wedding?”
Ryan looks at his watch. “We’ve got like ten minutes. I can probably do genuine surprise.”
“Yeah, about that,” Alex laughs, putting his arms around Ryan’s neck for just a moment. “Don’t give up your day job for an acting career.”
“I don’t have a day job,” Ryan says.
“See? That’s an even better reason right there not to give it up.”
-
The reception is in some huge, ostensibly-abandoned loft that a few friends of Nick Murray’s used to live in for a while; there are bizarre, tripped-out murals on the wall and someone forgot to remove a bicycle that is sitting in one corner missing a wheel. Streamers hang from the ceiling, and the lighting is probably illegal, and Alex’s parents seem to think the whole thing is fantastic while Ryan’s mother is just vaguely disapproving.
The tables they’re using for the dinner look remarkably out of place, and the head table is up on a bit of a rise that might have been a stage at one point. The place confuses Ryan, a lot, and he loves it.
“We should move in,” he whispers to Alex even as the last of the wine is being served.
“Oh, sure,” Alex says. “Yeah, let’s skip the honeymoon and just take over the loft until the cops kick us out.”
“Okay,” Ryan whispers back.
“I was kidding.”
“Oh.”
Z and Jon both get up at the same time. “I’ve known Alex for a long time,” Z begins, just as Jon is saying, “I’ve known Ryan for a long while now,” and Z crosses her arms and looks at him sternly.
Jon says, “What? I was going to make a speech.”
“So was I,” Z answers back.
“Uhm,” Ryan says, a little baffled even though Alex is laughing.
“Ladies first,” Jon says graciously, giving Z a little bow.
She curtsies, beaming. “Why thank you, Jon Walker. Like I was saying, I’ve known Alex for a long time, which is to say that if I wanted to I could talk for hours about dumb stuff he’s done.”
Z grins towards Alex, who just shrugs, his best impassive face on. He blows at a bit of hair that keeps falling into his eyes, from his recently-trimmed bangs. Ryan has to keep telling him he’ll get used to having short hair again, and Alex keeps denying it, but right now neither of them actually says anything about it because Z is still talking.
“When I was little, I was basically convinced me and Alex were going to get married,” she says, and okay, Ryan didn’t know that. “I figured out that wasn’t going to happen pretty quick, though, and a couple years back me and Ryan decided to make the world a better place by pretending to get married. And anyway, I’d go on, but the point is that somehow that turned into Ryan and Alex getting married, which is really probably the best outcome of all that. Also, I hear the cake is delicious.”
“Wow, Z, I’m touched,” Jon says. “That was really moving. I’m glad I let you go first.” He holds his wineglass out, leaning across Ryan and Alex to toast her. “Just beautiful. Anyway, hey, Ross, congrats. Good job on snagging someone decent, and having the follow-through to get actually married instead of just posting to Twitter. Seems like you picked a pretty cool dude. You did alright for yourself, man.”
“Amazing,” Z says.
“Hey, no, I’m not done,” Jon says. “I’ve got all kinds of anecdotes. Like, how back in ’08 when we were on Honda Civic Tour, Ryan spent basically the whole time following Alex around like a lost puppy. There were a few times me and the guys almost put up posters around a venue, you know, lost guitarist and all, except it was always so easy to figure out where Ryan was anyway. Him and Alex would just wander off and work on songs and all, and there were a few times I wandered in on really elaborate stories, too, like I think Ryan just liked listening to Alex talk. So, yeah, you know, it seems like they like each other okay. Plus, I don't think I've ever heard about Alex getting his water or electricity shut off, either, so hey, that’s always a good sign. Good job, Ryan.”
Alex spends the whole speech with one elbow on the table, resting his head on his hand so he can grin stupidly at Ryan. Ryan switches between grinning back at him and watching Jon as he talks, because Jon’s gesticulating more than usual and it’s pretty funny.
“So yeah,” Z says. “Food soon, then it’s party time.”
“It’s always party time,” Alex says to her.
Then dinner actually is served, and it’s time to eat, and then when it’s finished the tables get folded up and shoved aside as necessary and the music gets turned up so loud that voices can barely be heard three feet away.
One of Alex’s friends brought facepaint, which Ryan only notices because there’s a knot of people in one corner watching on as the girl applies increasingly ridiculous designs as she gets more to drink.
Ryan grabs onto Alex’s hand and nods his head towards that corner, raising his eyebrows a bit in a way he hopes is readable. Alex grins back and nods, so Ryan figures he got the message across so they go and the girl paints on Alex’s third eye in orange and teal and Ryan gets a swam of fuzzy birds across his forehead and the right side of his face.
“Don’t worry about time,” she tells Ryan, right in his ear so no one else can hear, and Ryan is pretty sure she is on a lot more drugs than he previously realized. “Don’t - I mean. It’s okay. It’s good. You’re really cute, you know that?”
“I just got married.”
“I know. I was there,” she says. “I can see it in you. Go, okay? Go and come back. We’ll all be here.”
“Uh-huh,” Ryan says. “I’m gonna go find Alex.”
Alex stands back waiting just a few feet away, so finding him is easy even though there are people between them. Alex keeps his fingers just barely away from the still-wet paint on Ryan’s face. “Nice.”
Ryan looks around, and he recognizes a lot of the people here but there are quite a few he’s pretty sure just invited themselves, and the music is good and loud and he feels it in his bones. He looks at Alex, who is watching someone else’s face get painted, and he says, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“We could go to Toys-R-Us,” Ryan says. “You can get directions on your phone, right?”
?: Ryan/Alex.
#: 8720 words.
rating: a+++ would buy from seller again
"": Ryan’s got a whole folder to keep track of every time they pretend to get married.
♥: Props to softlyforgotten for the fixing of things.
"What, no," Ryan says. "I did that already, I don't want to be repetitive. People are going to see a pattern."
"Yeah, but no one would believe you'd fake getting married twice."
"I do like patterns though." Ryan is wearing a floral shirt and his jacket has pinstripes he forgot about in the closet and only noticed when they got to the restaurant, but he guesses it's all right because Alex hasn't made fun of him for it yet.
"Pattern is movement."
"Yeah - hey, wait, that's. Oh, hey." Ryan claps, but only a little, like a spectator at a golf tournament who has just watched a good shot. "How far is it to Toys-R-Us?"
Alex looks down at his iPhone, and Ryan can tell by his thumbs that he is opening an app and typing, and extending that logic Ryan guesses that Alex is looking for Toys-R-Us. Alex looks back up. "Three miles."
"I can drive." Ryan has yet to finish his glass of wine. He was planning on driving anyway. It's not even seven yet, and he is very sober.
What Ryan likes is that Alex doesn't need to ask why Toys-R-Us. Or at least: Alex doesn't feel the need to ask, even if he doesn't know just what Ryan is thinking, but that seems unlikely because Ryan's thoughts are (as always) so transparent and Alex can always see them anyway even though they're see-through.
"Good," Alex says, and they settle the bill and get in the car and Ryan says, "Wait, no, look and see if there's - look for one in Vegas."
"Let's go to the one here and then drive to Vegas." Alex's suggestion is better, makes more sense in the long run, so that's what they do and in Las Vegas they go to a drive through even though the law won't acknowledge it technically, just so they can have pictures and post to Twitter.
They sit on a park bench in a suburb, not the one Ryan's from, and Alex gets out his iPhone and puts his hand, the one with the ring, on Ryan's knee and takes a picture so Ryan does the same but in reverse and laughs about it and they stay there until the sun comes up and then a while longer, until it's twelve hours from when they decided to leave in the first place. Then they go back and mostly it's a joke except Ryan keeps finding the little plastic shell his ring came in, all twenty five cents worth of it, finds it rolling around the floor of his car and finds it around his house, and he throws it away a few times - not the ring but the little plastic egg it came from - but the red-and-clear plastic keeps coming back, and it's strange, isn't it, and Ryan doesn't want to ascribe any meaning to events that are so clearly meaningless.
A few people, friends of both of them, make jokes about it, and there are too many replies on Twitter to bother with, even though Ryan and Alex look at a few of them and laugh until it gets old.
Then a month later: "Hey," Alex says while they're waiting for their food. He kicks Ryan in the shin. "We should get fake married again."
"Ow. Okay."
Two months after that, Ryan says, "You want to pretend to get married again?"
"Yeah, sounds good."
It’s an easy pattern to fall into and they don't always post to Twitter about it anymore or even tell anyone, just disappear for a while, stage a ceremony someplace where no one knows them and leave again.
For example: they go to some new bar in Brooklyn, and at one point Alex taps a spoon against his glass until everyone quiets down and he goes down on one knee and says, "Hey, Ross, you want to pretend to get hitched?" when everyone is quiet and still and looking at them.
Ryan says, "Of course, absolutely," and some drunken Brooklyn kids buy them a few rounds and congratulate them even though they’re strangers. Their joy is almost confusing, and Ryan wonders if maybe they just wanted a reason to be happy. He decides not to blame them.
Time goes by, as it often does, and at one point Ryan is drunk and goes down on Alex after a fake wedding and Alex pulls his hair and Ryan makes a sound and swallows.
Three days later they both have a few too many drinks, sitting out on Ryan’s porch looking up at the early evening sky and watching the birds and some early bats. The porch lacks furniture, so they sit on the wood floor, knees knocked together and shoulders pressed up close, and Ryan says, “Hey, hey,” to get Alex’s attention.
Half an hour later, they’re still trading sloppy kisses and Ryan keeps his hand curled around Alex’s neck and eventually they stop just because there’s still beer in the refrigerator. Alex breaks a bottle over the porch railing and says, “I christen this our marital porch. You may kiss the, the. Me. You can. If you want.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, and he does, and the next morning Alex helps clean up the broken glass.
A week later, Alex gets high and asks if he can jerk Ryan off, and Ryan says yes, and they get married again only this time they don't even leave the bedroom, Alex just says, "Okay, we're married again," and Ryan says, "I know, oh god, fuck" and a while later he falls asleep.
-
Jon asks, "Hey, what are you doing this weekend?"
Ryan says, "Getting married, probably."
"Mm. Well, there's this show my friend Jon is playing. Not me. Another Jon."
"Without an h?"
"Without an h," Jon agrees. "We're missing the same letter, which is probably why we get along, right?"
"You’re catching on, Jon Walker," Ryan says, a little disappointed because he wanted to suggest that, but he supposes Jon has known him long enough to predict and snatch his jokes from the egg before hatching. He puts his hands in his pockets and rolls the toys-r-us ring between his fingers, over its strangely greenish surface - it used to look silver. It kind of gives Ryan a rash now. "I'll see if we've got time. Maybe we can have the wedding at the show."
"What are you even talking about?"
"Oh," Ryan says. "I guess it's kind of an in joke."
-
Alex says, "How many marriage certificates do we have by now?"
"Mm." Ryan isn't sure. He pretends not to know where to look, even though he has a file with a record of every marriage they've ever had. The folder is thick and the edges are ragged and sheets of paper stick out at odd angles because there are too many to fit. It hasn't been all that long. Some of them are recorded on napkins or scraps of paper because Ryan always writes himself a note, and some of them are printouts and official documents from the various states. Ryan's thought about organizing them alphabetically by state but a few are too difficult to figure out, some of the handwritten ones.
"I know how many times we've gotten married," Alex says. "I just wanted to know how many had paper. Do you think the state'll track us down for bigamy?"
"Maybe," Ryan says. "I think a few times I put down my real first name, too."
Alex smiles, crooked. "I've been living a lie."
"Never. You're very honest, sometimes."
"Occasionally," Alex agrees.
-
"Do you think," Ryan says, and he is very careful and slow and it takes him a while to finish the sentence properly. "When you get married, will you ever renew your vows? Or will just being married be - like, would that be enough?"
"Maybe," Jon says. "I think it depends. I - how did you know?"
"Know what?"
Jon says, "Hey, come on, seriously. I’ve only been planning to propose to her for like a week now. I haven’t even told anyone except my parents.”
"Oh," Ryan says. "It was an educated guess."
"I don't know if we'll renew our vows or anything," Jon says eventually. "I guess we'll see. I’m - I should do this, right? It’s been long enough. Cassie deserves it after all this time."
"Yeah, yeah, absolutely," Ryan says, nodding, stunned. He feels guilty, all of a sudden, for what he was thinking of doing, so he waits, instead, and lets Jon have his moment of glory because if he said I think I'm going to get married then Jon would just laugh, because Ryan's got a pattern now, even if he were to add, quiet and shy, no, I mean it.
-
"Alex, will you be my plus one?" Ryan asks.
"Always," Alex tells him.
"No, I mean like." Ryan waves a hand. "For a particular instance, at Jon's thing. Jon and Cassie's thing. When they get married."
"Oh, yeah, sure," Alex says. "When is that? I'll have to make sure I'm in - where are they even doing that? Chicago, LA?"
"It says on the invitation," Ryan says, because he isn't sure. Jon asked him personally, but sent an invitation too, because Ryan asked for one, just to have and to keep for better and for worse.
Alex rubs a hand against Ryan's back and Ryan rolls his shoulders, not really a shrug. He's quiet. They're watching Diff’rent Strokes reruns. It's nearly two in the morning. Alex is living in Los Angeles, in a house of his own, and it seems like each of them spends more time at the other’s place than at home but neither of them is quite willing to give up home ownership so they just wander back and forth like vagrants, and at least now it’s not cross-country but cross-town and barely even that.
They haven't gotten married in a while.
-
Ryan helps Alex wash his hair, not because Alex needs any help, but because he wants to and he can and it seems like a good morning for it.
"I should probably dry it, huh," Alex says, thoughtfully, still dripping wet from the shower.
Ryan passes him a towel and sits on the edge of the tub while he dries himself off. "Uh, yeah. If you don't want to have old people glaring at you."
"Well, I am an uninvited guest."
"You’re not," Ryan says, insistent. "You’re invited. I get a plus one. That means you're invited. I even told Jon, and he said 'oh, okay.'" Ryan slips into a lazy impression of Jon Walker for a brief moment, then grins at Alex.
"Wow, awesome," Alex says. "I’m glad I got such stirring approval."
"You can't have everything." Ryan gets to his feet and attacks Alex with a towel, getting him in a one-armed headlock to rub at his hair with it.
"Oh my god," Alex laughs, not really trying to get away, just shoving at Ryan ineffectively. "What are you even -"
"I’m helping," Ryan tells him very seriously, letting go to leave the towel draped over Alex's head. He puts his hands on Alex's shoulders and looks him right in the eyes, very serious. "See? I’m so helpful."
"Sure, right," Alex agrees and leans to kiss him, and Ryan allows that quite willingly for a moment but pulls back when Alex's hands start to wander.
"We just got clean." Ryan shrugs, apologetic. "And we don't have time. Later. Maybe at the reception, and we can totally creep out Jon's great aunt or someone on accident."
Ryan has been to a few real weddings - a couple at city halls where they were just witnessing other people taking their vows, where they was just Alex-and-Ryan, and a few times when friends of his got married but he didn't always have the luxury of a plus-one. That kind of thing. It hasn't been anyone as close as Jon walker. He’s still weirded out by it, a little.
"I’m going to make you dance," Alex says. "Like a trained seal."
Ryan lets his hands drop from Alex's shoulders to his sides. "Do trained seals dance?"
"They do now."
This time it's Ryan who kisses Alex, just very quick, then he says, "No, really, though, we should get ready."
-
It’s a nice wedding, outdoors, with family from both sides present. The sun shines, as usual, but it's not too hot. There’s a breeze from the ocean. Ryan thinks of all his marriages, and can remember two by the seaside, both undertaken while incredibly stoned.
Ryan has to stand the whole time, which means he misses out on folding chairs that Alex later assures him are terrible. Ryan's the best man.
The vows take too long, and Ryan ends up watching some squirrels for a while because they're outdoors and animals can be distracting and, anyway, he still thinks it's weird this is even happening. He thinks about how he'd want a real wedding to go. He thinks about the law, and whether they'd be allowed to marry again, and what state they'd have to go to for it anyway, and if it would even be recognized.
He does his duties though, and mostly doesn't look at Alex sitting over on Jon's side of the aisle.
Before they drive to the reception, Ryan kisses Alex up against a tree because he looks fucking amazing today and because he wants to and he can, and Alex fists a hand in Ryan's hair and uses his teeth.
-
"Oh," Ryan says when they finally get to the reception and are being seated for dinner. He looks at the place cards. He’s at the head table, since he's best man, but. "Where does Alex sit?"
Jon shrugs, and looks to Cassie.
Cassie says, "He's over with the dates and spouses. There isn't room."
"Oh," Ryan says.
"I figured as much," Alex says, punching Ryan in the shoulder. "Man, look at me, I’ve been elevated to date status." He looks at Cassie very seriously. "I was told I was a plus one."
"Did I - sorry," Cassie says. "It’s okay, right? We weren't sure where to."
"It’s fine. It’s good." Ryan looks at Alex. Alex looks at Ryan.
Ryan shrugs, and Alex says, "Well, I better go chat up some old people, it looks like."
Ryan makes a speech, and when he is talking about love he mostly looks at Alex, and he had this whole thing written out in advance and has note cards in his pocket just in case - he thought about writing it on his hand but he's not from Alaska - and then at some point he forgets and says, "and really, trust me, you two, being married is great, I mean, sometimes it isn't, but mostly it really is," and Jon gives him a baffled look and Ryan gets back on the rails of his stupid little speech which is mostly far wittier than that.
He tries not to look at Alex so much after that.
-
Ryan and Alex are dancing, and from nearby Jon says, "I have so many cousins here," to Ryan like that means something.
“What?”
Jon answers, confused, “You’re not going to try to sleep with them?”
"Yes, absolutely," Ryan agrees. Alex is next to him, so Ryan's hand finds its way to the small of Alex's back. "You have a good family. Of course I want to fuck your whole family tree.”
"He’s a rake and a wastrel," Alex says solemnly.
Jon shrugs. "Well, it's what he usually does."
Cassie says, "Jon. Jon." She's dancing with her father, but she's close enough to scold him.
"What? Ow!"
Cassie’s shoes have pointy toes, so.
Then it's the dance just for couples, and Jon laughs when they're still on the floor, and Cassie and everyone else laughs too when they insist on staying out when it is weeded down to just married couples and they play it up a bit before scurrying off the floor with their arms around each others shoulders. They stand by and watch for a little while because it's finally Jon and Cassie's first dance as a married couple. Ryan tries to remember when he and Alex had a first dance and wonders if they were married at the time. There have been times when they've gotten married but not been married, is the thing.
Later Jon says, "Hey, your speech was good, thank you. You didn't even embarrass me too much."
"You're welcome."
Jon laughs and adds, "I'm pretty sure getting fake married to Z that one time - and Alex those other times I guess - doesn't count as being married, though."
"I know," Ryan says, and looks down. "I was just talking."
Jon laughs again, shaking his head a little.
Ryan says, "It would be bad if - never mind."
"If what?"
"Like, proposing to someone at your best friend's wedding reception is messed up, right?"
"What?"
"I won't mess this up for you, don't worry," Ryan tells Jon, very solemn, because he knows how good he is at messing things up.
"No, really, what? Oh, because - yeah, no, please don't pretend to get married at my wedding, dude," Jon says. "I know that's your thing, but definitely don't do that."
"I wouldn't," Ryan says.
"Anyway," Jon says, looking around. "I’ve got to go find my wife." He smiles, such a big stupid smile that Ryan can't help but smile back, and wanders off in the direction Cassie was last headed.
Ryan goes to find Alex and drags him to the bathroom to suck him off in a stall, down on his knees on the tile floor.
-
Things are mostly normal after that, except every now and then at practice Jon will suddenly remember he’s married and for a while it’s charming and then eventually it’s annoying but Ryan doesn’t let on because he really is happy for Jon.
The band works on recording another album, and Nick and Nick and Andy all go home at the end of the night, but Ryan says, “You can just crash here, man,” instead of leaving Jon to fend for himself. “I’m pretty sure the sheets in the guest room are clean.”
“Isn’t Alex staying here?” Jon laughs. “I don’t think anything he touches stays clean. I’m not sleeping in that bed until it’s been fucking, like, decontaminated.”
“What?” Ryan says. “Why would Alex be in the guest room?”
“You take that back, Jon Walker,” Alex says from a doorway, because he’s been lurking around most of the night.
“Never.”
Alex puts his arms out in front of him like a zombie and lurches towards Jon, and with the bags under his eyes and his hair hanging so limp today he almost manages to look frightening.
Ryan puts his chin on his hands and first smiles and then laughs as Alex chases Jon down, only to tap him on the shoulder and say, “There, now you’ll never be clean again. Enjoy.”
“Maybe if I just shower for the next five years,” Jon says.
“That might work,” Ryan agrees. “It’s too late for me, but you could be saved.”
Jon says, “So where is Alex even staying if he’s not in the guest room? I mean, the couch isn’t set up.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Alex wonders, laughing.
Jon looks between the two of them and is quiet for a while. “Are you - holy shit.”
Ryan’s eyebrows go up. He hasn’t been trying to keep secrets. “Wow.”
“I’m really impressed by your deductive reasoning,” Alex says. “Are you sure you’re not related to the Holmes family, Jon?”
“Fuck, no, I just never realized,” Jon begins. He stops. He says, “Fuck.”
“Yeah, well,” Ryan says. “Anyway, guest room is all yours.”
“It’s not like I’ve got a problem with it or anything,” Jon says. “Just, holy shit, I didn’t even know. So you're like - boyfriends, right?”
"I don't know if I'd use that word, but sure, it’s close," Alex says. "If it keeps things comprehensible for your simple mind."
“Yeah, and see,” Ryan says. He knows, since he’s talking to Jon, that he should be looking at him, but he watches Alex instead. “It’s been like a year, dude.”
“Holy shit.”
“Little over,” Alex says. “Technically. I mean, depending on what you’re counting from.”
“It’s just weird,” Jon says. “Okay. No. That’s - so you guys are sleeping together or whatever. That’s chill. I mean, is it - a year? Seriously?”
“A year or so.” Ryan nods. He doesn't mind repeating himself. Technically, a year and three months have passed since they first feigned marriage, and it’s been a year since they hooked up for the first time. Since then, they have pretended to get married seventy two times - there have been long periods where they haven’t pretended to get married at all, and it’s been a month and a half since their last wedding, but there are weeks where they got married eleven times just for the sake of it.
Jon says, "I mean, congrats? I don't know. Okay. Well, hey, as long as the sheets are actually clean. Yeah, okay."
"I promise we'll be super quiet," Ryan says. "So very quiet. Like mice."
"Oh, fuck, I didn't even - why did you say that? Man, Ryan, I love you, but I don't need to know about. Goddamn, dude."
Alex just laughs.
-
They are quiet. It’s a warm night, even with the air conditioning, and Alex licks the sweat from Ryan’s stomach and chest and neck, and lets his teeth scrape the place where Ryan’s jaw meets his ear. Alex’s hair falls, hangs like a curtain. Ryan is used to it now.
For a while, Ryan takes Alex in hand with lazy strokes of his thumb and still fingers but it’s late and he’s tired and they fall asleep without either of them getting off, which Ryan doesn’t even mind.
“Good night,” Ryan mumbles before falling asleep. “Sleep well, okay?”
Alex nods in somnambulant agreement. “I will.”
“Thank you.”
-
They spend a few weeks at Alex’s after that, not for any reason other than Alex wants to get something from his kitchen and then they just don’t leave. Or: they leave, for all kinds of reasons, but Ryan doesn’t go to the other house to sleep.
Summer is getting warmer and warmer, but Alex doesn’t want to turn on the air conditioning yet, so they wait until late evening and point fans in the closet before going to clean it out of old things. Alex hasn’t lived here very long but his closet is nearly full. A lot of things belong to someone else, or used to, once.
Ryan finds an old checked blanket, folded up neatly, and holds it out. “Is this yours, or should we throw it out?”
“It is now,” Alex says. “Mine, I mean. Let’s go on a picnic. That thing looks ready for a picnic.”
Ryan nods, cradling the blanket gently. “It probably hasn’t had one in a long time. We can do that for it.”
“Good,” Alex says. He looks around, and says, “Yeah, fuck it, let’s just go.”
“Right now?”
“Sure, why not?”
Ryan shrugs, and can’t think of a good answer so he helps go through the pantry and refrigerator to get grapes and crackers and slices of bread, and imitation cheese slices that Ryan has learned to tolerate. An argument over these lasted nearly a week once. Ryan now admits they taste less awful than some other fake cheeses.
Sometimes they have these little arguments, over who said what and who forgot to do the dishes and which way the toilet paper should roll and where the paper towel goes and whether that chord progression is worth developing, and sometimes Ryan is terrified that everything will crash down on him but it hasn’t yet so he acts unafraid and happy, because most of the time he is.
They eat out under the smog and reflected light of Los Angeles, only a few brave stars barely visible through the murk. Ryan lies down flat on his back and looks up at the sky.
“I like the sky better in the desert.”
“It’s so clear,” Alex says. “There, not here. It’s amazing. You were lucky.”
“Maybe,” Ryan says. “As lucky as you or I or anyone.”
Alex snorts and lies down beside him, just barely touching because the sticky heat makes close contact unbearable. There’s a breeze, but not enough to justify excess closeness. “Uh-huh.”
“Maybe I’m just lucky now,” Ryan says. “Or just sometimes. Not all the time.”
“Not all the time,” Alex agrees. “God, you’re not even - you’re so young sometimes.”
Ryan keeps quiet, not sure if he should apologize or argue or just agree. Probably the latter.
“It’s nothing,” Alex tells him even though Ryan didn’t ask. “Never mind.”
Ryan is terrified, for the future and the present and for all his memories of the past, but he doesn’t say so, just takes Alex’s hand and pulls it to his mouth so he can kiss each knuckle in turn.
-
Ryan gets home late from a show and raids the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice before going to see if Alex is home yet. He wanders a bit before finding Alex sitting in front of his laptop, face lit by the glow of the screen.
“Hey,” Ryan says, offering his cup. “You want some?”
“What is it?” Alex asks, not waiting for an answer before taking a drink. “Oh, thanks. It’s a bit late to start drinking, yeah?”
Ryan laughs a little. “Yeah, I got that out of the way already.”
“You have a good night?”
“I did, yeah.” Ryan leans on Alex’s shoulder. “What time’d you get home?”
“Like an hour ago, maybe.” Alex leans his head against Ryan’s arm. “So you wanna see what I’ve been up to?” He has Logic open, with about a billion separate tracks, half of which appear to be empty.
“Doing some producing?”
“Well, yeah,” Alex nods. “But, like, I was thinking about how fucking awesome the Internet was in 1998, you know? And I was kind of pissed Geocities got shut down because I would have rocked that shit, but this stuff’s actually pretty easy to do yourself.”
“As long as it’s not Myspace,” Ryan says. “No one even uses Myspace anymore. It’s sad.”
“A real tragedy of the modern era,” Alex agrees. “But yeah, hey, no, so I was fucking around on the computer and I made this shit, right?”
Alex pulls up another window, and for a second Ryan is just in awe of all the animated GIFs before actually reading the huge text splashed across the screen at a jaunty angle. Then he laughs.
“You gonna post that to Twitter? That fucking rules,” Ryan says.
“I mean, if you really want me to.” Alex shrugs a little, and Ryan feels the motion more than sees it. “I’ll wait until you’re ready to answer or whatever, though.”
“Ah, man,” Ryan says. “The challenge of coming up with a good tweet. I’m excited.”
Alex pauses. “So are you - I mean, yes? No? You’re gonna give your iPhone an answer before me?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Alex says, and moves to stand. “I’m gonna go get something to drink.”
“You should make me a drink, too, then,” Ryan decides. “And we can stay up and watch movies or something, since it’s not too late to drink anymore.”
“No, no, it’s still too late.” Alex leaves the room, and Ryan stands there for a minute because he shouldn’t follow, probably. He’s pretty sure following is a bad idea.
The main thing Ryan wonders about is how Alex could ever imagine he’d say no to another pretend wedding. Ryan agrees, every single time, and Alex does the same when Ryan asks. Unless.
Ryan looks up at the ceiling as if the plain white surface will offer him some assistance, but it remains flat and impassive as ever, and Ryan realizes probably the only reason Alex would ever think he might refuse.
He leans against the back of the chair for a minute before straightening and putting his hands in his pockets, and his fingers curl around his phone and he at once has and dismisses an idea in favor of a better one.
He goes to the kitchen, where Alex is at the counter drinking, and he says, “Yes, by the way.”
Alex laughs a little, the sound flat and dull. “Yes to what?”
“I’ll marry you,” Ryan says. “If you want, I mean, I would definitely marry you for not-pretend.”
“I think that’s what they call real,” Alex says. He perks up a little, and sounds so hopeful that Ryan just wants to hold onto him.
“Yes.” Ryan takes his hands out of his pockets and stands behind Alex and puts his hands around his waist, pressing his face into the hair at Alex’s neck and breathes in deep and slow. “Yeah, so we’ll just make it more than real. Reality won’t know what to do with itself with how married we’ll be.”
“Great,” Alex laughs, and can’t seem to stop. “Thank you. Fuck. Good.”
“You’re welcome.” Ryan brushes the hair away from Alex’s neck so he can kiss it. “You’re just lucky I like you.”
“I know.”
Ryan closes his eyes and rests his head on Alex’s shoulder and just stands there for a while, both of them unmoving except the rise-and-fall of breathing.
Alex says, “Fuck, we have to find somewhere we haven’t been married before.”
“There’s always Hawai’i.”
“Nah, fuck that,” Alex says. “The moon.”
“I don’t think we have the money for the moon, not even combined,” Ryan says, but he’s thinking about it, trying to tally up his personal finances. “Maybe we could get, like, South American fans to send us twenty million dollars. There’s still kids in Brazil spamming me on Twitter sometimes.” He pauses again. “Though most of them are still just mad about the coke.”
“We could always just do it here in LA.” Alex turns around so he’s facing Ryan, leaning back a little with his hands on the counter. “Or if you want, we could go to one of the states where it’s legal and then come back and have the party and shit here.”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do that, if we can’t get the money for the space shuttle.”
-
After practice the next day, Ryan drives to In N Out but doesn’t order anything, because he was thinking of bringing something home for Alex and the fast food joint, while delicious, is not the best bet for vegan food probably. Ryan maybe just needs somet time to sit and think. He hasn’t told his band, not yet, not even Jon, because he knows they won’t believe him.
Ryan sits in his car and looks up at the sky and tries to think of what to do, and finally he calls Z. “Hey, hey. Z. Z, right?”
“Yes, that’s me.” Z laughs, bright and clear. “You’ve got the right phone number.”
“Z.”
“It’s still me.”
“I know,” Ryan says. “Is it still me?”
“As long as you’re still Ryan, it is,” Z answers.
“Oh, thank god.” Ryan brushes at the front of his shirt, trying to get rid of some imaginary lint. “So hey, Z, guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m getting married.”
“Oh, again?” Z asks. “You need me to take a picture or something?”
“No, not again,” Ryan says. “I mean, yes again, but not again-again. We're probably going to want an actual photographer or something, maybe. We don't know yet, I don't think.”
Z pauses for a moment. “Okay, Ryan, look. Use your words like a big boy.”
Ryan takes an even longer moment so he can try to phrase himself just right. “We’re really doing it this time.”
“No, we’re not,” Z says, baffled. “You usually have to ask about that kind of thing.”
“He did,” Ryan says, and he can hear Z’s intake of breath over the phone.
“Are - really? You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan is glad he parked the car, because he has to hold the phone away from his ear because of Z’s delighted shriek. She calms down, though, and he starts listening again. “Oh my god. Wow. Well - wow, just - yeah, congratulations. I’m going to - can I call Alex? Look, I’m going to hang up on you, I have to tell that asshole to warn a girl about these things.”
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Bye, Z. You’re still the greatest.”
“Thanks, Ryan. I’ll - yeah, we’re talking again, as soon as I yell at fucking Alex. Wow, oh my god, congratulations.”
Ryan thinks that went pretty well.
He stays where he is in the parking lot, though, and eventually Z calls back and says, instead of hello, “Seriously, I’m just like, so happy for you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh,” Z says. “Maybe I’ll - no, no, I’m probably still going to get just as many three AM phone calls from him, but still. Seriously. You guys. Ryan.”
“I’m still me.”
“And you’re getting married!” She laughs. “For real! Do you guys have a date yet? Do you know where you’re gonna do it?”
“We’re thinking in space,” Ryan says. “But if that fails, I don’t know, somewhere around town, whatever.”
“Ryan Ross. You can’t just say whatever about where you get married. You’ve been married, like, a million places already, you’ve gotta find someplace special.”
“I guess so,” Ryan says. “I - wow, yeah, this is. Hey, it’s real this time.”
“It is!”
“Fuck,” Ryan says, adamantly, suddenly struck by the fact that he’s planning to spend the rest of his life with Alex.
Z’s voice goes cold. “Ryan.”
“No, I know, I know,” Ryan says. “You don’t have to defend Alex’s honor or anything. I just - wow, fuck. I mean, we’re going to get all old and shit and still be married. Probably. I hope.”
“Oh, Ryan,” Z says, gentler again. “It’s going to be so great. If you guys need help planning or anything, let me know.”
“Can The Like play the wedding?”
“As long as you don't get married while we're on tour," Z says sweetly. "Because I'd have to kill you, probably. Just a little bit."
"Just a little bit," Ryan agrees.
-
"Jon, hey," Ryan says. "Will you be my best man?"
"When?"
"Probably the middle of July. Like July 14th. Bastille Day."
"Oh, right, Bastille Day," Jon says. "That's my favorite holiday. I'm all booked."
"Oh," Ryan says, shoulders drooping. He looks at his shoes. They're very nice shoes, and comfortable. He likes them.
"So hey, about that song I was showing you the other day," Jon says. "Did you wanna keep working on that? I think I fixed the bridge."
"I don't know." Ryan shrugs. He doesn't remember the song that well anyway. "That song kind of sucked."
"What? I thought you liked that one verse. Fuck you, I was really happy with that."
"Yeah, that one verse," Ryan agrees. "But the rest of it, whatever."
"You haven't even heard the bridge," Jon says.
"Yeah, I'm just gonna." Ryan stands up. "You know, go be somewhere for a bit, since you're all booked up."
"What the fuck, Ryan?" Jon gets up too, grabbing Ryan by the arm to stop him. "Seriously, what the fuck, man? Stop being such a douchebag."
"It's just, I don't - would you say yes if it was a different day?"
"What? To what? What the fuck are you even talking about anymore?" Jon looks at Ryan, eyes and mouth narrow. "This isn't about that song."
"No." Ryan shakes his arm free of Jon’s hand.
"Okay."
Ryan says, "I just figured, like, you're probably my best friend. Or second-best, maybe, but pretty much tied for first place I guess. You're right up there, is what I'm saying, and I thought you would want to be there, but whatever, right? It's not like it's a big deal."
"Okay, Ryan, hey. I get that you're pissed at me, but I don't know why. I'm sorry I'm not willing to change my schedule around because you want to play at getting married again. I mean, it's funny and all, I guess? But seriously, I'm supposed to be helping Tom with a gallery opening that day. In Chicago. I’m not going to fly back for a practical joke."
"Oh, right," Ryan says. "Okay. That's. Okay. Fine. You don't have to - it's okay. I mean, you probably have plane tickets."
"Ryan."
"Jon."
"Why are you pissed at me? I'm sorry, dude, it's just sometimes people need to do shit with their lives for real."
"That's what I'm trying to do," Ryan says, so softly that he has to repeat himself twice.
“That’s what you’re …” Jon trails off, staring at Ryan. “What? You mean - Jesus, dude. You’re, okay, let me make sure I actually have this right. Unlike you, I can usually tell when I’m not talking to a fucking mind reader.”
Ryan laughs, a little, because he’s not good at being mad at Jon even when Jon seems to be trying his hardest to make Ryan feel like shit. Jon doesn’t usually do that, is the thing.
“So you’re getting married,” Jon says carefully. “To Alex. But it’s going to be an actual wedding and shit, right? Not a fake one to post to Twitter and confuse people?”
“Well, we might still tweet about it,” Ryan admits. “You’ve got to admit, it’d be pretty funny.”
“You’re not just getting married for ironic purposes, right?”
“It’s pretty sincere,” Ryan says.
“Okay. Okay. I mean, not that I can - it’s your life and all, even if it was ironic. I just hope the airline’s going to let me change my flight. It should still be far enough in advance, right?”
“It should be. Probably? I don’t know.” Ryan shrugs. He tries to make other people keep track of travel information for him most of the time. “We really want to get married in space. Or at least, I do, I think Alex is just humoring me on that.”
“Oh, right, in space,” Jon says. “I’ll pack my formal spacesuit.”
“I think it’s just gonna be here, though,” Ryan continues, ignoring Jon. “We just need to figure out an actual place. Besides Los Angeles. We can’t take over the whole city.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Isn’t it?”
-
“Wait, wait,” Jon says. “What’s wrong with the paisley?”
The saleswoman gives him a look. “Well, I just think you should be sure it goes with the colors your bridal party is wearing. I mean, the orange paisley and the yellow suits certainly would make a statement, but Ryan here is going to want to make sure it’s the right statement, isn’t he? Aren’t you?”
Ryan looks at Jon, startled, then back at the saleswoman. “There’s a bridal party? I want a party.”
“Well, you’ve got the groomsmen,” she says, gently. “Has your wife already picked out the bridesmaids’ dresses?”
“Yes,” Ryan says. “Of course.”
“No,” Jon says, laughing. “Well, I mean, I guess Z probably has some say in that? I guess she’s Alex’s, uh. Something.”
“She wants them to wear those dresses,” Ryan says, gesturing at his collar and then somewhere just above the knee. “The sixties ones. It would be super cute, apparently. That’s what she told me. Z looks good in them, but I don’t know about my mom. So I don’t know if there’s colors or anything.”
The woman says, “Well, do you have any colors picked out? The dishes, the flowers, anything?”
“Just the orange paisley,” Ryan tells her earnestly. “The food’s probably going to have colors too, though. Alex is vegan.”
Jon manages to stop laughing long enough to speak. “I had no idea they were this disorganized, ma’am, I’m sorry.”
She gives them both a withering look before perking back up, a smile plastered across her face. “How about you give your fiancee a call, Ryan, and see if she has any insight?”
“Oh, but I’m not getting married to a girl,” Ryan says. “Should I call Alex?”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Jon says. “We can bother him later. I mean, he might veto the paisley or something. You can’t let him do that. You have to stand up for your dreams.”
“You’re the one with experience,” Ryan admits, very earnest about it as he looks at Jon wide-eyed. He turns back to the saleswoman. “He married a girl. He knows his stuff. That’s why he’s here.”
“Right,” she says. “That’s great.”
“So,” Ryan says. “Orange paisley. I guess the suits don’t have to be yellow. Jon, how do you feel about black?”
“As long as there’s satin trim,” Jon says.
Ryan claps his hands together, delighted. “Man, see, I knew I brought you along for a reason.”
-
Ryan regrets the decision to stay apart from Alex for the night. They’re trying to be as traditional as possible for the wedding, and the reception is going to be balls-out insane, but the night before the wedding refuses to end, and the next morning seems overly-long as well. It doesn’t help that Ryan has to wake up early to get ready. Jon insists on taking him out to brunch, and then he has to change from his normal clothes and brush his hair at least a little bit, and he gets so jittery that not even Jon can stop him from going to find something to do.
The Like are setting up in the back of the church, and despite their best efforts to discourage him, Ryan helps them out. Mostly he crouches down and studies a board of effects pedals, and tries to arrange all the patch cables with suitable care and artful diligence. It looks really nice.
Someone stands in front of him, casting a shadow on his excessively careful work, and Ryan refuses to look up at first because he is trying to focus, and also he imagines this someone will discourage him from helping anymore. That’s all anyone’s been trying to do lately.
The pair of shoes in front of him shuffle a little awkwardly, and Ryan looks up to see that said shoes are in fact connected to some socks and pants and a belt and a shirt and jacket, and it’s totally that guest Ryan spotted from all the way across the church earlier. Ryan really wanted to compliment him on his fashion choices but never got the chance.
Except, that’s all the split second before Ryan looks at the dude’s face, and, “Whoa, whoa, hi there,” Ryan says. “You’re Alex. I thought you were a guest earlier, but you’re not.”
Alex’s hair is really, really short, or a lot shorter than it was two days ago, and cleaner too. Alex worries at the hair at the back of his neck, looking at Ryan from under his eyelashes, biting his lip. “Hey. You’re not even supposed to be here yet.”
“Your hair’s short,” Ryan tells him. Z is standing a short distance away. She winks at Ryan, and he grins at her before turning his focus back towards staring at Alex.
“Yeah, fuck, I know,” Alex says, looking aside. “Z made me do it. I was just supposed to be getting it, like, washed and styled or some shit, but then there were scissors and I couldn’t do anything about it, and please don’t call off the wedding.”
Ryan stares at him, more intent on wanting to jump his bones than trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. “What? Call it off?”
“Oh god,” Alex says, eyes going wide.
Ryan has to step around the effects board so he can stand close enough to Alex.
"Fuck," Ryan says. He puts his hands in his pockets, slouching a little, trying to look anything but overeager as he smiles. "Look at you."
Alex pulls a face, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I know, I know. It’s fucking weird.”
"Christ." Ryan laughs a little. "Are you sure we have to get married right now? Like." He looks around, but everyone is studiously ignoring them while they talk, except Z, but Z is Z and Ryan doesn't really care if she hears. "I’m not saying to call it off, since, I mean, we could elope later or something, but I - yeah, I mostly just want to have a lot of sex with you right now. You look amazing."
"Yeah, but we did that a few times already, kind of. This’ll be new," Alex says. "Also, my parents would kill me."
"But we could start the ceremony a little late or something," Ryan says, shuffling even closer so he's right up against Alex with their noses almost touching and his hand in Alex's hair. It's clean, and soft, and Alex smells amazing right now and Ryan says, "We could go, like - bathroom? A quickie or something?"
"Don't tempt me," Alex says. "I'd have to get Z to talk us out of it, and I don't think either of us wants that to happen."
"You really don't," Z says demurely.
"Anyway. There's always the honeymoon," Alex says. "And the reception. I'm sure I can manage to stay at least somewhat hygienic and hypoallergenic until the reception."
“Man, though,” Ryan says. “Look at you.”
“Are you gonna pretend to be surprised when it’s actually time for the wedding?”
Ryan looks at his watch. “We’ve got like ten minutes. I can probably do genuine surprise.”
“Yeah, about that,” Alex laughs, putting his arms around Ryan’s neck for just a moment. “Don’t give up your day job for an acting career.”
“I don’t have a day job,” Ryan says.
“See? That’s an even better reason right there not to give it up.”
-
The reception is in some huge, ostensibly-abandoned loft that a few friends of Nick Murray’s used to live in for a while; there are bizarre, tripped-out murals on the wall and someone forgot to remove a bicycle that is sitting in one corner missing a wheel. Streamers hang from the ceiling, and the lighting is probably illegal, and Alex’s parents seem to think the whole thing is fantastic while Ryan’s mother is just vaguely disapproving.
The tables they’re using for the dinner look remarkably out of place, and the head table is up on a bit of a rise that might have been a stage at one point. The place confuses Ryan, a lot, and he loves it.
“We should move in,” he whispers to Alex even as the last of the wine is being served.
“Oh, sure,” Alex says. “Yeah, let’s skip the honeymoon and just take over the loft until the cops kick us out.”
“Okay,” Ryan whispers back.
“I was kidding.”
“Oh.”
Z and Jon both get up at the same time. “I’ve known Alex for a long time,” Z begins, just as Jon is saying, “I’ve known Ryan for a long while now,” and Z crosses her arms and looks at him sternly.
Jon says, “What? I was going to make a speech.”
“So was I,” Z answers back.
“Uhm,” Ryan says, a little baffled even though Alex is laughing.
“Ladies first,” Jon says graciously, giving Z a little bow.
She curtsies, beaming. “Why thank you, Jon Walker. Like I was saying, I’ve known Alex for a long time, which is to say that if I wanted to I could talk for hours about dumb stuff he’s done.”
Z grins towards Alex, who just shrugs, his best impassive face on. He blows at a bit of hair that keeps falling into his eyes, from his recently-trimmed bangs. Ryan has to keep telling him he’ll get used to having short hair again, and Alex keeps denying it, but right now neither of them actually says anything about it because Z is still talking.
“When I was little, I was basically convinced me and Alex were going to get married,” she says, and okay, Ryan didn’t know that. “I figured out that wasn’t going to happen pretty quick, though, and a couple years back me and Ryan decided to make the world a better place by pretending to get married. And anyway, I’d go on, but the point is that somehow that turned into Ryan and Alex getting married, which is really probably the best outcome of all that. Also, I hear the cake is delicious.”
“Wow, Z, I’m touched,” Jon says. “That was really moving. I’m glad I let you go first.” He holds his wineglass out, leaning across Ryan and Alex to toast her. “Just beautiful. Anyway, hey, Ross, congrats. Good job on snagging someone decent, and having the follow-through to get actually married instead of just posting to Twitter. Seems like you picked a pretty cool dude. You did alright for yourself, man.”
“Amazing,” Z says.
“Hey, no, I’m not done,” Jon says. “I’ve got all kinds of anecdotes. Like, how back in ’08 when we were on Honda Civic Tour, Ryan spent basically the whole time following Alex around like a lost puppy. There were a few times me and the guys almost put up posters around a venue, you know, lost guitarist and all, except it was always so easy to figure out where Ryan was anyway. Him and Alex would just wander off and work on songs and all, and there were a few times I wandered in on really elaborate stories, too, like I think Ryan just liked listening to Alex talk. So, yeah, you know, it seems like they like each other okay. Plus, I don't think I've ever heard about Alex getting his water or electricity shut off, either, so hey, that’s always a good sign. Good job, Ryan.”
Alex spends the whole speech with one elbow on the table, resting his head on his hand so he can grin stupidly at Ryan. Ryan switches between grinning back at him and watching Jon as he talks, because Jon’s gesticulating more than usual and it’s pretty funny.
“So yeah,” Z says. “Food soon, then it’s party time.”
“It’s always party time,” Alex says to her.
Then dinner actually is served, and it’s time to eat, and then when it’s finished the tables get folded up and shoved aside as necessary and the music gets turned up so loud that voices can barely be heard three feet away.
One of Alex’s friends brought facepaint, which Ryan only notices because there’s a knot of people in one corner watching on as the girl applies increasingly ridiculous designs as she gets more to drink.
Ryan grabs onto Alex’s hand and nods his head towards that corner, raising his eyebrows a bit in a way he hopes is readable. Alex grins back and nods, so Ryan figures he got the message across so they go and the girl paints on Alex’s third eye in orange and teal and Ryan gets a swam of fuzzy birds across his forehead and the right side of his face.
“Don’t worry about time,” she tells Ryan, right in his ear so no one else can hear, and Ryan is pretty sure she is on a lot more drugs than he previously realized. “Don’t - I mean. It’s okay. It’s good. You’re really cute, you know that?”
“I just got married.”
“I know. I was there,” she says. “I can see it in you. Go, okay? Go and come back. We’ll all be here.”
“Uh-huh,” Ryan says. “I’m gonna go find Alex.”
Alex stands back waiting just a few feet away, so finding him is easy even though there are people between them. Alex keeps his fingers just barely away from the still-wet paint on Ryan’s face. “Nice.”
Ryan looks around, and he recognizes a lot of the people here but there are quite a few he’s pretty sure just invited themselves, and the music is good and loud and he feels it in his bones. He looks at Alex, who is watching someone else’s face get painted, and he says, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“We could go to Toys-R-Us,” Ryan says. “You can get directions on your phone, right?”