You Will Not Rattle Us Apart, Ryan Ross // Vol. II
VOL. II: Thursday
Thursday is compost day. Ryan wakes up to the smell of mulch and rotting organics coming through the window that looks down onto the courtyard. The sun’s been up for so long and Ryan is so disoriented that he feels like an insect burning under a magnifying glass: hot, stinky, half-blind. And also really fucking hung over.
His phone is ringing, he notices, as he figures out how soon he’s going to have to get out of bed. He lets it go to voicemail while he goes and vomits in the bathroom, rinses his mouth and drinks a gallon of water directly from the tap. When he comes back out half an hour’s passed and it’s 3:00 pm and it occurs to him that he said he’d go in to work today and make up the hours from yesterday.
But he feels better now, and the sun is shining. He goes and checks his phone and tells himself he’ll go in later even as he calls Jon back.
Jon’s at the grocery by his apartment in Chinatown, and he’s on his way to come partake in compost day, but he wants to know if he should bring anything for the barbeque. “What kind of bland crime against tofu are they cooking this time? Maybe I can help.”
“Uh,” says Ryan, staring down at the mob of activity in the courtyard, “You know, I think I’m still a little drunk.”
“Jesus, Ross,” Jon says, and hangs up.
Ryan apparently wore his show-sweaty t-shirt and tightest pair of jeans to bed last night (although the button fly is popped, which is probably why he didn’t wake up with gangrenous junk) and he still has one sock on. He gets undressed and then dressed again, taking it slow and pulling his pants - loose, breathable chino that Spencer’s mom bought him for a job interview once: good for compost day, and nothing else - on while lying in bed, gropes for his sunglasses, and then pulls Brendon’s Buddha Sigg bottle out of the fridge for further hydration and goes down to join in.
Compost day happens four or five times through the spring and summer, and pretty much Olivia has a Model T assembly line workflow in place: pre-mulching everyone’s new offerings, overturning the in-process stuff, or spreading the rich, stinky-ass brand-new fertilizer out into the communal gardens. Ryan chooses none of the above and, waving a few greetings to the Zooeys, goes to stand with Spencer, who is spreading out the newly donated kitchen scraps on top of the pile.
Ryan kind of regrets this choice, because the egg shells and rubbery celery hearts and potato skins are somehow pretty nauseating. Also, the flies. He picks up a shovel, to look useful, and then just leans on it while he says, “So I don’t remember much past when those guys in pajamas started playing Led Zeppelin covers.”
Spencer looks over at him. His hair is lanky and he looks a little stone-faced through his sunglasses. “Jon disappeared with some girl with a lip ring and then you got us kicked out of the bar at closing time. Then we came home.”
“A girl?” Ryan disapproves, choosing to ignore everything else. “God, he has to get over that.”
“Over what?” says Spencer, who already knows the answer, and demonstrates that fact by rolling his eyes even as he asks.
“That whole heterosexual thing.” Ryan twists his shovel around in his hands, then belatedly inspects his palms for imaginary splinters. “It’s harshing our vibe.”
“I’m a little unclear as to what our vibe is supposed to be, actually.” Spencer doesn’t do air quotes, but he implies them verbally pretty clearly. “Because we’re still a long way off from being the gayest band in Brooklyn, your love of jodhpurs aside.”
“What if we want to play in drag?” Ryan demands, “What if I want to go on expletive-filled punk rock rants about homophobic frat boys between songs?”
“I think Jon probably counts as an ally, anyway.” Again, with the twist of the mouth that implies air quotes. “And he’s witnessed you and Brendon screwing enough times to register as a gay porn expert. ”
“Yeah,” Ryan doesn’t acknowledge the slight to his own horniness. “But without actually putting his dick in a guy, he’s keeping us out of the running completely.”
“Is that really your primary concern?” Spencer asks, and from the way he points his eyebrows and his beard over at Ryan, Ryan knows the joke, lame as it was, is no longer tolerable, much less funny.
“No,” he concedes. Then he perks up: “I think I’d rather know who had their hands in my pants last night.” Fishing for reassurance of his eminent fuckability is a little tacky, but he tries to smile winningly at Spencer anyway. “Some lucky person forgot to do up my buttons, afterward.”
Spencer doesn’t rise to the bait. He’s a deep swimmer. He looks like he didn’t even hear the words come out of Ryan’s mouth, overturning shovelfuls of organics like a deaf farmboy.
Back when Ryan was still available, and still boning every warm body in touching distance, things were always best when the other person was a loose acquaintance: dazzled by the shining surface, ignorant of the emotional undertow. Despite that, Ryan likes to think that Spencer would still want him, even having been dragged down far enough to drown a hundred times over. He likes to think that if the timing was right, the things they did when they were lonely, bored teenagers would just start up and take off with minimal fuss and mind-blowing results.
Sometimes that’s one of the things he says to hurt Brendon when they fight about questions like how-monogamous-is-too-monogamous. That Spencer’s a better option. He’s said it twice: both times it’s been near-fatal. The look on Brendon’s face showed the shock of the amputee, the gutshot, the maimed left waiting in triage. Ryan knows he should never say it again. He knows he probably will, anyway. But even as much as he knows it hurts Brendon, Ryan will never, ever say it to Spencer. Because that would be even worse.
Spencer just keeps poking the compost bits around, leaving Ryan to feel like a jerk for flirting when he doesn’t mean it. Or can’t mean it, or shouldn’t. Whatever. It’s a slutty, jerky thing to do, and Brendon deserves better and Spencer definitely, definitely deserves better.
“Thanks for getting me home, anyway,” Ryan says, eventually. He climbs into the compost pit and starts upending buckets full of sagging greenery and used tea bags so that Spencer can more easily shovel them to where they need to be.
Spencer just says, in that same flat way from before, “Brendon would’ve worried.”
“Yeah, I know.” Chastised, Ryan keeps working. He thinks up about a half dozen ways to apologize for dragging them all into this stupid fight, but none of them really sound right. Probably because none of them end with him promising to stop letting his dick ruin the band, first by boning Brendon and now by - well, not boning Brendon. Whoever’s fault that is.
He keeps hoping he won’t have to apologize. That’s the problem. That it’ll turn out that Ryan Ross was right all along. That the turmoil and bitching was all worth it because he’ll suddenly have maneouvred the band into the perfect gig, the perfect tour, the perfect LP, the perfect indier-than-thou label.
He doesn’t know where Zach got off to last night, but having someone like that see their show - because, of course, to see is to believe - would be really helpful towards that end. And Ryan is starting to feel like he could really use some help. His plan fell to pieces months ago.
Pretty soon Jon shows up with a garbage bag full of his kitchen scraps - mostly just joint stubs and coffee grounds - and clambers in to help, as well. He’s considerably cheerier, cleaner and better-rested than either of them, and he quickly draws Spencer out of his grumpy bear routine. Mostly by calling it a “badittude on par with one of Ryan’s tantrums.”
Spencer’s head swivels to stare, “Badittude?”
Jon raises his eyebrows and shrugs, and Spencer eventually nods. “Alright, that’s accurate,” he says.
Ryan goes, “Hey.”
And later, when Spencer drops a piece of limp asparagus down the back of Ryan’s pants, he knows that they’re okay again.
Sometime after 5:00 the sun ducks behind the rise of the western apartment block, and the children all line up to get the dirt hosed off of them, and someone fires up the massive grill for a tofu and root vegetable ratatouille. People finish up what they’re doing as the smell of the food starts wafting across the courtyard.
“Oh shit!” says Jon as soon as he realizes that dinner has started. He drops his trowel and grabs for his bag: “I brought some sriracha sauce for this.” Holding the bottle aloft like a medic, he heads over to lend his expertise at the grill.
Ryan goes upstairs to take a shower before dinner - opting to spare everyone the shrieking that would come with getting blasted by the garden hose - and notes that he missed a few calls.
Work. Brendon.
He listens to both messages while holding the speaker as far away from his ear as possible, grimacing with guilt for the first, and then just - drooping. His shoulders sag, he stares at the floor as he listens.
Brendon says: “Hey, so I’m not gonna be home for dinner. Work’s kind of crazy. Tell Olivia I’m sorry I missed compost day, I’ll make it up to her next month. Save me some barbeque if you can, okay? Or I’ll just get some takeout or something. Okay. I - okay. Talk to you later.”
Ryan’s disappointed, and he’s angry at himself for feeling disappointed, and he’s angry at Brendon for disappointing him, and also for not apologizing for disappointing him and also. Fuck. For proving Ryan right, maybe. Because he really didn’t want to be right about this job. And missing compost day was one thing, but next thing you know Brendon will be moving practice around or trying to weasel out of a gig.
Ryan can see that day coming. That day scares the living shit out of him. A life without Brendon is one thing - livable, if nothing else. But a band without Brendon? Doesn’t even exist.
He gives himself ten minutes in the shower to rage, and then five minutes to get dressed and cool off. “Badittude,” he mutters to himself as he towels his hair into something artful, then dabs some belated sunblock onto his pinkish face. “Try gladittude. I’m one happy motherfucker.”
He goes back downstairs and eats off his knees and laughs and jokes and if he falls asleep before Brendon gets home that night, it’s not the end of the world. Things could be worse.
He just needs to make sure that he doesn’t let it get that way.
.
Vol. III: Friday